E-democracy (combination of the words "
electronic" and "
democracy.") is a form of
direct democracy representing the use of
information and communication technologies and strategies by
democratic actors within
political and
governance processes of local
communities,
nations and on the international
stage. Democratic actors/sectors include
governments,
elected
officials,
the media,
political organizations, and
citizens/
voters.
E-democracy suggests greater and more active citizen
participation enabled by the
Internet, mobile communications, and other technologies in today’s
representative democracy as
well as through more participatory or direct forms of citizen
involvement in addressing public challenges.
E-democracy is a relatively new concept, which has surfaced out of
the popularity of the
internet and the need
to reinvigorate interest in the democratic process. Access is the
key to creating interest in the democratic process. Citizens are
more willing to use Web sites to support their candidates and their
campaign drives. In the United States just over half of the
population vote, and in the United Kingdom only 69% of English
citizens do so.
The research indicates the political process has been alienated
from ordinary people, where laws are made by representatives far
removed from ordinary people. The goal of e-democracy is to reverse
the
cynicism citizens have about their
government institutions. However, there are increasing doubts
concerning the real impact of electronic and digital tools on
citizen participation and democratic governance, and warn against
the 'rhetoric' of electronic democracy.Mosco, V. (2005)
The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and
Cyberspace. The MIT Press.
Lusoli, W. (2006).
Of Windows, Triangles and Circles: the Political
Economy in the Discourse of Electronic Democracy. Comunicazione
Politica, 7(1), 27-48
Lusoli, W. (2007).
Forme di democrazia elettronica. In G. Pasqino
(Ed.), Strumenti della democrazia (pp. 101-122). Bologna: Il
Mulino
Tools/Forms of E-Democracy
There has been a significant growth in the last four years and
implementation rates have topped out in many of the categories. To
see this data, go to
NIC Resources web site. Public and private sector
platforms provide an avenue to citizen engagement while offering
access to transparent information citizens have come to
expect.
To develop these public-sector portals or platforms, governments
have the choice to internally develop and manage,
outsource or sign a self-funding contract. The
self-funding model creates portals that pay for themselves through
convenience fees for certain e-government transactions. Early
players in this space include govONE Solutions, First Data
Government Solutions and
NIC, a company built on the self-funded model.
Social networking is an emerging area
for e-democracy. The social networking entry point is within the
citizens’ environment and the engagement is on the citizens’ terms.
Proponents of e-government perceive government use of social
networks as a medium to help government act more like the public it
serves. Examples of state usage can be found at
The Official Commonwealth
of Virginia Homepage, where citizens can find
Google tools and
open
social forums.
Government and its agents also have the opportunity to follow
citizens to monitor satisfaction with services they receive.
Through ListServs, RSS feeds, mobile messaging, micro-blogging
services and blogs, government and its agencies can share
information to citizens who share common interests and concerns.
Government is also beginning to
Twitter.
In the
state of Rhode
Island
, for instance, Treasurer Frank T. Caprio is offering daily tweets of the
state’s cash flow. Also, many state agencies 'Tweett'
Practical issues with e-democracy
E-democracy has a number of practical issues surrounding it. In the
media, on the Internet, and in popular consciousness, there is a
strong and generally unchallenged view that the Internet is the new
electronic cradle of democracy. The original source of this view is
probably the relatively unfettered speech found in Internet
newsgroups, mailing lists, blogs, wikis and chat rooms.
The Internet, as it currently exists, does have several attributes
that encourage thinking about it as a democratic medium. Part of
this can be traced to the design principles that were established
early in its evolution. The lack of centralized control suggests to
many people that censorship or other attempts at control will be
thwarted. Other attributes are a result of social design in the
early days, the strongly libertarian support for free speech, the
sharing culture that permeated nearly all aspects of Internet use,
and the outright prohibition on commercial use by the National
Science Foundation, for example. The Internet's most significant
contribution was the idea of unmediated many-to-many communication
on a large scale, through newsgroups, chat rooms, MUDs, and
numerous other modes. This type of communication ignored the
boundaries established with broadcast media, such as newspapers or
radio, and with one-to-one media, such as letters or landline
telephones. Finally, the reality of the Internet as a massive
digital network with open standards suggested that universal and
inexpensive access to a wide variety of communication media and
models could actually be attained. Some practical issues involving
e-democracy include: effective participation; voting equality at
decision stage; enlightened understanding; control of the agenda;
and inclusiveness.
Citizen’s Role in E-Democracy
The Internet provides a distinctive structure of opportunities that
has the potential to renew interest in civic engagement and
participation. Civic engagement can be understood to include three
distinct dimensions: political knowledge (what people learn about
public affairs), political trust (the public’s orientation of
support for the political system), and political participation
(conventional activities designed to influence government and the
decision-making process) .
The information capacity available on the Internet allows citizens
to become more knowledgeable about government and political issues,
and the interactivity of the medium allows for new forms of
communication with government and elected officials. The posting of
contact information, legislation, agendas, and policies makes
government more transparent, potentially enabling more informed
participation both online and offline. For more information, visit
transparent-gov.
Internet as a campaign tool
The Internet is viewed as a platform and delivery medium for tools
that help to eliminate some of the distance constraints in
representative democracy. Technical
media for e-democracy can be expected to extend to mobile
technologies such as
cellphones.
Most importantly the Internet is a many-to-many communication
medium where
radio and
television, which broadcast few-to-many, and
telephones broadcast few-to-few, are not. Also, the Internet has a
much greater computational capacity allowing strong
encryption and
database management, which is important in
community information access and sharing,
deliberative democracy and
electoral fraud prevention. Further, people
use the Internet to collaborate or meet in an asynchronous manner —
that is, they do not have to be physically gathered at the same
moment to get things accomplished.
Using the Internet as a political campaigning tool has become a
cheaper and more convenient alternative for many politicians in
comparison to traditional door-to-door knocking or telephone
campaigning. Candidates are also beginning to use social networking
sites to reach younger audiences, in turn, creating potential
supporters to campaigns. E-mail chains and political blogs also
have had a major impact with online campaigning. Views are
expressed by adding comments to political blogs or web pages.
Point-and-click advertising (interactive advertising online) also
has influenced traditional mail or television campaigning.• Adam,
Nagourney. "Politics Faces Sweeping Change via the Internet."The
New York Times 04-02-2006 1-2.
/www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/washington/02campaign.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=internetandpolitics&st=cse&scp=1>.
The lower cost of information-exchange on the Internet, as well as
the high-level of reach that the content potentially has makes the
Internet an attractive medium for political information,
particularly amongst social interest groups and parties with lower
budgets.
For example, environmental or social issue groups may find the
Internet an easier mechanism to increase awareness of their issues
compared to traditional media outlets, such as television or
newspapers, which require heavy financial investment. Due to all
these factors, the Internet has the potential to take over certain
traditional media of political communication such as the telephone,
the television, newspapers and the radio. The
civil society has gradually moved into the
online world.
Another example is
openforum.com.au, an Australian
non-for-profit eDemocracy project which invites politicians, senior
public servants, academics, business people and other key
stakeholders to engage in high-level policy debate.
Novel tools are being developed that are aimed at empowering
bloggers, webmasters and owners of other social media, with the
effect of moving from a
strictly informational use of the
internet to using the internet
as a means of social
organization not requiring top-down action.
Action triggers, for instance, are a novel
concept designed to allow webmasters to mobilize their viewers into
action without the need for leadership. These tools are also
utilized worldwide: for example, India is developing effective
blogosphere that allows Internet users to state their thoughts and
opinions.
Electronic support for local democratic groups
Citizens' associations play an important role in the democratic
process, providing a place for individuals to learn about public
affairs and a source of power outside that of the state, according
to theorists like
Alexis de
Tocqueville.
Public policy researcher Hans Klein at the Georgia
Institute of Technology
notes that participation in such forums has a
number of barriers, such as the need to meet in one place at one
time. In a study of a civic association in the northeastern
United States, Klein found that electronic communications greatly
enhanced the ability of the organization to fulfill its
mission.
There are many forms of association in civic society. The term
“interest group” conventionally refers to more formal organizations
that either focus on particular social groups and economic sectors,
such as trade unions, business and professional associations or on
more specific issues such as abortion, gun control, or the
environment. Other traditional interest groups have
well-established organizational structures, formal membership
rules, and their primary orientation is toward influencing
government and the policy process. Transnational advocacy networks
bring together loose coalitions of these organizations under common
umbrella organizations that cross national borders.
The Internet may serve multiple functions for all these
organizations, including lobbying elected representatives, public
officials, and policy elites; networking with related associations
and organizations; mobilizing organizers, activists, and members
using action alerts, newsletters, and emails; raising funds and
recruiting supporters; and communicating their message to the
public via the traditional news media.
Benefits and disadvantages
Information
and Communications Technologies are neither democratic, nor
undemocratic, they are merely means to an end and not normative by
their nature. They are tools that may be deployed to achieve
certain goals (e.g. contradictory goals, such as coercive control
or participation can be fostered by digital technology). However,
certain institutional framework conditions may either support or
hamper the use of electronic means for the benefit of democratic
processes. Risks and opportunities of the digitization of
democratic processes depends therefore to a large extent upon the
particular institutional framework conditions of the chosen
democratic model (which is mainly set out in the
Constitution, incl. the type of the underlying
social contract, specific aspects of
the
rule of law,
representative democracy or
direct democracy, etc)Hilbert,
Martin. "DIGITAL PROCESSES AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY: Dynamics, risks
and opportunities that arise when democratic institutions meet
digital information and communication technologies." open-access
online book 2007
/www.martinhilbert.net/democracy.html>.
Benefits
Contemporary technologies such as
electronic mailing lists,
peer-to-peer networks,
collaborative software,
wikis, Internet forums and
blogs
are clues to and early potential solutions for some aspects of
e-democracy.
A number of non-governmental sites have developed
cross-jurisdiction, customer-focused applications that extract
information from thousands of governmental organizations into a
system that brings consistency to data across many dissimilar
providers. It is convenient and cost-effective for businesses, and
the public benefits by getting easy access to the most current
information available without having to expend tax dollars to get
it. One example of this is
transparent.gov, a free resource for citizens
to quickly identify the various open government initiatives taking
place in their community or in communities across the
country.
Another valuable source is
USA.gov—the official site of the United States
government. The website is directly linked to every Federal and
State agency. The information provided by the web site is valuable
to all citizens, and non-citizens, of the current news and
regulations of the U.S. government. These are just some examples of
E-government's influence in the
Internet.
E-democracy leads to a more simplified process and access to
government information for public sector agencies and citizens.
For
example, the Indiana
Bureau of
Motor Vehicles simplified the process of certifying driver records
to be admitted in county court proceedings. Indiana became the
first state to allow government records to be digitally signed,
legally certified and delivered electronically by using Electronic
Postmark technology. In addition to its simplicity,
e-democracy services can reduce costs.
Alabama
Department
of Conservation & Natural Resources, Wal-Mart
and NIC
developed an online hunting and fishing license service utilizing
an existing computer to automate the licensing process. More
than 140,000 licenses were purchased at Wal-Mart stores during the
first hunting season and the agency estimates it will save $200,000
annually from service.
Electronic democracy can also carry the benefit of reaching out to
youth, as a mechanism to increase youth voter turnout in elections
and raising awareness amongst youth. With the consistent decline of
voter turnout e-democracy and
electronic voting mechanisms can help revert that trend.
Youth, in
particular, have seen a significant drop in turnout in most
industrialized nations, including Canada
, the
United
States
and the United Kingdom
. The use of electronic political
participation mechanism may appear more familiar to youth, and as a
result, garner more participation by youths who would otherwise
find it inconvenient to vote using the more traditional methods.
Electronic democracy can help improve democratic participation,
reduce civic illiteracy and voter apathy and become a useful asset
for political discussion, education, debate and
participation.
Disadvantages
Equally, these technologies are
bellwethers of some of the issues associated with
the territory, such as the inability to sustain new initiatives or
protect against
identity theft,
information overload and
vandalism.
Some traditional objections to direct democracy are argued to apply
to e-democracy, such as the potential for
governance to tend towards
populism and
demagoguery. More practical objections exist,
not least in terms of the
digital
divide between those with access to the media of e-democracy
(mobile phones and Internet connections) and those without, as well
as the
opportunity cost of
expenditure on e-democracy innovations.
Furthermore, there are still those who are skeptical to the amount
of impact that they can make through online participation. Although
the government projects supply information, IT illiteracy and the
digital divide are grounds to discourage participation. The
political advances on the Internet can potentially dishearten
non-users to adapt the new technologies.
Electronic direct democracy
Electronic direct
democracy is the strongest form of
direct democracy in which
people are involved in the
legislative function. The notion is
utopian in the present
capitalistic world, because realistically the
Internet and other electronic
communications technologies are
used only to ameliorate the
bureaucracy
involved with
referendums. Many advocates
think that also important to this notion are technological
enhancements to the deliberative process. Electronic direct
democracy is sometimes referred to as EDD (many other names are
used for what is essentially the same concept).
EDD requires
electronic voting or
some way to register votes on issues electronically. As in any
direct democracy, in an EDD citizens would have the right to vote
on legislation, author new legislation, and recall representatives
(if any representatives are preserved).
Technology for supporting EDD has been researched and developed at
the Florida Institute of Technology. The technology is currently
used with student organizations.
EDD as a system is not fully implemented anywhere in the world
although several initiatives are currently forming.
Ross Perot was for a time a prominent advocate of
EDD when he advocated "electronic town
halls" during his 1992 and 1996 Presidential campaigns in the
United
States. Switzerland, already partially
governed by direct democracy, is making progress towards such a
system.
Senator On-Line, an
Australian political party running for the Senate in the
2007 federal elections
proposes to institute an EDD system so that Australians decide
which way the senators vote on each and every bill. A similar
initiatiave were formed 2002 in Sweden where the party
Aktivdemokrati, running for the swedish
parliament, is offering its members to decide the actions if the
party over all or some areas for decisions, alternatively to use a
proxy with immediate recall for one or several areas.
Liquid democracy, or direct
democracy with
delegable proxy,
would allow citizens to choose a proxy to vote on their behalf
while retaining the right to cast their own vote on legislation.
The voting and the appointment of proxies could be done
electronically. The proxies could even form
proxy chains, in which if A appoints B and B
appoints C, and neither A and B vote on a proposed bill but C does,
C's vote will count for all three of them. Citizens could also rank
their proxies in order of preference, so that if their first choice
proxy fails to vote, their vote can be cast by their second-choice
proxy. The topology of this system would mirror the structure of
the Internet itself, in which routers may have a primary and
alternate server from which to request information.
ICTs and Political Participation
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a major role
in organizing and informing citizens in various forms of civic
engagement. ICTs are used to enhance active participation of
citizens and to support the collaboration between actors for
policy-making purposes within the political processes of all stages
of governance. ICTs offer citizens not only the means to organize
themselves, but also to produce cultural codes to represent
themselves. ICTs can be seen as an important enabler to the
empowerment of citizens or e-mancipation of citizens..
Internet and Youth Civic Engagement
There has been much speculation about the Internet’s potential to
facilitate the engagement of younger citizens in politics. This
group of young people, under the age of 35, frequently labelled
Generations X and Y, have been noted for their lack of political
interest and activity for the last two decades. The younger
generation is less likely to have established long-standing habits
of media use, and are willing to experiment with new technologies
and formats. Young adults view the benefits of new technologies as
a means of gaining advantage in education, employment, and in the
political realm. Younger people have a facility with Internet
technology and are more likely than older citizens to use web-based
platforms to research and access political information . However,
there is on clear consensus on the capacity of new media, including
the Internet and social networking websites to engage young people
in the democratic process.
See also
References
- Clift, S. (2004). E-Democracy Resource Links from Steven Clift
- E-Government, E-Politics, E-Voting Links and more. Retrieved July
10, 2009, from Publicus.Ne-t Public Strategies forthe Online World:
http://www.publicus.net/articles/edemresources.html
- Ibid.
- Bellamy C., T. J. (1998). Governing in the Information
Age. Great Britain: Biddles Ltd.
- Stockwell, S. (2001). Hacking Democracy: the work of the Global
Citizen. The Southern Review-Online Journal , 34 (no. 3),
87-103
- Franke-Ruta, G. (2003). Virtual Politics: How the Internet is
Transforming Democracy. The American Prospect-Online , 14 (No. 9),
A6-A8.
- Mercurio, B. (2003). Overhauling Australian Democracy: The
Benefits and Burdens of Internet Voting. University of Tasmania Law
Review , 21 (No. 2), 23-65.
- Bellamy C., T. J. (1998). Governing in the Information
Age. Great Britain: Biddles Ltd.
- Ibid.
- Center for Digital Government “Digital States Survey
open-access online resource 2008
http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/survey/61
- Government Technology’s Public CIO Thought Leadership Profile
"Expanding eGovernment, Every Day" open-access online paper 2006
http://www.nicusa.com/pdf/EGOV_PublicCIO-Aug06.pdf
- For a full list of state agencies with Twitter feeds, visit Real
Life. Live document.
- Novak, T., & Hoffman, D. (1998). Bridging the Digital
Divide: The Impact of Race on Computer Access and Internet
Use. Nashville: Vanderbilt University.
- Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its Critics. etc.
New Haven: Yale University Press
- Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement,
information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge:
University Press
- Center for Digital Government “ENGAGE: Creating e-Government
that Supports Commerce, Collaboration, Community and Common Wealth”
2008 http://www.nicusa.com/pdf/CDG07_NIC_Engage.pdf.
- Jensen, M., Danziger, J., & Venkatesh, A. (2007, Jan).
Civil society and cyber society: The role of the internet in
community associations and democratic politics. Information
Society, 23(1), 39-50.
- The road to e-democracy. (2008, Feb). The
Economist, 386(8567), 15.
- Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement,
information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge:
University Press
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Gunter, B. (2006). Advances in e-democracy: Overview. Emerald
Group Publishing Limited 58(5), 361-370
- http://www.in.gov/bmv/ Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles
- http://www.nicusa.com NIC
- Canadian Parties in Transition, 3rd Edition. Gagnon and Tanguay
(eds). Chapter 20 - Essay by Milner
- Komito, L. (2007, December). Community and inclusion: The
impact of new communications technologies. Irish Journal of
Sociology, 16(2), 77-96.
- Kattamuri etal. "Suporting Debates Over Citizen Initiatives",
Digital Government Conference, pp 279-280, 2005
- Electronic Voting in Switzerland (invalid
link)
- Proxy Proposal
- Kubicek, H., & Westholm, H. (2007). Scenarios for future
use of e-democracy tools in Europe. In D.F. Norris, Current issues
and trends in e-government research (pp.203-223). Hershey:
Cybertech Publishing.
- Frissen, V.A.J. (2008). The E-mancipation of the citizen and
the future of e-government: Reflections on ICT and citizens’
participation. In A. Anttiroiko (Ed.)., Electronic government: Vol.
6., Concepts, methodologies, tools and applications (pp.
4070-4084). New York: Information Science Reference
- Owen, D. (2006). The Internet and youth civic engagement in the
United States. In S. Oates, D. Owen & R.K. Gibson (Eds.), The
Internet and politics: Citizens, voters and activists. London:
Routledge.
- Ibid.
External links
- access2democracy NGO - E-democracy: from theory to
practice.
- Council of
Europe's work on e-Democracy - Including the work of the Ad Hoc
Committee on e-Democracy IWG established in 2006
- e-DC (e-Democracy
Centre) - Academic research centre on electronic democracy.
Directed by Alexander H. Trechsel, e-DC is a joint-venture between
the University of Geneva's c2d, the European University Institute
in Florence and the Oxford University's OII.
- e-democracy - Professional blog gathers information on
creative ways to increase citizen participation in the websites of
public authorities and local governments.
- E-Democracy.Org
- ICELE -
International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy, a UK
driven international project exploring tools, products, research
and learning for local e-democracy.
- Institute for
Politics Democracy and the Internet
- Interactive Democracy - Notes on how technology can
improve democracy.
- IPOL - A portal on Internet and politics —
Website including primary and secondary research resources related
to online participation, e-democracy and the use of the Internet by
parliaments and assemblies; edited by Stephen Ward, Wainer Lusoli and Rachel Gibson.
- Transparent-Gov
- World
E-democracy Forum
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