Participatory constitutional design: A grassroots experiment for (re)designing the constitution in Greece

Abstract

This chapter reports how participatory processes and ICT tools can go against rule-driven bureaucratic approaches to political participation and public deliberation, trying to defy strict procedural norms in favor of more flexible formats for citizen mobilization, political co-thinking, and sustained social innovation in the area of constitutional building. After describing key theoretical issues on trends and perspectives of public participation in constitution building processes, we review arguments in favor of ICT and social media use in constitutional building and then discuss an ongoing Greek bottom-up experiment named Syntagma 2.0 that introduced an innovative co-creative process for the production of a new Constitution for Greece, to be delivered by the citizens for the citizens. Based on the results of the aforementioned project so far, we present success factors for such initiatives.