Talking about supranational democracy – or just democracy – seems too broad or vague.

Yet, it describes hope. This hope lies at the heart of the political and social evolution, one we, willingly or not, are called to face. Humanity faces problems of planetary dimensions. These include the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity, and the migration waves. Additionally, there is water scarcity and the oceans’ plastic pollution. Not to mention the current wars and catastrophes with their excruciating toll on human lives.

The instinctive human reaction to facing formidable and overwhelming challenges is to seek refuge in one’s territory. People yearn for the intimate and parochial dimension it offers. They seek the reassuring protection of identity and the shelter their roots provide. This is the story that recent elections, wherever in the Western world and beyond, seem to tell us. Nationalism, nativist populism and xenophobic attitudes are all expressions of similar concerns grounded in fear. A justified fear.

Unfortunately, problems aren’t solved by locking them out or building a nice sturdy wall around our space. It is much more complex than that and, at the same time, more intellectually stimulating. It is the challenge of democracy. This challenge implies openness, confrontation, and dialogue.

At different times in the history of mankind, we had different relevant levels of government: cities, kingdoms and empires, nation-states. It has not been a linear or democratic process at all.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), we now have at least four relevant levels of government simultaneously. These are the local level, the national level, and the regional level. This is especially true in Europe, but not only there, since there are other integrated regions of the world. There are also cross-regional groupings like G7 or BRICS. Finally, there is the global level, appearing to be the most relevant for many reasons.

For some of these governance levels, we have democratic models to discuss: municipalities, states, and the EU. The solutions are essentially to be invented for others, especially the global ones.

And this is the first part of the governance dilemma.

The second part is how all these levels of government can and will interact with each other. How can citizens be at the same time holders of rights in their municipality and citizens of the world? How can local administrations interact with continental and global ones? How can states act as a transmission belt among all these levels of government? How can they all be legitimate, accountable, and inclusive?

Suppose we have any hope of taking up the global governance challenge successfully. In that case, we must address the people’s need for belonging. We must also protect their cultural rights. This need for roots connects to the local dimension. The “global” without the “local” has no appeal for individuals.

For all these reasons, the Supranational Democracy Dialogue has been organized annually since 2018 by Università del Salento in Brindisi. It is a place to discuss all these topics with scholars, experts, activists, and international officials. Basically, it welcomes whoever is interested. There is no way to define how big the interdisciplinary area of multilevel governance is and how heterogeneous the relevant interactions among different institutional actors at various levels may be. And how interestingly diverse the contributions to the conversation are.

We have already learned that there are scalable democratic tools such as citizen consultations, randomly selected deliberative assemblies, multi-stakeholder dialogues, courts and tribunals. Others are perhaps less so, such as parliaments. We have learned that technology can do a lot to reproduce on a larger scale models that previously worked only at the townhall level.

Dialogue does not claim conclusiveness. The more many the voices, the more interesting the conversations become. The possibilities for mutual learning and cross-fertilizations in research and practice are infinite.

In terms of the evolution of societies, six years is a short time. This conversation has just begun. You are all invited!