PoliticalBar

Political Transparency

In order to understand the issues raised by transparency, it is important to understand that the requirement for transparency is consubstantial with the emergence of democracy. Transparency is thought of as a necessary and essential modality of democracy in the sense that it allows two things. First of all, it fights against the secrecy attached to the arbitrary decisions which were the prerogative of the monarchies and which excluded a whole part of the population from the political decision while allowing the decision-makers to be freed from any justification of the decision. taken. Next, the requirement for democratic transparency is based on the idea that the association of individuals with political life implies that rational individuals have all the information necessary to make a clear and informed decision. In other words, transparency makes it possible to fight against corruption and conflicts of interest – the pursuit of particular interests to the detriment of the general interest – while improving the quality of democratic deliberation.

Proposal

In order to answer the question of “Politic Transparency” it seemed necessary to create a space for exchange and debate, between citizens and politicians, in a public space.
To answer these different tematiques we propose the concept of “Politic festival”. This festival breaks down into 3 phases:
-from April 1 to April 30: thanks to the PoliticalBarApp, citizens can find out about the political figures who will represent them during the summer session of parliament for each of the cantons. He will then be able to vote which politicians he most desires to meet in order to be able to discuss with them during the 2nd phase of the festival.
-from May 1 to May 30: Launch of the PoliticalBar, the citizen can follow via the application which politicians will be present on which days during this period. They can interact, debate, with the politician, which reinforces the feeling of “Politic Transparency” in the eyes of the citizens thanks to this physical meeting.
from may 31 – June 18: Summer session in the Swiss parliament. Citizens can follow the debates live from the PoliticalBar, where the concentric space promotes discussion. In the PoliticalBar of Bern, in front of the parliament, a politician is invited every day to take the place of the Barman. This allows citizens to make their feedback directly to politicians reinforcing the feeling of being part of democracy for the people.

The PoliticalBar application firstly allows citizens to learn about the identity of the politicians who represent them in the parliament. Using the app, the user can choose a canton, where the list of parliamentarians displays the data of each politician, which parties they are from, and what ideas they support.
Through this list, the user can get acquainted with one or more politicians who share similar ideas. He then has a period of one month to vote on the personalities he would most like to meet during meetings at the PoliticalBar (April 1 – April 29). On April 30, the application will give the names of politicians as well as the opening hours of the PoliticalBar every weekend for a month. Thanks to the application, citizens can indicate their presence during the debates where they wish to go during this period.
During the summer session (May 31 – June 18), the application allows the user to know the subjects that will be debated in the assembly each day, and to stream them live. If the citizen is interested in a certain type of subject, he can notify in the application that he will be present at the PoliticalBar to follow the debate and participate in it.

The structure of the building is composed of a wooden frame repeated every 2 meters.
The beams on each side of the frame delimits the space reserved for citizens, while the space between the interior ends of the frames delimits the space of the politician, who takes on the role of the Bartender. The idea of putting the politician in the place of the bartender is to reaffirm the idea that his role is to be at the service of the people. Its central position in relation to the plan reinforces this idea of servitude with the structure (cage), but also of exchange since it is at the center of the citizens to promote dialogue.

The Political Bar is a pavilion divided into 2 spaces with different uses.
-The central, longitudinal space is dedicated to confrontations between two parties who do not have the same opinion on a subject. Each of the parties can sit on one side of the bar, which allows a frontal dialogue between the two opinions. In this case, the role of the bartender becomes that of the mediator, he controls the debate by allowing everyone to express themselves and give their opinion.
-The side spaces are dedicated to open discussion and questions from citizens directly to the bartender. This takes up the idea of Greek theaters with a concentric space where the bartender becomes the actor, but here the crowd can directly interact with him.