NEW PUBLICATION: Borghetto, E. (2023). The debate about a virtual Parliament during the pandemic emergency. Interdisciplinary Political Studies, 9(1), 5–19. PDF available here
PARLIAMENTS and technological innovation after the pandemics
The pandemic crisis represented an unprecedented challenge for legislative assemblies, which were required to rethink their traditional methods of parliamentary work. In most cases, this translated into a process of modernization of their ICT capacity. Starting from an analysis of the reaction to the first waves of the health emergency of 2020-2021 - assumed as a paradigmatic case study to analyse the dynamics of technological reorganization of parliamentary procedures - this research project aims to investigate the implications, the potential and, where appropriate, the risks of the introduction of ICT solution in the context of parliamentary work.
The project was funded by the European Union (NextGenerationEU) and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze after been selected in a competitive announcement "Finanziamento di progetti competitivi per Ricercatori a Tempo Determinato (RTD) dell'Università di Firenze 2021-23"
The research project is organised into three Working Packages:
WP1 - Analyse, map and classify the remote participation and voting methods put in place by parliaments during the pandemic crisis. Hence, it envisaged a classification and analysis of the forms of virtual or hybrid Parliaments.
WP 2 - Reflect on the post-pandemic perspectives for re-engineering parliamentary procedures. In a non-emergency context, can ICT offer opportunities - and at what "cost" - for rethinking the current working methods of parliaments?
WP 3 - In light of the experience of the Italian Regional Councils and some foreign legal systems, lay the ground for a reflection on the digitalization of drafting, with particular attention for its implementation in the Italian legislative assemblies.
