The Changing Face of Digital Democracy

This is an initiative which, in fact, is the direct consequence of escalating events in Italy and Europe. The origin of the research project "Pandemic and Democracy. Rule of Law in the Digital Society", born under the aegis of the Leonardo Foundation from the collaboration between Bocconi, the University of Florence, the University of Trento, the Feltrinelli Foundation and the Treccani Encyclopedia Institute, had intended to investigate the impact of digital transformation on rights protection. But the pandemic has reshuffled the deck by making the researchers take another perspective.

"With our partners we decided to investigate the relationship between digital technology and democracy in the context of the coronavirus emergency", explains Oreste Pollicino, Full Professor of Comparative Public Law. He is part of the Bocconi team participating in the initiative together with Marco Bassini and Giovanni De Gregorio, who will work with him on digital rights, and Pietro Sirena and Francesco Paolo Patti, who will look into the private law aspects associated with the impact of the pandemic.

The project, included in the COVID Crisis Lab, involves the development of six major topics: the first concerns the way in which, under the push of the emergency, the sources of law are changing; the second looks at the relationship between health and privacy and, therefore, at the relationship between digital technology and surveillance; the third considers the impact on citizens and private contracts. And while the fourth topic is that of the use of technology in the fight against the virus, especially as regards the protection of health, the fifth considers the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, also with reference to the relationship between Northern and Southern Italy. Finally, in the last of the six macro areas of the research project, scholars evaluate the impact on the European integration: What kind of Europe is emerging from the ordeal?

"The Bocconi faculty chairs in constitutional law and private law have placed particular emphasis on the present and future implications of Covid-19, investigating how rights and fundamental freedoms are going to be protected in a future characterized by the accelerated digitization of society," Prof. Pollicino concludes.