Prof. Dr. Uwe Serdült

Index on digital political participation opportunities in the cantons.

The Democratizing Just Sustainability Transitions (DUST) project aims to develop new participatory tools for sustainability transitions that strengthen citizen participation and trust in democratic governance.

It seeks to recognize the voices of the least engaged communities, with a focus on structurally weak regions that are dependent on energy-intensive industries and will be most affected by sustainability transitions.

The goal is to support the implementation of place-based policies for just sustainability transitions at scale that increase citizen participation and trust in democratic governance, especially in the least engaged communities.

Blockchain technology has enabled a new phenomenon, so-called decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs). DAOs can be defined as self-governing organisations whose administrative logic is implemented via smart contracts on a blockchain. DAO members need to take decisions either for the daily business (e.g., investments) or for developing organisational structures (e.g., protocol changes) and for this, DAOs have implemented a variety of decision-making processes in which members vote on proposals submitted by the community. The project builds on a interdisciplinary approach: The UZH Blockchain Center will extend its already existing technical framework for collecting blockchain data to include data on DAO voting and apply its expertise in network science and modelling to analyse voting dynamics; the ZHAW Institute for Organizational Viability is going to structure and categorise the DAO landscape along different voting mechanisms and conduct interviews with DAO representatives; the UZH Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA) will apply learnings for digital democracy based on DAO voting approaches. The project will bring Switzerland a step further in developing effective policies for a digital democracy.