The schedules have evolved to focus on audience participation, rather than endless policy announcements
. Across the Baltic sea there are similar jamborees in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The combined audience is more than 600,000 people each year. About 90% of parliamentary parties send representatives. Recently the organisers banded together to form the “Democracy Festivals Association”, which will offer support to groups from other countries who want to put on something similar.
The popularity of these events in northern Europe owes much to those countries’ political cultures, reckons Zakia Elvang, the Democracy Festival Association’s chairwoman, since “there is less distance between the regular citizens and the elite of society” than elsewhere. The organisers encourage attendees to see themselves as a crucial part of the political system. Admission is always free.
The schedules have evolved, Ms Elvang explains, to focus on audience participation, rather than endless policy announcements. “You might come along with your kids because you’ve seen that there’s a children’s soccer game, but then you stay there,” she says. “You overhear a conversation about environmental politics, and decide to check it out. It opens up this space for people who are not already attending the church of democracy.
At times this idyllic vision of political participation runs up against uncomfortable realities. In both 2017 and 2018 the Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi organisation, disrupted Sweden’s. But the idea of citizens celebrating their political differences over a picnic is catching on elsewhere. The Democracy Festival Association is working with organisers in Ukraine and South Korea to set up their own events.
Nonetheless, the spread of these events shows that ordinary people have plenty of appetite for civic engagement and public debate—as long as it is lubricated by a couple of drinks and the odd ice-cream. In an age when democracy is threatened by online polarisation and institution-flouting populists, these festivals offer something to cheer.
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