How Vast Or How Good Is E-Democracy? A Review On The “Digital Democracy Database” By The European Digital Development Alliance

Recently a new source of data on democracy has been released. The Digital Democracy Database (Khutkyy 2021) published by the European Digital Development Alliance is announced as an evolving project “designed to identify and analyse cases of digital democracy aspiring to consolidate global democracy by discovering and sharing good practices of open participatory governance worldwide.” This first edition is a collective pro bono initiative of an international team of analysts. In sum, the database lists over 1 000 digital democracy cases of nationwide scope from 50 countries. The database is similar to several other available datasets of democratic instruments and cases such as the Direct Democracy Database (International IDEA 2021), Participedia (2021), or OGP Toolbox (Open Government Partnership 2021). In particular, it systematically reviews democratic instruments in multiple countries as the Direct Democracy Database, structures data by instruments and cases, provides datasets in open data format and positions them on map as Participedia, and embraces transparency, accountability, and participation in digital realm as OGP Toolbox.