Research has shown that deliberative formats, and digital tools, in particular, are unable to address this imbalance, and this holds true all the more in the face of social challenges such as those posed by the Covid-19 crisis. This disproportionately disadvantages the less wealthy, lending the resulting democratic deficit a specific socio-economic character (cf. To make things worse, the naturalisation regime is much more strict and the procedure far more expensive in Austria than in other European states. Footnote 1 Because they have the “wrong” passport, they are unable to influence the legislation by which they are nevertheless bound. Since only Austrian citizens are eligible to vote in municipal elections, almost a third (31.5%) of the city’s permanent residents are unable to participate in these elections. Our discussion draws on the findings of a research project that examined the increasing democratic deficit in the Austrian capital Vienna. In this paper, we discuss the extent to which innovations in participatory democracy might help address democratic deficits caused by the fact that socio-economically underprivileged segments of the population are neither able to vote nor overly interested in voting.

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