Last month, the National Civic League’s Center for Democracy Innovation and the Institute for Democratic Engagement & Accountability (IDEA) at the Ohio State University co-hosted the second annual Global Innovations in Democracy parliamentary exchange in Washington, D.C. This year’s exchange included delegations from nearly a dozen countries, representing Armenia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, France, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States.
The purpose of the exchange was to provide a global forum to discuss the most innovative methods and tools to strengthen democratic resilience via deliberative citizen engagement.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi helped kick off the event at the opening reception, hosted by the European Parliament Liaison Office. Pelosi told the crowd “We need to make democracy more democratic.”
Pelosi described how innovations in democracy can help empower women in politics (which was a theme of the reception). She underlined the importance of having women in leadership on the global level. This helped set the tone for the rest of exchange, as participants shared a number of examples of how women are leading, strengthening, and benefiting from innovations in democracy.
