The experience of the covid-19 crisis has served to underline and strengthen the case ERS Scotland has long been making for a revamped local democracy. The work undertaken in recent years – alongside a range...
Posted 14 Jan 2021
The Citizens' Assembly of Scotland has proposed an idea that could ensure all of Scotland is reflected in Holyrood - a permanent citizens assembly, or 'House of Citizens'.
Posted 04 Jan 2021
Overhauling Parliament’s London-dominated second chamber would help empower the UK’s nations and regions, writes a senior director at the Electoral Reform Society. It’s been a year since Boris Johnson’s victory in the 2019 general election,...
Posted 22 Dec 2020
Last Saturday the final session of the Citizen’s Assembly of Scotland concluded. The assembly, the largest deliberative event in Scotland’s history brought together ordinary people to deliberate over the issues that will shape Scotland. As...
Posted 12 Dec 2020
It’s hard to think of a more troubling year in living memory. But the public health crisis has, perhaps counter-intuitively, put issues of democracy at the forefront. The election may feel like a distant memory,...
Posted 07 Dec 2020
This article was originally published on inews.co.uk. You could dismiss the comments as classic Boris Johnson bluster. But they vocalise what the views of too many in Westminster when it comes to the devolved nations....
Posted 27 Nov 2020
Scotland’s lax transparency rules are leaving voters in the dark about the scale and nature of political lobbying, a coalition of campaigners has told MSPs. The argument was made by the Scottish Alliance for Lobbying...
Posted 09 Nov 2020
For too long now, online political campaigning in Britain has gone effectively unregulated – to the benefit of well-funded, secretive groups, and to the detriment of voters. Despite the rapid rise of online political ads as a campaign tool, governments...
Posted 29 Oct 2020
"When we now come to use Westminster’s one-person-takes-all system in Scotland, it seems perverse and unwieldly."
Posted 04 May 2020
Democracy isn’t static, it is a process. It isn’t always simple or easy, and today it is being tested under the strain of a crisis of trust, one which affects political institutions, the public square...
Posted 30 Mar 2020
