Embracing Digital Democracy: Brazil's Path Forward

On Monday, June 24, in Brasília, the Wilson Center Brazil Institute co-hosted an important event with two of the most significant thinkers at the intersection of technology, democracy, and social impact: former Taiwanese Minister of Technology, Audrey Tang, and E. Glen Weyl. Both are authors of the book "Plurality," which describes how this vision of plurality applies to the future of the digital world. The event, held at Ibmec Brasília, was organized in partnership with the RadicalxChange Foundation and the Institute of Technology and Society (ITS Rio). Brazil Institute Global Fellow and policy expert Natalia Paiva was present. Joining Natalia were Paula Berman and Marco Konopacki.

As Natalia recalled in her opening remarks, Brazil has a history of democratic social participation, from participatory budgeting and the constituent assembly to the Internet Civil Framework (Marco Civil da Internet). But today, with new challenges we see hasty poorly informed discussions, restricted debates, with no popular participation, influencing the Brazilian legislature, and compromising the positive trajectory of defending collective and individual rights, especially in internet regulation. As we have stated before, the attempt to regulate artificial intelligence in a rushed manner is a clear example of this disconnect.

Now is the ideal time for democratic nations draw inspiration from tradition of broad democratic and plural participation, driven by the excellent examples of digital democratic innovation promoted by global experts such as Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl.