SEOUL - Bruno Kaufmann - the globetrotting Swiss-Swede journalist who serves as president of the Initiative & Referendum Institute-Europe and is the driving force behind the global direct democracy forum here  -- trotted out a new term in his speech opening the conference: "Superdemocracy."
    That's his way of talking about the need to build "trans-national" democratic structure to give citizens real power in a globalized world. Kaufmann's argument: the global economic crisis was produced and managed by international forces not subject to democratic accountability. The world needs global democratic structures that blend elements of representative and direct democracy.
    In his words: "Furthermore, migration, globalization and the borderless digitalization of our spheres of communications indicate that our predominantly indirect and nation-state based democracies have to be upgraded-hence we are approaching what I would venture to call ‘Superdemocracy' - a democracy which is much more direct and much more transnational."
    There are few models for this sort of democracy. The best may be the transnational initiative that is part of the Lisbon Treaty, which provides a new framework for the European Union.
    Kaufmann set out four goals for the forum process.
1.    Creating a global inventory of direct democratic procedures and practices (and developing a common language to describe them)
2.    Developing a global curriculum and agenda for research in d.d.
3.    Creating a public debate on the need for direct democracy in transnational organizations, such as the ASEAN process.
4.    Developing "a code of conduct for free and fair democratic procedures."
More to come on all of this.