How can the sovereignty of the people be fostered ? That is the question that was raised during the seminar organised by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 3-5 July 1997.
Paradoxically, recognition of the virtues of democracy, based essentially on the representative system, has gone hand in hand with an awareness of the need to make it function more fully in order to involve citizens more in political decision-making.
This fuller functioning on which the seminar focused its attention entails finding a balance between representative democracy and direct democracy.