The “Political Parties and the Citizen” project focused on examining how political parties in Asia and Europe interact with citizens and citizen movements. The project consists of two components, (i) research and (ii) a workshop. The research examined interesting case studies from Asia and Europe on the relationship between political parties and civil society organisations and how they interact with one another. The workshop aims to expand on these case studies to address the challenges political parties and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) faced in their interactions; how these challenges have been addressed; and present policy recommendations to improve the effectiveness of how the two interact to promote mutual interests.
The objective of the project was to:
- Facilitate the sharing of experiences and lessons learned by political parties in engaging CSOs.
- Explore the role that citizen movements play in domestic politics and how political parties can engage with them.
- Identify common trends and challenges that political parties in Asia and Europe face and put forward lessons-learned and follow-up activities that could be pursued in addressing them.
The workshop on “Political Parties and the Citizen” was held on 14 – 16 November 2013 in Yangon, Myanmar and 25 International and local representative participated in the workshop. The workshop was organised under ASEF’s long-standing “Asia-Europe Democratisation and Justice” (AEDJ) and in partnership with the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and hosted by the Sun Institute in Myanmar.
