ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The manuscripts that originated this book were generously discussed by
researchers at the Center for Advanced Studies in Digital Democracy and
Electronic Government of the Federal University of Bahia. I am very grateful to
Dilvan Azevedo, Rodrigo Carreiro, Maria Paula Almada, Lucas Reis, Tatiana
Dourado, Eurico Matos, Pedro Mesquita, Maria Dominguez, Robson Carneiro,
Isabele Mitozo and Samuel Barros for the criticisms, corrections and suggestions
offered.
CONTENTS
Presentation
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1
1970-1995: The origins of the idea of electronic democracy –
teledemocracy
To democracy via technology
Teledemocracy as a project
The dimensions of digital democracy
Registering public opinion
Information, data
Debate, discussion, horizontal communication
Decision making
Chapter 2
1996-2005: the consolidation of the idea of digital democracy
Digital democracy takes off
The impact of technology on democracy: the controversy on the effects
The phase of models of democracy
Facing the last resistances
Chapter 3
2006-2015: the state of digital democracy
A new internet
Themes and trends in recent years
New trends in digital democracy
To conclude
References
About the author
Credits
S
INCE THE LATE 1990s, with the spread of the internet, words such as
interaction, collaboration, exchange, recombination and sharing have
come not only to organize the grammar of digital networks but also to influence
the social dynamic itself. It is a set of expressions related to forms of production
and distribution of information and knowledge that uncover new scenarios,
demanding reflexive efforts to understand its effects on communication and
culture, as well as on education, economy and politics.
Today, the reach of the digital connection networks in a country of
continental dimensions such as Brazil is evident. If, on the one hand, internet
promotes an unprecedented enhancement in remote interactions and an
exponential increase in access and production of content, on the other hand,
there is a fierce dispute over attentions (and accessions) in its environment, which
are increasingly narrowed to a limited range of platforms, sites and applications.
With the growing use of networks in the country, issues such as freedom,
human rights, social equality, censorship, gender and race populate the daily life
of virtual forums, often providing alternatives to the type of approach developed
in traditional media such as radio, the TV and the written press. This is due,
among other factors, to the relativization of the division between those who
dictate and those who consume information, as this boundary is currently being
erased.
Since the expansion of the network leverages the multiplication of data
volume and its corresponding dissemination in the public sphere, and it also
stimulates the participation of an increasing number of people in the discussions
on subject matters of common interest, we should ask ourselves about the real
impact, in the public eye, of this way of circulating information and voices.
In this sense, it is promising to create a collection that aims to bring together
Brazilian authors dedicated to thinking about the dynamics of digital connection
networks, investigating their influence on the direction of democracy. Edited by
the sociologist and PhD in Political Sciences Sergio Amadeu da Silveira, the
Digital Democracy series invites researchers from the field of digital culture to
scrutinize, from different approaches, the recent history of this ambivalent
relation.
Within this series, the book Democracy in the Digital World: History, Issues and
Themes, by Wilson Gomes, guides us more securely through the history of this
democracy so distinctively designed by the contemporary world. An itinerary, in
the author’s own words, to follow the formation of a new, transformative idea,
whether regarding its meandering uniqueness or the historical meaning of many
terms used for comprehension on broader scale.
With a clear and direct language, the Digital Democracy series also seeks to
awaken the interest of researchers in the area of technology and communication,
as well as that of a more comprehensive readership, who are surrounded in their
daily life by permanently connected technological devices. This publication in
digital format makes use of a support capable to expand the possibilities of
accessing studies about central aspects of contemporary life. In this way, it
reinforces the role of reading as a key feature in education conceived on an
emancipatory basis, using digital technology as a tool propitious for a critical,
inventive and renewing social space.
Danilo Santos de Miranda
Regional Director of Sesc São Paulo
L
IVES CONNECTED IN HIGH-SPEED data flows through georeferenced
devices. In the past it would have sounded like fiction. Today it sounds like
a trite description, a commonplace. Our everyday life is teeming with
information technologies that have come to mediate much of our social
interaction. Technological hopes thrive and become marketing ploys, creating
loyalty to and passion for the brands of big corporations that sell state-of-the-art
gadgets. But the technology leaps unveil scenarios of risks and dystopias. The
fear of automation, algorithmic prediction, artificial intelligence or corporate
control over human beings has produced research and fiction.
In order to discuss the complex relationship between technology and
democratic societies, from the human and social sciences point of view, we now
launch the Digital Democracy series, featuring works that address topics closely
linked to the expansion of technologies, such as hacker culture, intellectual
property, algorithms and democracy. The series includes reflections on the
implications of digital technologies – especially cybernetic (Wiener) – in societies
that can be called of control (Deleuze), in an informational (Castells), surveillance
(Zuboff) and platform-based (Srnicek) capitalism, delimited by a neoliberal order
(Laval, Dardot).
In this volume, one of the most important of the series, the professor and
researcher Wilson Gomes has successfully gathered, both critically and
creatively, theoretical approaches to digital democracy, from the origins of the
concept in the 20th century to our days, analyzing notions of the disputes and
solutions envisioned for the obstacles and possibilities stemming from the
appearance of newer, more agile and more pervasive technologies. It is,
therefore, an indispensable reading for anyone who researches, studies or takes
an interest in the subject, since, despite the theoretical rigor, it was written to be
read and understood by non-specialists.
The journey narrated by Gomes is one worth following. I find it particularly
striking how people once believed and placed their hopes in television as a means
to organize the participation of the society. Today, teledemocracy may seem farfetched, but it shows that over time technologies have kindled the hopes of
people who seek to overcome or solve issues of social power relations through
technique. One of the main legacies of modernity.
Scrutinizing the theories of digital democracy, the author discusses political
participation in digital networks, the so-called e-deliberation, the structuring of
the public sphere vis-à-vis the internet, the obstacles to and advances of etransparency and the digital divide as one of the limits of the democratic process.
While attempting to stick to the main theme, Gomes could hardly fulfill his
mission without addressing or mentioning online political participation and the
issues of digital governments and parliaments.
This book thus fills a gap in the scientific literature on digital democracy. In
somber times, of serious crisis and doubts about the democratic conditions of our
country, it makes us reflect beyond the possibilities of digital technologies to
improve the quality of democracy, political representation and processes of
deliberation and participation.
It is opportune to remember that digital technologies are a product of
cybernetics, the science of communication and control. The internet is a network
in which the digital traces left by its users are aggregated and analyzed by data
brokers that identify them and sell them to marketing companies. Online social
networking had focused the attention of connected citizens of both genders and
hosted major clashes of electoral disputes in Western democracies in the second
decade of the 21st century. Intriguingly, heated debates have emerged on the
corrosion of democracies in technologically mediated environments due to the
opacity of the algorithms and codes that control them, the speed of the so-called
fake news, adherence to post-truth rituals, in short, the huge concentration of
traffic in few technological platforms. In this sense, the issues raised by Wilson
Gomes may help us understand the ambivalent role played by technologies in
democracies.
Sergio Amadeu da Silveira
T
HIS BOOK INTENDS TO PROVIDE AN ITINERARY to help readers
understand the development of the idea of digital democracy, which is the
conception according to which technological resources, projects based on
communication technologies and even personal and social experiences in the use
of communication and information technologies can be employed to produce
more democracy and better democracies. The history of the idea of digital
democracy is the history of the implementation of e-democracy in projects and
experiments, but also, unintentionally, of the social uses of technology.
Moreover, it is also the history of the public talk, in political environments or in
the media, in the form of discourses, publications and debates, about what
technology could or should do for – or against – democracy. Finally, it is the
history of academic or scientific attention to e-democracy, of the bibliography on
the subject from the first formulations to contemporary developments, of the
formation and consolidation of lines and trends of research, of the constitution of
the scientific field of digital democracy.
The three elements are fairly well documented and, owing to the very brevity
of this history, the memory of the entire journey is still largely available. But the
study of academic attention provides the most promising path for two reasons.
Firstly, materials such as articles, chapters, books, works in conference
proceedings and papers are more reliable, more abundant and more available in
their complete format. Scientific discourse is obliged to be systematic, careful and
comprehensive, which cannot be said of the other two types of materials.
Secondly, scientific publications reflect, address and often have as subject,
throughout the entire history, the projects and public debate on digital
democracy. The opposite is not true, since experiments and debates in the public
sphere, for example, do not necessarily reflect the state of the art of research and,
as they are focused on responding to specific functions, they hardly keep in view
the current e-democratic issues as a whole.
Therefore, the reconstruction of the history of the idea of digital democracy
in its broader lines is directly based on the academic attention given to the theme
in the last 45 years. And, indirectly, on the public debate and experiments
carried out over those years, since they are reflected in scientific attention. The
material used consists of a collection of little over two thousand titles gathered
and classified by me in the last ten years, mainly in English and Portuguese1, and
which comprises, under any metric used, the main literature of the area of digital
democracy. When necessary I partly drew on another collection, gathered in the
same way, with around 2,500 titles, from the areas of digital government and
online politics2. This enabled the design of a graphic representation of the area
(its themes, its trends), which, presented in a timeline, reveals the course of the
conception of digital democracy from its origins to our days.
Thus it was possible to provide readers desiring an overview of this subject
with a fairly reliable map and chronology about the origins, trajectory and future
directions of digital democracy, as well as the history of its main issues, debates
and questions. The chronological approach, in the format of a history of the
issue, is actually an innovation in the case of digital democracy, a theme often
subjected to systematic discussions on general problems or particular questions,
and, to the best of my knowledge, no other book adopts such an approach.
Do readers therefore deserve an explanation as to why I did not simply
address the main themes and most decisive discussions of digital democracy,
drawing mainly on the current state of affairs? A lot of uncertainty has prevailed
in the area, which still produces considerable damage when adequate links are
not established between concepts, problematizations and viewpoints adopted at a
given moment and the state of affairs at that precise moment.
A proper understanding of the state of affairs, which means one that
considers changes over time, involves understanding:
• the technology standard adopted at a given moment;
• the stage of development, innovation and social use of technology at
that precise moment;
• the specificities of the discussion developed in that context, the “parties”
and interests involved;
• the intellectual benchmarks considered by the authors of a given
moment.
That is why it is different understanding, for example, a proposition of
electronic democracy when somebody has cable television in mind; or of
cyberdemocracy in a society that is discovering home computers; or of digital
democracy in a society of the internet of things, big data and social media. In the
same tone, a discussion of technology-based democracy in a context in which
democratic theory is most concerned with participatory democracy cannot be
similar to one in which deliberative democracy exerts considerable attraction on
the imagination of democratic minds. I start out from the hypothesis that in
order to make more refined distinctions, fairer and more adequate analyses or
appropriate reconstructions of problems it is important to at least once link the
issues, themes and discussions to the historical contexts in which they are
inserted.
Being a short book, its course is also naturally brief. But it tried to be faithful
to the topography of the area and the trajectories therein contained. In addition,
it was conceived as an introduction to e-democracy, to present the subject to a
non-specialist reader, but who is interested in acquiring a practical grasp of
digital democracy. I hope I have succeeded in that purpose. I must say that even
for me, who have been working since 2001 in a field that only actually started in
1996, it was important to try to formulate a reconstruction of the history and
produce a reliable map of what, after all, happened in this brief, extremely fast
and definitely intense twenty-year span of digital democracy − which, not
accidently, was the one that swept us up in the 20th century and launched us
into the whirlwind of innovations of the new century. Digital democracy is the
offspring of the turn of the millennium and naturally reflects the dizzying speed it
inherited from that moment. In this sense, a pause to locate ourselves on the
map, understand where we came from and decide where we want to go seems to
be not only important but necessary. I sincerely hope readers will appreciate the
map provided by this small book.
This volume is divided into three parts, each corresponding to one of the
periods in the history of digital democracy.
• The first is the formative period of the idea of democracy via
technology, from the first formulations of the 1970s to the period of
the great debate on teledemocracy between the late 1980s and the
middle of the following decade. The second and third parts address
digital democracy in its strictest sense, over the period that extends
until the present, when hopes for e-democracy are based on internet
technologies.
• The second part is longer and features the debates, the themes, the
typical issues of the 1996-2005 decade, the turn of the millennium
when the idea of digital democracy was consolidated. Debates,
themes and issues that will definitely mark the field, so far.
• The third part is shorter and addresses the problems, changes and
trends typical of the last eleven years up to our times. It examines the
behavior of the themes of the previous decade, discusses the new
themes and points out future trends and gaps to be filled in digital
democracy studies and projects. This section will be shorter, mainly
because it is largely an unfolding of the trends, conceptions, and
premises established in the great debates at the turn of the
millennium.
Lastly, an important conceptual explanation to properly introduce readers to
the universe of interactions between democracy and technology. An attempt is
made in this book to restrict the subject matter to the field of digital democracy
and its new and traditional themes. In an earlier publication (Gomes, 2016a), I
believe I have shown that e-democracy has become, especially from the turn of
the century onwards, part of the broader field dealing with the impact of
technology on public life.
TABLE 1
The field of digital politics, democracy and state
Online politics
Digital democracy
• Campaign and elections
• Theory of digital democracy • Digital government
• Political participation
• E-Participation
Digital state
• Governance
• Participation and
cooperation
• News and politics
• Politicians, parties and
institutions
• Internet and society
• Political discussions
• E-Deliberation and the
public sphere
• E-Transparency
• Digital divide
• Delivery of public services
• Open government and
open data
• Smart cities
• Digital parliament
In Table 1, digital democracy lies precisely in the middle, between the
subfields of online politics and digital government (or state). The interfaces
between digital democracy and the other two fields are quite significant, above
all because e-democracy was born first and provides most of the social legitimacy
on which the entire larger area is grounded. In other words, digital governments
must be efficient, economical and modern, but they also have to be democratic;
politics happens almost entirely online, but remains committed to the normative
horizon of liberal democracy, at least in our societies. These are intersections,
not confusions or indifferences: each area has its particularities, aspects,
dimensions, purposes. And its own themes. I resorted to such interactions here
whenever relevant, but it should be clear that I did not presume the themes and
problems related to digital government or online politics to be automatically part
of the digital democracy repertoire.
1 Nevertheless, there is also literature available in Spanish, Italian, French, and German.
2 This is a collection of metadata, treated on the Mendel platform, resulting from a permanent project of
the Center for Advanced Studies in Digital Democracy and Electronic Government (CEADD) of the
Federal University of Bahia, the main laboratory of the National Institute of Science & Technology in
Digital Democracy (INCT.DD).
It is widely believed that it would be impossible for millions of people to have the kind
of participatory democracy available to the members of small communities such as the Greek
polis, New England towns, and Israeli Kibbutzim. In contemporary modern societies, there
are no effective means by which large groups of citizens, whether dispersed across the country
or clustered in a single community, can regularly interact among themselves or with their
leaders. […] At last there is a basic conception of the attributes needed to create a
technological system that will allow a large number of citizens, dispersed throughout their
communities and throughout the nation, to dialogue with each other regularly and to form
their positions on public issues as a group.
Amitai Etzioni
To democracy via technology
T
HE NOTION OF DIGITAL DEMOCRACY1 did not emerge all at once,
but it was developed step by step. The idea that technology could be useful
to build more democratic societies was gradually constructed over at least 45
years. Much changed during this span of time, starting with the designation of
the phenomenon, called successively electronic town meetings (Etzioni, 1972),
teledemocracy (Arterton, 1987), electronic democracy (Varley, 1991), virtual
democracy (Hacker; Todino, 1996), cyberdemocracy (Ogden, 1994), computer
democracy (Buchstein, 1997), and digital democracy (Hale; Musso; Weare,
1999). Not to mention a large number of adjectives and nouns whose mere
association with the word “democracy” sufficed to express the same idea: online,
technology, new technologies, information and communications technologies
(ICTs), web, etc. Obviously, the choice of the word associated with “democracy”
bestows on it a specific meaning (Porebski, 2002): the “distance” (as in “distance
education”), the cybernetics, the electronic technologies, the online connection,
the means of transmission.
Moreover, it took some time to reach a solid consensus on the elements
addressed and hence referred to by the idea of digital democracy and,
consequently, by its experiments, applications, tools, devices, institutions and
functions. In different historical phases, for example, different means of
communication prevailed, but between the telegraph and the permanently
connected smartphone lies a huge difference of scope and meaning. It is one
thing to think of mechanisms of televoting; it is quite another to consider big data
and open government data.
Thirdly, the very idea of democracy is a complex notion; it can be
polysemous and admits a considerable dose of legitimate pluralism, even at the
most rigorous and sophisticated conceptual level. Thus the main issues of digital
democracy were long treated as if all that mattered was the kind of democracy to
be delivered through technology. Is it direct democracy or yet another
appendage of representative democracy? Is it another version of majoritarianism
(in the sense of a society in which the majority can oppress and assert its
dominance on the minority by sheer force of numbers) or is the emphasis now
placed on consensus building? Is it the democracy as understood by classic
liberals, libertarians and communitarians, or is it deliberative or participatory
electronic democracy?
If that were not enough, added to the intrinsic multidimensionality of
theories of democracy are difficulties regarding which democratic aspects or
dimensions will be addressed in the definition adopted. Are we interested in:
• Giving people the chance to make political decisions directly?
• Being consulted, i.e. being heard and considered, by the political
system?
• Interacting with elected representatives?
• Participating? Deliberating?
• Cooperating with the government?
• Legislating?
We have furthermore to consider how rigorous we want to be: is it ultimately
about improving liberal democracy, supplementing current representative
democracy or changing it profoundly and permanently through a technological
revolution per se?
Finally, we should have to admit that the notion that technologies of
communication and information may have a relevant democratizing effect on
governments and parliaments, on political activity and on public life in general;
the notion that technologies have the potential to transform the political process
with democratizing purposes and offer new solutions to traditional obstacles to
the implementation of democracy is not new, but took a long time to acquire the
features it has today. It goes back to a time when, for example, speaking of
communication technologies brought to mind something very different from our
current referent of the term, generally a piece of equipment with a screen, some
kind of input device (which may be the actual screen), some kind of processor
and internet connection. As Thierry Vedel put it, despite the young age of this ethat serves as a suffix for democracy, “electronic democracy [...] has a standing
history of several decades, of which the current discussion focusing on online
media is only the most recent extension”2.
The history of the idea that it was possible to improve democratic processes
through information technology can naturally go a long way back, as the
invention and, above all, the massification of new communication media have
always been accompanied by renewed hopes for improvement in democracy and
public life. For many people, the principle that any important change – and for
the better – in the quality of public life necessarily entails a reassessment of
democracy itself is consistently true. So it was with the printing press and the
sudden genuine possibility of spreading the printed word and “democratizing”
access to books, but also, successively, with the telegram, the telephone, the
radio, the cinema, the television, and even the fax machine. “Democratizing”
could well mean “massifying,” reaching a wider audience beyond face-to-face,
restricted audiences, but also instructing new audiences about political issues,
offering more, up-to-date inputs to form public opinion and inform debate,
endowing parties and political factions with channels of expression, providing
citizens with new and more efficient ways of access to political authority etc.
Our story begins in the 1970s, more than twenty years before the internet
became a relevant social experience, when speculation starts on the future
intersections between democracy and technology, now materialized in a few
concrete experiments. The academic attention enjoyed by the theme at the time,
still sparsely scattered in few publications, consists either of general speculation
about the effect of “new technologies” (cables, satellites, interactive television,
computers, fax, video conferencing) on democracy or the review of experimental
projects, usually carried out by academics and members of social organizations,
aimed at democratic participation via electronic technologies (de Sola Pool,
1973; Doty; Zussman, 1975; Etzioni, 1972). The main focus is citizen
participation. The political and democratic model, in turn, was derived from the
“town meetings”3 held by residents of villages and towns in the golden age of
New England’s “Tocquevillean” democracy (which, in turn, replicated the Greek
agora model) (Etzioni, 1992).
In the 1980s, the volume of publications doubles and academic attention to
the subject deepens. There is a clear decision to consider interactive cable
television as the main technology in question, with other technological resources
(computers, telephones, fax) playing second fiddle. Experiments thrive, headed
by organizations and social movements, but also carried out by companies,
almost all based on cable TV and focused on citizen participation. A theoretical
approach to the contribution of technology to democracy in this period basically
addresses (or promotes) the polarization between advocates of teledemocracy (or
supporters of democracy via technology) and skeptics, critics or detractors,
whether of the proposal of teledemocracy or of the idea that technology is able
promote or modify current democracy.
Between 1990 and 1995, the amount of material published matches that of
the entire previous period, indicating that academic attention to the subject has
now been consolidated. The conceptual discussion is basically an extension of
what had been debated in the preceding decade, though with greater coherence
and initial attempts to organize the field of debate (Dutton, 1992). A considerable
difference now looms on the horizon: as the debate about the possibilities and
limits of teledemocracy still reverberates in the period, the discussion on
democracy and technology increasingly sees the technology of preference, cable
television, fading away in the rear mirror, while home computers with internet
connection firmly establish themselves as the technology of the future.
Teledemocracy still lies at the core of the discussion, but already terms like
electronic democracy (Varley, 1991) and cyberdemocracy (Ogden, 1994) start to
emerge, indicating that eyes are turning to other technologies.
Teledemocracy as a project
The first phase in the history of the “electronic” democracy idea is anchored
in the term “teledemocracy.” The expression gains conceptual muscle in the
1980s, extends throughout the 1990s and, sporadically, over the following
decade. The golden age of teledemocracy is the 1980s and the first half of the
1990s, when experiments mushroomed and rhetoric about the democratic
promises of electronic technologies peaked. But criticism was equally fierce,
especially in the late 1980s and in the 1990s. It should be noted, finally, that this
is basically an American experience, despite having marked the history of
electronic democracy worldwide, either as an example of experiences or as a
counterexample in alternatives to e-democracy.
The term, like all others that succeeded it, expresses what is considered
essential in the new quality of democracy based on electronic technologies,
especially the prefix tele-, in the etymological sense of “at a distance” and in the
most immediate sense of the relation with telephone and television. What
technology can best offer to democracy, therefore, has to do with what can be
done at a distance, putting people in contact with one another or with political
authorities.
At all stages in the development of the history of the idea of democracy based
on technologies – and therefore also in the case of teledemocracy – three
processes unfold at the same time: a) experiments specially designed to explore
the democratic possibilities of the new technology; b) a strong increase of
rhetoric, reflected in media and political discourses, about the impact of
technology on democracy; c) academic debate in which terms are treated
conceptually and concerns take on the form of conceptual problems4.
Experiments with teledemocracy generally include:
• opinion polls (or projects of a general plebiscitary nature);
• “televoting,” registering votes by electronic means;
• and meetings between citizens and elected representatives to discuss and
solve problems, now at nationwide level through electronic town
meetings (Etzioni, 1992), events held via teleconferencing and
interactive cable television.
One example of experiments and initiatives of democracy via electronic
technologies is the so-called Minerva project, developed by the German-IsraeliAmerican professor Amitai Etzioni, then based at the Center for Policy Research
in New York, and documented in an article from the early 1970s (Etzioni, 1972).
Apparently, the term teledemocracy had not even been coined yet, but the idea
is of “an electronic technology that will allow masses of citizens to have
discussions with each other, and which will enable them to reach group decisions
without leaving their homes or crowding into a giant hall.”5 This “system of
participatory democracy” is based on different technologies, depending on the
number of people reached: for groups of up to thirty people, automated
telephone teleconferencing systems would suffice, but for small communities (up
to 2,000 people) interactive cable TV would be the most adequate medium,
while medium-sized communities (6 to 40 thousand) would need to rely on a
combination of radio, satellite television and telephones. Finally, meetings of a
national or international scope would need to be based on networks connecting
cables, shortwaves, television stations or satellites.
It should be noted that, despite the integration of multiple technologies, cable
television (and its interactive possibilities) was the technology standard that most
stirred people’s imagination, already present in every home, school, church, city
council and political club in the US.
An example of a typical electronic poll of the early 1980s was the interactive
television service called QUBE, of the Warner-Amex cable company, whose
purpose was to give governments a quick feedback on what people thought
about public policies and other specific subjects of public interest. QUBE was
adopted by many city administrations in the United States to conduct unofficial
“electronic referendums” on local issues. All citizens needed to do was push
buttons on a console placed on top of the TV to register their vote, which was
collected every six seconds by the company’s computer. It didn’t work out for
different reasons such as operational costs, low participation rates and the
impossibility of having a scientifically constructed sample, among others, but it
enjoyed some success during its short period of existence. And it fired
imaginations.
Regarding the rhetoric about the use of electronic technologies to aid
democracy, or even to replace existing democracy, two main types of material
make important contributions: a) the public discourse present in mass media,
generally stemming from influential politicians or newspaper, magazine and
television columnists; b) the “futurologies”, publications that attempt to identify
and interpret trends in the contemporary social environment and predict their
impact on a more or less imminent future.
The highlight of the first type of public discourse occurred during US
election campaigns of the 1990s, when political rhetoric finally buys the idea of
technologies at the service of the renewal of democracy. First with the model of
Ross Perot’s earliest formulation in 1992, and his electronic town hall meeting. Then
with Al Gore’s more modern version, through the idea of information superhighway
sold in the 1996 presidential campaign (Oblak Črnič, 2012). Both attract
considerable media attention, adding even more confusion to the debate
(Bradley, 1994; Brown, 1993; Etzioni, 1992).
The other important contribution to selling the idea of electronic democracy
came from a few essays of reasonable argumentative (and sales) success in
identifying certain trends in the use and social application of technologies present
in society and extrapolating from them, pointing to future directions and even
estimating the consequences of where the world was heading. Therefore, before
papers and books on electronic democracy, the discourse on the possibilities of
democracy based on electronic communications was underpinned, more or less
emphatically, by essays that formulated a kind of general theory of society (or of
the future of our societies), in which it was admitted that the future technological
stage would finally allow the advent of much better democracies than those we
have at present.
Authors such as J. Naisbitt (1982) and Alvin Toffler (1980) are, in this sense,
very important for stressing the idea of electronic democracy in their predictions
about the society of the future − an attitude that will be replicated by other
general theorists of society, such as Manuel Castells, albeit differently. Toffler, for
example, made it very clear that the old problems of communication shall no
longer get in the way of a consistent and expanded direct democracy6. The
1990s added Howard Rheingold’s virtual community (1993) and John P.
Barlow’s cyberspace (1996) to the rhetorical verve of the moment. These essays
fueled the collective imagination and achieved reasonable success in certain
intellectual sectors with their estimates of what should work in terms of
democracy and technology in the society of the future.
This seemed to be the state of affairs between the late 1980s and the mid1990s: rhetorical polarization between enthusiasts and skeptics of electronic
democracy, and a growing number of experiments in the use of technologies for
political participation, for opinion polls and interaction between citizens and
elected officials. This is where the scientific treatment of the subject starts. The
scientific discussion on the likelihood of the existence of an electronic democracy
and what it should look like did not take long to emerge. Many important
researchers have contributed in the last thirty years to help us understand the
significance of the rapid development of information and communication
technologies for public life and the way they affect life in society, political
institutions and, in particular, the not so simple democratic system.
The answers made up a broad spectrum. Some positions were moderately
skeptical, others bet openly on the future of democracy based on technology, and
others still were decisively skeptical or opposing. The moderate skeptics wanted
to check whether there was any fire beneath all the smoke. Everyone is talking
about teledemocracy and electronic democracy, and enthusiastically so, but is it
just rhetoric and political diversion or is there really something serious that
merits the attention of political science, political communication and sociology?
F. Christopher Arterton is an example of a skeptical author, at least with
regards to the democratic determinism of technology. Moderate your
expectations about the requalification of democracy due to the impact of
communication technologies, he says. He concludes that the current stage of
communications has indeed enabled an important increase in direct interaction
between public office holders and the mass of citizens, which is a good thing, but
unfortunately, in such interaction, one still notices “significant inequalities
between leaders and the public in terms of control over the initiation, timing and
content of political messages”7. In addition, after reviewing several
teledemocracy projects, he concludes that technologies, considered in
themselves, do not demonstrate the capacity to really engage citizens. The
success of a project would therefore be much more related to the organizational
choices of whoever designed it, that is, to choices based on their values and their
assumptions about participation (what they hope to obtain, by which means, to
what extent) than to the technological possibilities. Democracy, therefore, shall
not be “inevitably [...] induced by the revolution in communications
technology”8. Thus our author concludes, visibly disappointed, that direct
democracy has not yet loomed in the horizon: “As I see it, the trend in our
politics appears to be not toward the eventual replacement of representative
institutions with procedures for direct policy determination by citizens”. And he
sadly finishes: “At best, change may lead to an invigoration of representative
processes facilitated by communications media”9.
In the same period John Downing considers, from a different point of view,
that Arterton’s excessive caution was hardly supported by the most recent
developments of technologies. Above all, the latter ignores computer communications
beyond their use for teleconferencing. What Downing does then is review
experiments that consist of projects focusing on computer communications,
especially the PeaceNet and Public Data Access projects. The former, founded in
1986 in California, aimed to support peace movements; the latter, also from the
1980s, was born in the Reagan era to make government information accessible
to the public.
Downing’s conclusions are positive in indicating potential pro-democracy
applications of communication projects via computers, which he synthesizes in
four dimensions.
• Such projects allow “the directed gathering and analysis of data on key
issues that affect communities and subgroups of the population that
might be otherwise overlooked or ignored”.
• By making irrelevant the need for everyone to be together at the same
time, these projects allow the mobilization of people who are
generally separated in time and space, thus bringing together enough
people and publicity “to pressure powerful political interests”.
• Besides nerve centers, such projects can serve “as forums for developing
the requisite language and agendas for political action.”
• Because they connect people beyond national boundaries, such projects
“can begin to address the common problems of humanity, such as
human rights, toxic waste, and peace, by strengthening the resources
and reserves of democratic culture” (Downing, 1989).
But the opponents and detractors of teledemocracy were also numerous,
hailing from at least two sides.
The first critical front comes from those who believe that teledemocracy
overestimates technology while underestimating the political system or neglecting
the dominance exerted by the economic system over technology. What bothers
them is the pretension of modifying the political system by “simply” adding
electronic tools or “naiveties” such as:
a. poor understanding of the resistance of political institutions to selfreformation;
b. a (wrong) assumption of the neutrality of technology, which would
supposedly allow itself, without further ado, to be shaped by
democratic intentions, submitting its particular logic to the social
purposes imposed on it.
The second front of criticism comes from those who, while sharing the
discontent with the state of democracy and desiring changes in the arrangement
of contemporary democracy, view with distrust the model of democracy that
might emerge from teledemocracy. Teledemocracy is quickly accused, as we
shall see later, of proposing a sort of alternative direct democracy whereby public
and free deliberation among the citizens themselves, in the Athenian model,
would be replaced by an “at a distance” plebiscitary majoritarianism, based on
electronic technologies.
Scott London (1995) summed up the common criticisms prevailing until the
mid-1990s and found seventeen items, which can be broken down into practical
problems of technology, problems of political implementation, and problems
related to the democratic and political assumptions behind the experiments.
The following are examples of practical problems related to technology.
• most experiments had low rates of participation;
• the costs of organizing such technological experiments are still
prohibitively high;
• conversation via electronic means is generally context free and therefore
lacks things that can give it meaning and purpose;
• public opinion is produced without the actual (physical) presence of the
interlocutors, and becomes easily fickle.
The following relate to problems of political implementation, according to London:
• consulting citizens through feedback can be inefficient and timeconsuming for representatives;
• one cannot assume that voters feel compelled to become engaged in the
specifics of policymaking;
• some public issues are poorly suited to very broad discussions because
they are either too technical, too specific or too regionalized;
• issues of inequality of access, due to social exclusion or poor
technological literacy, are not resolved.
Democracy-based problems include the following issues:
• devices such as those used to register opinion leave no room for
reasoned, lateral dialogue and debate;
• the compilation of opinions resulting from televoting cannot be
considered equal to a public voice;
• individuals are atomized in this process;
• excessive speed is inimical to consistent democratic deliberation;
• citizens are not free to frame issues on their own terms in electronic
polls or televoting;
• in cases in which there is no clear majority on an issue, simple
majoritarian solutions (by a minimum margin) are not adequate;
• participation in electronic consultations does not involve the ability of
citizens to act on their own initiative, and therefore they do not feel
responsible for the policies designed;
• as there is no adequate supply of information necessary for the decision,
the manifestation of the will becomes susceptible to traditional means
of communication and advertising;
• the same is true with respect to susceptibility in setting the social and
political agenda.
The dimensions of digital democracy
For the authors of this period it is clear that demonstrating the relevance of
technology for democracy requires raising points that are truly decisive for the
democratic life to which the influence of technology makes or would make much
difference. Such points should be summarized in four dimensions: registering or
consulting public opinion, information, decision making and deliberation. Obviously, since
the teledemocracy phase, there has been much public talk about political
participation, which is absent from this list. As a matter of fact, it is a premise
that materializes in all these dimensions – political participation of citizens had
always been considered a decisive factor for the democratic effect of technology.
Moreover, these four dimensions can be distributed into two spheres: the
sphere of citizens or civil sphere (society) and the sphere of political decision (the
state, the political system). Regarding information, the issue is raised of how
citizens may obtain information on public policies, government and the political
system to make the political decisions that concern them in the democratic
regime, such as electoral decision, understanding of politics and defense of their
interests. But there is also the flow of information and data stemming from the
state for citizens’ use. In the case of registering the public will, through either
voting or government consultation, there is once again a flow between society
and government with vectors going up and down. Political decision making is the
prerogative of elected representatives, but if there is any significant enhancement
to be achieved in this regard, it consists of some form of citizen participation in
decision making. Finally, public deliberation is the prerogative of citizens, but,
again, what may be relevant and innovative in this sense is precisely to somehow
transform the horizontal flows of conversation between citizens into vertical flows
intended to influence the system and the government.
Registering public opinion
Electronic voting was one of the first political applications of technology for
democratic purposes. Advocates of a direct electronic democracy argue that
technological solutions could be used to get citizens to vote more frequently,
quickly, cheaply and continuously on a greater ranges of issues (Hilbert, 2009).
Perhaps even more than once a day (Berkeley, 1962). And, above all, from the
comfort of their homes (Hollander, 1985). There would no longer be, according
to the more enthusiastic, any technological limitation to direct democracy with
regard to continuous consultation of the popular will.
In fact, much of the dispute on electronic democracy theory occurring up to
the mid-1990s is related to estimating the role played by electronic systems in the
expression of the popular will. The advocates of teledemocracy had no doubt
that in liberal democracies in which the government and the political system
were increasingly distant and disconnected from the population, and increasingly
closed up in their inherent functioning, no means of making the will of people
reach their representatives should be neglected. Even more so if such registering
of citizens’ opinions could be quick, inexpensive, up-to-date, capable of following
in real time the pace of legislative discussion on public policies and the pace of
government reaction to social issues imposed by the circumstances of the
moment. With the new possibilities afforded by electronic communications –
tele-polls, tele-referendums and televoting via telephone, computer networks,
interactive cable television –, public authorities could no longer complain about
the spatial and temporal difficulties of following the voice of the people, or the
low reliability and high cost of forms of heeding popular sovereignty in
referendums, plebiscites and consultations. Why should the public voice be
disregarded now that it was within earshot of the representatives? The result is,
naturally, enthusiasm.
The reaction was not slow in coming and brought in its wake the first wave of
skepticism against the idea of electronic democracy. It basically consisted in
saying that opinion registering systems do not affect any fundamentally relevant
function of democracy at all. Such a thing, if actually put to work, will only
superficially change the impervious liberal-democratic state, since the sphere of
political decision making will continue to be controlled by elected representatives
and the government, and zealously protected from any “meddling” by the
masses. That if it was capable of change, the state would change into something
even worse, a sort of electronic plebiscitarianism or majoritarianism that would
produce interest aggregation at best.
Benjamin Barber, who devoted much time to criticizing the idea of
teledemocracy in the 1980s, made this point his main trench. His criticism is
explained by the fact that in this same period he proposed a democratic theory
model called strong democracy (Barber, 1984), a democracy based on
participation and autonomous deliberation of citizens, which contrasts with thin
democracy, according to him the model in use in current liberal democracy, with
low participation and production of political decision monopolized by strong
social actors. For Barber, the problem with the demagogues of electronic
democracy based on opinion polls and the fanatics of the democratic automatism
of technology “is not their understanding of technology but their grasp of
democracy”10. The decision to technologically implement a representative
democracy, a plebiscitary democracy or a deliberative democracy, for example,
has radically different implications and requirements with respect to
technologies. And with respect to what technologies may or may not be able to
offer, or offer more or less efficiently, I would add.
Of course, some authors consider that the best application of technologies
consists precisely of promoting a “plebiscitary majoritarianism,” a system based
on the identification of majoritarian opinions (without ever considering that it is
an aggregation of the private interests of private persons). In this case, Barber
expresses a very common concern in the 1990s: “New technology can be a
dangerously facile instrument of such unchecked majoritarianism.”11 Which will
lead to the claim that “the kind of democracy being proposed is a debased,
impoverished version of the true ideal. Democracy becomes a mere device for
registering preferences”12.
Another philosopher, Michael Walzer, writing at the same time, found
himself compelled to fit into his famous book on democratic theory, Spheres of
Justice, a criticism of what he then considered to be the dominant representation
of the impact of modern technology on democracy: isolated individuals,
watching television in the living room, talking only with their spouses, voting in
referendums on crucial national issues by pressing a button on some sort of
device. “But is this the exercise of power? I am inclined to say, instead, that it is
only another example of the erosion of value – a false and ultimately degrading
way of sharing in the making of decisions”13.
An example of this same criticism is recorded in a review by Jean Elshtain of
QUBE, the instant polling service via interactive television already mentioned.
According to the author, the mistake made by the then defenders of
teledemocracy was having a misjudged view of democracy, mistaking it for a
simple system of plebiscites. But there is no democratic political community, she
states, without incorporating “a deliberative process, involving discussion with
other citizens, developing a shared sense of moral responsibility for one’s society
and the enhancement of individual possibilities through action in, and for, the res
publica”14. The plebiscite is not a sufficient guarantee of democracy, since an
autocratic regime may well exist disguised as majoritarian opinion: “That
opinion can be registered by easily manipulated, ritualistic plebiscites”15.
Teledemocracy was not actually limited to systems of registering opinions, as
some of its proponents and many of its detractors insisted, but the assumption
that there lay a project of direct electronic democracy (plebiscitary, based on
interest aggregation and neglectful of public deliberation) provoked considerable
reaction. Apparently, direct democracy via electronic plebiscites needed to be
exorcised. So much so that, re-assessing in the late 1990s the rhetorical and
theoretical polarization of the age of teledemocracy, Professor Stephen Coleman
relates that, for some time, the common discursive strategy of those who
defended the democratizing role of information and communication
technologies, but at the same time wished to evade the objections to the idea of
teledemocracy, “is to assert resolutely their rejection of anything approaching
direct democracy”16. Direct democracy without deliberation and based on mere
aggregation of inclinations was transformed into the caricature of teledemocracy
(and consequently of electronic democracy) and the theoretical scarecrow that
could easily and conveniently be destroyed.
Information, data
“Information” is one of these terms of scant conceptual precision and great
popular success in democratic theory. That is precisely why it is a common item
in lists of highlights either of the qualities of democracy, understood as the
regime in which information is generated and flows more freely, or of the needs
for implementing healthy democracies. It therefore could not be absent from the
short list of technology’s essential contributions to democracy.
Information firstly appears in the form of “politically relevant content,
including news, opinions, and factual data – in vast quantities”17. In this case, the
common observation is that ICTs in general and the internet in particular have
been lavish “in facilitating quicker and more complete access than that of
conventional media to political and government information locally, nationally,
and internationally.”18 Given that democracy is essential for citizens to make
well-informed political decisions, and that digital information and
communication media and environments contribute significantly to providing
citizens with the information that they need, it becomes quite easy to justify the
relevance of technology to democracy.
Secondly, one must consider the actual information about citizens, their
opinions, dispositions, beliefs, desires, fears and activities, flowing to the political
system and government. The good side of this flow of information can be
considered as “the directed gathering and analysis of data on key issues that
affect communities and subgroups of the population that might be otherwise
overlooked or ignored”19. In this sense, information is basically yet another way
of registering public opinion, necessary for public policies and other political
decisions for which one wishes to consider the political desires of the majority of
citizens. On the other hand, the negative side of this view of information as
“citizen data” is the danger that applications designed to collect and process this
type of content represent for the privacy of individuals.
Thirdly, information appears in the form of government data. As early as the
1990s the conviction existed that documents and other data from governments
and state bodies could be made available online to citizens, since the barriers to
their access could be considerably mitigated with the use of information and
communication technologies. The predicted effects of public access to public
data have included, since then, technology-mediated government transparency.
Debate, discussion, horizontal communication
It is curious how early in the debate on electronic democracy we see the idea
that electronic communications might benefit democracy by affording the
possibility of public discussion of social and political problems. This aspect of
democracy is not so obvious, since it does not rival with the need to take into
account the opinion of citizens or the importance of political and governmental
information for enlightened citizenship. Even in democratic theory, the notion
that public deliberation is essential for a well-founded democracy makes a late
appearance.
How then, in the theory of electronic democracy, did the imposition of the
theme occur so “early”? In my hypothesis, there are two good reasons for this.
The first concerns the production of arguments to oppose the notorious
plebiscitary majoritarianism as a way of establishing a dense, participatory
democracy, closer to the model of direct democracy. The plebiscitarianism of
teledemocracy projects was duly contested in theoretical terms with the claim
that there was another means, more efficient and more in tune with a
demanding concept of democracy, of formation of public will and opinion: open,
horizontal discussion, free among citizens. After all, as Athenian classic
democracy has taught us, majority voting and rule are methods to conclude
discussions at the end of which decisions need to be made, but only if a
consensus has not been reached and solely when arguments have been
exhausted.
Only a crude majoritarianism would skip deliberation and go straight to the
vote, dispensing with everything that is the basis of democracy: the search for
clear consensus, mutual enlightenment among citizens on equal terms, the
normative value of the principle of the best argument, the gains in cooperation
and co-responsibility reaped from decisions generated in free discussions, the
strengthening of horizontal ties among citizens, the formation of active
citizenship.
Another possible reason why claims about the importance of debate and an
active public sphere have permeated the qualification of digital democracy lies in
the temporal coincidence between the initial phase of the discussion on electronic
democracy and the boom of deliberative democracy in democratic theory, both
in the 1990s.
Decision making
Political regimes are distinguished from each other by the methods and
assumptions adopted to make decisions that affect life in common. Autocratic
regimes are characterized by limiting decision making to a few people or only
one, while in the democratic regime the decision is made by all, directly or
through representatives chosen for this purpose. Political decision, therefore,
plays an important role in the definition of democracy, so seeking a place for it in
electronic democracy is only natural.
The issue of increasing citizen participation in decision making through
communication technologies involves different aspects.
First of all, we have a set of decisions for which citizen participation is
required, even in forms of democracy that are scarcely amenable to the public
will – that is, that are bent on reserving to the elected and the state bureaucracy
virtually all prerogatives related to decision making. These may be circumstances
in which the parliamentary system transfers to citizens the decision on public
policies, ratifying or not decisions made by representatives, or choosing between
predetermined options, as in referendums and plebiscites, or circumstances in
which the regular legislative process determines that stakeholders be heard
before the parliamentary decision, as in public consultations. In both cases, the
mediation of technology can represent not only a reduction in the costs of these
processes of measuring the popular will, but also the opportunity for efficient and
accessible participation, better adapted to the convenience of the citizenry.
In addition, we have decision making whereby the political system opens up
to citizen cooperation. Cases in point are regulation of standards or public
policies, collaborative production of bills, policy design, etc. Mandated by
constitutions or specific laws or induced by public policies or representatives
open to citizen collaboration, opportunities for participation in these
intermediate forms of citizen intervention have greatly increased. And
communication technologies are an essential condition for the implementation of
levels of participation previously deemed unthinkable. Which includes, in this
case, an effort to involve citizens more closely in public affairs.
Lastly we have the core of political decision, in legislative decisions typical of
regular parliamentary work or in government decisions, regarding the
implementation of public policies and public management decisions. This is a
dimension usually reserved for the elect, and only projects to restore direct
democracy include the possibility of transferring this level of political decision
directly to citizens, without representation or delegation. Alternatively, two
possibilities are usually demanded related to this scope of decision making by
electronic democracy:
• Monitoring: citizens have the right to know how and by whom decisions
are made, as well as the nature and scope of such decisions.
Technological mediation is available precisely to shed light on
decision makers, on the activities of state officials, on the discretion
exercised by civil servants and political authorities, even in the use of
their prerogatives.
• Demand for transparency in the legislative process, which extends to
knowing whether any illegitimate factor (such as corruption) has
affected the decision of any of the actors involved in the decision. But
also required is transparency of government activity as a whole – and
of the conditions under which it is exercised – of public management,
of the exercise of the discretionary power of each servant. Public
transparency, therefore, does not relate only to public affairs, but also
to the actors involved in decision making and the circumstances in
which decisions are made.
***
As seen from the analysis of the four dimensions of electronic democracy
recognized in the teledemocracy phase, not everything is disputed. Criticism
mainly centered on the issue of registering the opinions and positions of citizens,
which for many detractors seemed to represent the core of the proposal. The
other dimensions, also defended by the advocates of teledemocracy, such as
information, deliberation and civil participation in political decision, raised no
controversy. This is important to understand that behind the rhetoric of
opposition to teledemocracy lay a rejection not of electronic democracy, but of
an electronic democracy consisting of an aggregation of opinions through
opinion-gathering mechanisms. QUBE seems to have monopolized political
fantasies to such an extent that it ended up summarizing what many considered
to be the quintessence of teledemocracy and electronic democracy in general.
Other experiments and ideas (such as town meetings and electronic town halls), which
held deliberation and citizen participation in decision making in high regard,
because they did not haunt imaginations, were not called on to help mitigate the
criticism of teledemocracy. Thus, although it may seem, based on the
bibliography, that the period of teledemocracy closes with the victory of those
who rejected electronic democracy, something quite different happened. The
door was closed to the use of communication technologies for political and
democratic purposes (in polls and plebiscites), while the importance of the other
dimensions involved was confirmed, such as information production,
deliberation and participation in political decision. In the future, as we shall see,
the plebiscitary functions will be replaced by public consultation mechanisms,
discussion forums and other forms of lateral and vertical interaction involving
citizens and authorities.
Therefore, the period of experimentation with teledemocracy and of
speculation on ways of using new technologies in the democratic process can in
no way be viewed as a failure. Many of the intuitions born from experiments
based on a technology that did not thrive, the interactive cable television, have
been retrieved since the mid-1980s to be applied again, using the technology of
networked computers. Likewise, the debates about the advantages and
disadvantages of the application of technologies in the political process were
resumed when the technology glimpsed was already the internet. The place of
digital democracy, in public debate and academic discussion, was created and
safeguarded by the discussion about teledemocracy.
1 As we shall see, there have been and still are contending designations of digital democracy. As far as
possible, I shall use “digital democracy” and “e-democracy” to refer to the phenomenon being
addressed here, when more specific contextual designations, as in the case of the teledemocracy period,
are unnecessary. However, when translating or reproducing the argument of another author, I will
adopt the expression he uses. Be that as it may, readers should consider as synonymous the expressions
teledemocracy, electronic democracy, virtual democracy, cyberdemocracy, eDemocracy, e-democracy
and digital democracy. I shall normally use the two latter only because they are the most employed
today.
2 T. Vedel, “The Idea of Electronic Democracy: Origins, Visions and Questions”, Parliamentary Affairs, v. 59,
n. 2, pp. 226-35, 10 Feb. 2006, p. 226.
3 For more on the role of town meetings in US political history, cf.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_meeting>.
4 In this specific case, rhetoric and experiments have been present since the late 1960s and the 1970s (de
Sola Pool, 1973; Etzioni, 1972; Flood, 1978; Laudon, 1977; Smith, 1978), the theoretical discussion is
from the 1980s (Abramson; Arterton; Orren, 1988; Arterton, 1987, 1988; Bjerknes; Ehn; Kyng, 1987;
Sola Pool, 1983; Downing, 1989; Elshtain, 1982; Hollander, 1985), extends to the late 1990s (Barber,
1997; Becker, 1993, 1998; Brants; Huizenga; van Meerten, 1996; Buchstein, 1997; Davies; Jegu, 1995;
Dutton, 1992; Etzioni, 1992; Fountain, 2003a; Grosswiler, 1998; London, 1995; Ogden, 1994; Street,
1997; Tsagarousianou, 1998; van Dijk, 1996; Varley, 1991; Watson et al., 1999; Ytterstad; Watson,
1996) and, already in decline, to the early 2000s (Becker; Slaton, 2000; Kangas; Store, 2003; Whyte;
Macintosh, 2001).
5 A. Etzioni, “Minerva: An Electronic Town Hall”, Policy Sciences, v. 3, n. 4, pp. 457-74, Dec. 1972, p. 457.
6 Cf. A. Toffler, The Third Wave, Toronto: Bantan Books, 1980, p. 429.
7 F. C. Arterton, “Political Participation and ‘Teledemocracy’”, PS: Political Science and Politics, v. 21, n. 3, pp.
620-7, Jan. 1988, p. 620.
8 Idem, Teledemocracy: Can Technology Protect Democracy?, Newbury Park: Sage, 1987, p. 623.
9 Ibidem, p. 621.
10 B. R. Barber, “The New Telecommunications Technology: Endless Frontier or the End of
Democracy?”, Constellations, v. 4, n. 2, pp. 208-28, Oct. 1997, p. 224.
11 Ibidem.
12 J. Street, “Remote Control? Politics, Technology and ‘Electronic Democracy’”, European Journal of
Communication, v. 12, n. 1, pp. 27-42, 1 Mar. 1997, p. 32.
13 M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985, p. 307.
14 J. B. Elshtain, “Democracy and the QUBE Tube”, The Nation, pp. 108-9, 1982, p. 108.
15 Ibidem.
16 S. Coleman, “Can the New Media Invigorate Democracy?”, The Political Quarterly, v. 70, n. 1, pp. 16-22,
Jan. 1999, p. 18.
17 T. Vedel, op. cit., p. 231.
18 R. Hurwitz, “Who Needs Politics? Who Needs People? The Ironies of Democracy in Cyberspace”,
Contemporary Sociology, v. 28, n. 6, pp. 655-61, 1999, p. 657.
19 J. D. H. Downing, “Computers for Political Change: PeaceNet and Public Data Access”, Journal of
Communication, v. 39, n. 3, pp. 154-62, Sept. 1989, p. 162.
The Internet is a vast, amorphous metaphor in search of tangibility. A highway, an
agora, a mall, a library, a portal, a Web, a brain, an ethereal universe of bits and bytes.
We surf, we scroll, we browse, we search, we navigate, we post, we chat, we lurk, we log
on and we go offline.
Stephen Coleman
People often refer to e-democracy as something you can be “for” or “against”. Since no
one living in democratic countries is against democracy (with the exception of marginal
groups), then it must be the “e” people find objectionable.
Åke Grönlund
T
HE POPULARIZATION OF THE INTERNET, the massive adoption of
home computing with connection to, as it was once called, the “world
computer network”, did not happen all at once, obviously, but it did happen in a
decade. In the early 1990s, it was already clear that microcomputers with
internet connection were the major trend in the adoption of communication and
information technologies, even in technologically peripheral countries such as
Brazil. The technological innovation that made home computers possible was
established in the 1980s, but it was certainly not as a home data processor (or a
sophisticated and expensive typewriter) that microcomputers would become
popular in the next decade. If the popularization of home computers did indeed
bring computing machines into the household, the most important fact was that
it opened the door to the massification of another innovation, already
consolidated for military and scientific purposes: the internet. In the early 1990s,
the convergence of home computing with the internet seemed somewhat
comparable to the technological leap that had first put the radio, then broadcast
TV, then cable and satellite TV in people’s homes. But the speed of the
technological innovation and the ensuing massive adoption are even more
surprising than in the emergence of previous technologies.
Between 1990 and 1995 two innovations in particular were determining
factors for the popularization of home computers with internet access. Both had
to do with the invention of graphic interface for the use of new technologies,
which made computers (the case of Windows and the invention of the graphic
standard) and also the internet (the case of the web and the “surfing” internet
[Brugger, 2013; 2016]) intuitive, interesting and fun for people to use. The boom
in the adoption of web-connected computers kicks off in mid-decade and by its
end has already reached massive patterns. At the dawn of the 21st century, the
home computer/internet pattern is already one of the most important and
characteristic social phenomena.
Digital democracy takes off
As of 1996 something very singular starts happening. First of all, the notion
of what to pay attention to in technological terms changed: the focus shifts from
television to computer and from cable to internet technology. There was no
competition, either in commercial success or speed of adoption. We are now,
self-consciously, in the “internet age” (Brants, 1996). In experimental projects, in
rhetoric and in research, the term “distance democracy” is definitely replaced by
the more general expression “electronic democracy” – or by its contenders, such
as the aforementioned “cyberdemocracy” and “virtual democracy.”
If we use academic attention as a reliable indicator of the social, scientific and
political importance attached to a subject, then there is no doubt that the age of
digital democracy is inaugurated in 1996. The first exhibit presented in support
of this hypothesis is that between 1996 and 1999, the same number of titles on
democracy and technology is published as from 1972 to 1995. The comparison
of publications per decade (Chart 1) clearly evidences the temporal delimitation
of the subject and marks the second half of the 1990s as its effective starting
point.
CHART 1
Breakdown of publications on digital democracy per decade – 1976-2015
In addition, if we look at the historical distribution of academic attention, we
will see that only since 1996 production on our subject became numerically
relevant, constant and increasing, as can be seen in the time series that includes
all publications up to 2016 (Chart 2 ).
CHART 2
Distribution of publications on digital democracy per year – 1996-2016
The 1996-2005 decade is homogeneous neither in technological innovation
nor in social use of technology, and all that is reflected in the theme of electronic
democracy. The second half of the 1990s is known as the “commercial turning
point” of the internet, when the internet standard reserved for academics is
replaced by the popular internet, but also of its popularization boom. Internet
service providers thrive, the cost of machines and access drops consistently,
public curiosity about what can be done, as people said, in the “virtual world”
explodes, as does the desire to be “plugged in”. The race for the internet-linked
computer is the order of the day until the turn of the millennium. By the end of
the century, new users are already extremely interested in online interaction,
which abounds in the shape of electronic forums and web chats, but also in
digital tools for instant communication. In the first half of the 2000s this trend is
consolidated and will result in web-based relationships, content-sharing and
social media (Allen, 2013; Zimmer; Hoffmann, 2016), very popular in this
period. Orkut appeared in 2004, YouTube in 2005, Twitter and Facebook’s
open version in 2006, but social networking sites had been available since 1997
(like SixDegrees.com) (Boyd; Ellison, 2007).
From the thematic point of view, the discussion on conceptual principles, the
theory of electronic democracy, is at the core of academic attention to the impact of
technologies on democracy for most of the period. In the ten-year period
between 1995 and 2004, the golden age of digital democracy theory, more than
two-thirds of all publications adopt or include a theoretical approach. That
means, first of all, that most studies, even those aimed at analyzing experiments
and the rhetorical struggle for preferred models of implementing technology in
democracy, must, in one way or another, speculatively face issues related to the
justifications of the likely impacts of technological changes on democracy. After
all, even rhetoric and experiments in electronic democracy have to support their
claims before skeptical audiences, some of them opponents of the idea or of the
consequences they can anticipate. Virtually everyone who writes in the field must
be theoretical to some degree in this period, even when their training and
viewpoint lack a consistent conceptual basis.
In previous years, up to the mid-1990s, the theoretical approach about the
“whys” and “what fors” of teledemocracy ensured the chances of survival of the
theme of electronic democracy. After 2006, however, digital democracy was
broken down into subthemes which thrived throughout the whole period,
practically forming specific areas with their own specifically developed theories,
experiments and rhetoric and, as we shall see, their own history.
The main subthemes of digital democracy – participation, the public sphere
and exclusion, and, a little later, transparency – emerge over the period in
question, but up to 2004 the conceptual treatment of digital democracy prevails
over all other subthemes. After 2004 there is somehow an inverted trend as the
other themes of digital democracy, as a whole, start prevailing over the general
theory of e-democracy to eventually surpass it individually between 2006 and
2008.
CHART 3
Academic attention to digital democracy subthemes per year – 1996-2005
The explanation is that this is a moment in which everyone is asking
themselves, explicitly or implicitly, questions that require answers in terms of
political theory and democratic theory. The initial question from the
teledemocracy phase regarded, for example, whether the new communication
technologies would have a significant impact on politics, on government and,
above all, on democracy. This debate continued between 1996 and 2005
through the discussion about the possibilities and characteristics of technologies
for and against democracy or the permeability of liberal democracies to the new
possibilities afforded by technology, for example. And it progressed as people
sought to understand which type of democracy might emerge from the impact of
new technologies on the political system and government, as well as understand
the interactions between both and society. Great debates followed on the
democratic functions that might be improved (or made worse) by new
technologies, on whether a direct electronic democracy is possible or desirable,
on the democratic patterns arising, for better or for worse, from the application
of technologies. Finally, the question is raised as to whether the effect of new
technologies on the political system, government and society would produce the
model of democracy we want or need.
Of the five major subthemes of digital democracy, only two were actually
present in the second half of the 1990s: the theory of e-democracy and public
deliberation by digital means. Although e-participation had been present already
in the previous phase, in implementation projects and rhetoric, this did not
translate into significant production in the bibliography. Actually, e-participation
is, alongside digital divide, a typical theme of the 21st century, as inferred
from Chart 3.
But why is e-deliberation so precocious compared to the other themes?
Firstly it should be said that it is actually a combination of two themes, close in
their intellectual origin but approached in a relatively independent way by the
authors: public sphere and public deliberation. The subtheme of public sphere,
or of the “new online public sphere”, followed up on the applications of the
Habermasian concept of public sphere, in the field of political communication,
to the universe of mass communication. The idea of a new public sphere, no
longer subject to the limits of mass communication heavily criticized by
Habermas in the 1960s, was based on a representation of the internet as a free
space for horizontal conversation among citizens about affairs of common
interest, and contributed considerably to introduce issues of democratic theory in
the assessment of the digital revolution. Since its inception the internet had
always been adaptable to tools and environments where people could talk to
each other, but now they could dispense with the mediation – and the
embarrassments – of journalism and politics, as well as the limits imposed by the
need for all interlocutors to be present at the same time in the same place, not to
mention the advantages afforded by anonymity, the universalization of contacts
unrestrained by space, the supposed absence of political control in the web. The
internet, therefore, seemed to be purposefully designed to implement the ideal of
the public sphere or, at the very least, to renew hopes in the revival of the public
sphere experience (Calhoun, 1998; Carpignano, 1999; Poster, 1997; Schneider,
1996). Approaches to the internet based on the idea of public sphere soon
thrived, especially by authors in the fields of political theory, democratic theory
or communication, in a momentum that peaked at the end of the period under
analysis (Brants, 2005; Dahlberg, 2001a, 2001b; Downey; Fenton, 2003;
Gimmler, 2001; Muhlberger, 2005; Papacharissi, 2002; Stromer-Galley, 2003).
Skeptics naturally made an appearance (Dean, 2003), but the prevailing mood
made the Habermasians of the public sphere feel completely at home in digital
democracy.
Public sphere was not the only Habermasian theme to feel at ease in digital
democracy in this period. The theory of deliberation was another theme
frequently highlighted between 1996 and 2005. There is a coincidence in time
that might explain this curious fact, as this same period witnessed the boom of
deliberative democracy in philosophy and political theory. Philosophers and political
scientists, such as James Bohman (1996), Amy Gutmann (Gutmann; Thompson,
1996), Seyla Benhabib (1996) and John Dryzek (2000), published at the time
some of the most important books on deliberative democracy, not to mention the
release in the US of the translation of the book Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur
Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaates1, by Jürgen Habermas,
which is the major point of reference of this trend of democratic theory. Studies
in the area thrived in the following years, accompanied by attempts to verify, in
practice, how the so-called public deliberation might work. The popularization
of the internet seemed then to be a unique opportunity to test applications of
deliberative democracy (Buchstein, 1997; Coleman; Gøtze, 2001; Dahlberg,
2001c; Froomkin, 2003; Gastil, 2000; Graham; Witschge, 2003; Janssen; Kies,
2005; Maia, 2002; Trechsel et al., 2004; Witschge, 2002). Even a few
theoreticians of this model of democracy were seen in the field discussing
applications of public deliberation to the digital world (Bohman, 2004;
Chambers, 2005; Iyengar; Luskin; Fishkin, 2003; Schlosberg; Dryzek, 2002).
In fact, the approach to the theme of online public discussion strongly
influenced by democratic theory stems from three sources, all of them rooted in
Habermas, though not exclusively:
a. the discussion on the bourgeois public sphere, in Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas, 1962);
b. the theory of the ethics of argumentation, in Moral Consciousness and
Communicative Action (Habermas, 1983);
c. the theory of deliberative democracy formulated in Between Facts and
Norms (Habermas, 1992).
The second of these themes extended into the third, but it is at the origins of
the approaches that to this day try to test the deliberative quality of online
argumentative interactions. Be that as it may, what matters is that this trend
allowed the theme of online discussion to become, for the theme of digital
democracy post-1996, what teledemocracy had represented for this same theme
between 1972 and 1995.
In the early 21st century, in turn, two new subthemes come to the forefront.
First, the theme identified by the term digital divide, which considers as a main
democratic issue the political inequalities caused by the digital exclusion of
members of a society or the inequality in access to technology between different
countries and regions. At that moment, the digital inclusion of some and the
digital exclusion of others seems merely to reproduce, and enhance, the
important issue of contemporary democracy related to social inequality, caused
by the social inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. Without political
equality there is no democracy, it is that simple. And if digital exclusion increases
the poverty of parts of the political community and the vulnerability of certain
countries and regions suffering from other vulnerabilities, is digital democracy
still democratic? At the very least, then, digital divide needed to be addressed as
an issue as pressing as social exclusion.
The theme was already present in the 1990s in political and media rhetoric,
but it enters academic production consistently in the 2000s (Dewan; Riggins,
2005; Dimaggio; Hargittai, 2001; Hargittai, 2002; Jung; Qiu; Kim, 2001;
Kennedy; Wellman; Klement, 2003; Norris, 2001; OECD, 2001; Servon, 2002;
van Dijk, 2005; van Dijk; Hacker, 2003). In fact, the subtheme plays a curious
role in the discussion on e-democracy, since it serves as a kind of constant
resistance going against the grain of the actual area, constantly defying the idea
that digital democracy might actually exist. The subtheme of inequality or
exclusion is, using the biblical allegory, the real “thorn in the flesh” of the idea of
digital democracy, not to deny it, but to act as its moral conscious, a persistent
reminder that it is there and must be considered.
The theme of e-participation, on the other hand, is a case on its own.
Experiments involving citizen participation have always accompanied pari passu
the idea of democracy via technology. In part because the concept at its origin,
political participation, is so naturally broad that, conveniently explored, it can
encompass practically all the functions technology is able to put at the service of
democracy: from interaction between governors and the governed to the
registration of opinions, from televoting to online discussion among citizens,
from mobilization to political expression. Moreover, since the inception of the
idea there has always been a clear link between the yearning that technologies
might improve democracies and a widely shared diagnosis that a consistent
democratic deficit exists in contemporary liberal-democratic states, a deficit deeply
related to reduced political participation of citizens.
The trend in democratic theory actually named participatory democracy (Barber,
1984; Pateman, 1970) has long contributed to prescribe greater civil
participation as a remedy for democracies that have deflated the concept of
popular sovereignty, that rely on low levels of interest and cooperation and even
lower shares of social capital (Putnam, 2000) – but plenty of apathy and cynicism
to match – among its citizens. Citizen political participation emerges therefore as
a path for the “redemocratization of democracies”. Public discourse about
communication technologies coming to the rescue of democracy is thus typical of
settings that share the idea of the existence of a democratic gap that can only be
filled with greater participation (Gomes, 2005a, 2005b). And participatory
democracy is one of the points of contact between democratic theory and digital
democracy.
Therefore, although we have works on e-participation already in the 1970s
(Doty; Zussman, 1975; Laudon, 1977), 1980s (Arterton, 1988; Mitropoulos,
1985) and 1990s (Streck, 1998; White, 1997), it is in the 2000s that the theme
really takes off, and so consistently that in 2016, digital participation accounts for
50% of everything published in the area of e-democracy. One of the reasons for
the success of the subtheme is already manifest in the period and consists of the
plurality of experiments, projects and phenomena sheltered under the umbrella
of e-participation. In those years, e-participation is generally discussed, but
especially for:
• digital petitions (Macintosh; Malina; Farrell, 2002);
• participatory budgets, partially or wholly online (Rios et al., 2005;
Roeder et al., 2005);
• electronic public consultations (Ainsworth, 2005; Pearce, 2001; Whyte;
Macintosh, 2001);
• tools for interaction between citizens and government (Coleman; Hall;
Howell, 2002; Jensen, 2003; Lotov, 2003);
• resources for civil cooperation in decision-making processes related to
regulation (Beierle, 2003; Brandon; Carlitz, 2002; Fountain, 2003b);
• political decision making in general terms (Kersten, 2003; Macintosh,
2004);
• and, above all, the fashionable theme at the time, electronic voting
(Biasiotti; Nannucci, 2004; Chevret, 2003; Gibson, 2001; Houston et
al., 2005; Lauer, 2004; Oostveen; Van Den Besselaar, 2004; Smith;
Macintosh, 2003).
Many and varied things, therefore, go under the name of “e-participation,”
by then renowned and widespread.
The impact of technology on democracy: the controversy
on the effects
From the viewpoint of the theoretical treatment of digital democracy, these
are years that tackle the problem of assessing the impact of technologies to
produce democracy. A vital matter, since on its answer depends the possibility of
continuing to consistently talk about digital democracy.
Along this path, we first encounter the view according to which considerable
dispute and confusion surround the attempt to estimate the intensity of the
impact of technology on democracy, to the point that many (still) feel quite
comfortable understanding electronic democracy “as something you can be ‘for’
or ‘against’”2. One can perceive a lot or very little in electronic democracy, and
one can perceive good things and bad things in the use of technologies, as in the
universe of digital communications there are very different things to perceive and
different assumptions to be made. The result? For some, this merely indicates
that the meaning of new technologies for democracy “is unclear and
controversial”3, that the direct link between new technologies and democracy “is
far more controversial, palpably dangerous if not entirely false”4, that those who
wish to grasp the probable effects of information and communication
technologies on democratic processes “are met with a confusing tangle of
propositions, many of which are contradictory and all of which are interrelated
in unexplicated ways”5.
What this means exactly can be ascertained by examining the lists of
contrasting conclusions about the effects of technology on democracy. These
range from the modest estimates of those who view technology as a complement
of democracy to ambitious arguments of those who consider that “electronic
media will conquer many of the problems of scale that made direct democracy
an impracticable ideal”6, to mention just one example. And, lastly, there are
even those that claim that the very concept of electronic democracy results from
an improbable collage: “The idea of electronic democracy is still in its infancy. It
looks like an explosive cocktail, blending a dose of Athenian agora, another of
Rousseau, shaken with bits of Jefferson and Mill, plus a zest of Californian
ideology”7. In other words, on the effects of technology on democracy much has
been said and then some.
Above all it is the list of disparities of themes and evaluations that explains
the internal tension of the concept:
Fears of social polarization due to inequitable access to ICTs or of
increasing government intrusion into our private lives are juxtaposed
against the promise of rejuvenated political participation engendered by
new communication channels. Visions of citizens being empowered by
ubiquitous access to government information are tempered by warnings
of information overload8.
Or, in another roll:
Researchers have linked the rise of the Internet to greater citizen
empowerment and to the reinforcement of existing divisions of power; to
increased social fragmentation and to the rise of new forms of
community; to reinvigorated democratic discourse and to Internet road
rage that poisons civic engagement; to a new golden age of participatory
democracy and to threats of ever greater surveillance and control of
individuals; to an interactive age of democracy that overcomes voter
apathy and to a commercialization of political life that marginalizes
democratic concerns9.
In short, with the bibliography at hand, we are forced to conclude that
practically everything good and democratic, and everything bad, antisocial and
antidemocratic can be done via digital communications and digital
communication environments.
But there are even those who consider that it is not a matter of choosing
between noticing this or highlighting that, but of different aspects of the same
phenomenon, and that, strictly speaking, electronic democracy has, at least,
three faces, each of which “reflects a different aspect of the ICT-driven political
phenomena and each implies a separate vision of the democratic process”10.
• The first face would include everything that technology does to remedy
the crisis of democracy: improving – in terms of costs, mobilization,
coordination, internal communication, building of international
networks – the dynamics of political organizations and the provision
of online public services, and enabling political participation, social
mobilization and civic engagement.
• The second face, in turn, would entail what, according to its critics,
electronic democracy would do to stimulate the democratic crisis: the
insistence on plebiscitarianism that weakens citizenship and the
increase of social stratification and power structures due to digital
divide.
• The third face of the application of technology to democracy is the
recognition of its own irrelevance, caused by the fact that what is seen
online is the commodification of the internet and cosmetic changes in
the spectacularization of politics, not fundamental changes. In the
words of Porebski: “After the decade of the information revolution we
experience exactly the same problems of democracy as in the precomputer times. New bottle can not change the taste of the old wine”.
And he concludes, pessimistically, on the impossibility of reducing the
controversy surrounding the meaning of digital democracy: “It is not
very probable that in the near future the indisputable vision of the
electronic democracy impact on politics will emerge”11.
A somewhat different approach is taken by some authors that argue that a
decision about what technologies can offer to democracy depends on decisions
about democracy itself. For some, for example, uncertainty about the democratic
reach of technology must be put down to the absence of a prior decision on the
idea of democracy present in the aspirations of the different projects and theories
of electronic democracy. According to Benjamin Barber, for example, it is
equally plausible to think that technology is both an impediment to democracy
and an improvement in the quality of the political community, depending, of
course, on the answer to the question of what democracy represents for us. “In
other words”, he says, “it turns out there is no simple or general answer to the
question ‘is the technology democratizing?’ until we have made clear what sort of
democracy it is we have in mind”12.
Given this context, a few solutions are put forward. And here again there are
differences. Authors range from those who seem to suggest that the glowing side
and fearful faces of the impact of technology on democracy are neither
circumstantial nor temporary to those who demand “models of democracy” like
Benjamin Barber and Jan van Dijk, for whom the decision on which model to
adopt would allow the field to become less ambiguous. There are those who
believe that electronic democracy is still in its infancy and that time must be
allowed to see if it can materialize into practical systems the transformation of
the utopian “strong democracy”13, and those who think that perhaps confusing
expressions like “electronic democracy” should be abandoned and replaced with
more precise designations such as “electronic mobilisation,” “electronic
participation” or “electronic voting,” which, unconstrained by the connotations
and confusions of the former, “can make the debate on political consequences of
new technologies use more rational and substantial”14.
The estimate – and the diagnosis – of the intensity of effects does not progress
historically. In fact, there have been advocates of weak, complementary or
incremental effects from the 1980s to the present. Of course one must keep in
mind that the estimate of low impact may be less correlated with an
underestimation of the effects exerted by technology on democracy and more
with the contrast between the influence perceived and the influence expected.
Thus, authors who describe considerable impacts of experiments may still be
frustrated in their high expectations, since to them the effect seems to be much
smaller than expected. It is best therefore not to ascribe normativity to estimates
of effect beyond the arguments presented.
Two different starting points, for example, can lead us to a definition based
on disappointment. Arterton, for instance, an enthusiast of teledemocracy
projects, perhaps due to high expectations or maybe because he dealt with a
considerable amount of academic criticism of electronic democracy, settles for an
“at best” argument: “At best, change may lead to an invigoration of
representative processes facilitated by communications media”15. H. Buchstein,
in turn, a critic of even moderate positions on the pro-democracy effects of the
internet, concludes with the same rhetoric: “A better case [scenario] would have
the Internet supplementing existing political institutions”16.
Arguments in favor of the supplementation and incremental improvement (or
invigoration) of democracy through technology are the preferred model of the
viewpoint of weak effects. The effects are weak for a few reasons. One relates to
the fact that resistance to profound changes is natural to political institutions at
the stage in which they are. John Nugent is of that opinion. He goes with the
general rule that a new technology or communications media (and he has
nothing less than the internet in mind) is more likely to reflect or complement the
political order than modify it.
For all its importance, the Internet has not remade the American
political landscape. Like other communications media, it has
supplemented the world in which it was created, and its political
implications must be considered within the context of that world. […] A
major reason technology has not lived up to such bold predictions is that
political participation and governmental process are structured by
institutions and processes established by state and federal constitutions,
which are quite resistant to change17.
E-democracy, as he defines it, “refers to processes carried out online –
communicating with fellow citizens and elected representatives about politics, for
example”, but also to new ways for citizens to keep informed and participate
politically. But, he concludes, a new way of obtaining information or
communicating with elected officials does not change the way the legislative
process happens, for example, completely closed to citizen participation.
In the literature of the period, the relevance of the impact of technology on
democracy correlates with what may be included in the concept. Does digital
democracy consist of ways of communicating with elected representatives and
obtaining political information? Then its effect on the system is minimal. Is it an
effective way of polling public opinion capable of influencing decision makers?
The level of effectiveness increases. But, in general, those who see little effect are
not willing to concede much in terms of the pro-democracy functions of
technology. If digital democracy is used “to refer to the use of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) to connect politicians and citizens by means
of information, voting, polling, or discussion”18, its estimated impact is greater,
because the spectrum of its reach is broader. But if the reference is distributed in
the democratic retail between the strengthening of political participation, the
increasing role of plebiscites and online debates in decision making or simply any
use of computers and computer networks to carry out basic democratic
processes, what matters is the weight we give to each of those elements. Lastly, if
its reference is “rationalization of governmental organization, improving policy
processes, reinstating the primacy of parliament and the city council, opening up
public information systems previously accessible only to public officials and the
press, and improving the role of the citizen as voter”, in this case, there is
considerable impact. However, it is still used “mostly instrumentally, as a
technological extra which helps to improve and perfect the existing
representative democracy”19.
Contrariwise, however, most authors of that period and the following decade
insisted on very high expectations about the influence of technologies on
democracy. Expressions like “a radically new form of democratic practice
modified by new information technologies” and “democracy substantively
changed by new technology”20, or convictions that “this new communications
technology will not just affect democracy, it will transform it”21, that “modern
ICT is absolutely essential for helping democracies transform themselves toward
a strong democracy or a more participatory stage of democratic evolution”22
clearly reflect this mentality, albeit with some rhetorical exaggeration.
The approaches to the theory of electronic democracy that adopt a viewpoint
of strong effects of technology on democracy focus on the distinction between
secondary or conventional functions of technology influence on political
institutions, and substantial and consistent functions. So it all depends on how
one evaluates what deeply affects or might affect a democratic system, and what
would have a secondary effect on it, which is open to potential disagreements.
But, in general, it seems less relevant to e-democracy theorists when technologies
are used to do “politics as usual” than when they produce intense forms of public
transparency otherwise hard to achieve, for example. They believe that a mere
digitization of public services to reduce costs and facilitate the work of state
bureaucracy is less relevant than a new era of online public service delivery,
driven by the interests of citizenship.
The phase of models of democracy
In the subfield of the theory of digital democracy, the predominant discussion
in those years centered on the quarrel about models of democracy. In many
ways, the conceptual discussion of electronic democracy considerably correlated
with developments in democratic theory. The question of “models of
democracy” is one of those strong points of interaction, mainly based on two
books whose influence was especially noted in the 1990s and 2000s. I refer to
Strong Democracy, by Benjamin Barber (1984), and Models of Democracy, by David
Held (1987), two books of democratic theory that developed very successful
typologies of democracy in order to enable people to interpret and compare
democratic patterns in time and space.
Barber himself addressed the theme of electronic democracy, although his
horizon of reference is basically restricted to the pattern of experiments and the
rhetorical wave associated with teledemocracy projects. Due to his view that a
true democracy must be strong, dense, not weak and thin, he always seemed
rather uncomfortable with the idea that telecommunication technologies might
represent a new stage in global democracy. Well, first of all, it must be explained
that, actually, he does believe there is a democratic potential in communication
technology innovations that deserves to be explored, and also that they offer
possibilities for civic republicans, and even for those who defend a demanding
concept of democracy, “to strengthen civic education and enhance direct
deliberative communication among citizens.”23 What bothers him is “technoenthusiasts” arguing that the new communication technologies will allow us to
overcome all the communication and democracy deficits of our political system,
such pretension being merely supported by electronic plebiscitary systems and
improvement in obtaining information. Not true, he says. A political culture
based on an inconsistent model of democracy is not the most conducive to
democratic determinisms, much less pro-democratic. So that “even where it can
be shown that the technology inherently holds out the promise of civic and
democratic potential, it is not likely to reflect the thin, representative, alienating
version of democracy that currently dominates political thinking?”, he skeptically
asks24.
It is not that technology develops deterministically to produce weak, thin
democracies, instead of generating a consistent, participatory, strong democracy.
What Barber states is that, given a culture of weak democracy, unless there is a
manifest resolve to guide technologies to the production of “a more participatory
and robust civic system”, the outcome may be the production of “the same
incivility and cynicism that characterized politics in the older technologies, e.g.
radio and television”25. For example, we may look at interactivity, the ability to
connect people and to enable reciprocity between them, which all recognize as
inherent in new technologies. The potential of interactive technologies to
produce public deliberation and interaction among citizens and between citizens
and rulers is evident, but interactive technologies alone will not solve the fact that
the political system is increasingly impervious to popular will and closed to
citizen participation. The most important issue, however, concerns what kind of
democracy might emerge from the use of new telecommunications technologies.
This is clear for Barber: anyone wishing to talk about electronic democracy must
first say what type or definition of democracy they have in mind. It is a question
that demands from respondents a stand on real democracy and their ideal model
of democracy, to then judge what can or cannot be offered by electronic
communication technologies.
Taking a similar view in a 1995 paper, Scott London draws a contrast
between models of teledemocracy and deliberative democracy. According to the
author, there are “two models of public talk”. It seems exaggerated to oppose a
set of experiments and a few claims, more rhetorical than theoretical, involving
the impact of technologies on democracy with a current of democratic theory of
high conceptual elaboration, but since deliberative democracy was also a
consistent inspiration for experimentation (and rhetoric) in digital democracy,
the comparison does bear some fruit.
For him, the two models are justified according to different premises.
Teledemocracy is based on approaches that, in political theory, are known as
rational choice, negative liberalism or the logic of collective action; understands the political
world as a free market in which interests compete and conflict; and, I add, values
more the existence of channels to express opinion than the way it is produced.
Deliberative democracy, in turn, considers that political will cannot simply
emerge from the friction of pre-established interests, but from “reasoned
discussion about issues involving the common good” (London, 1995). The
following table summarizes the contrast proposed by London. The author’s side
is, naturally, already chosen.
TABLE 2
Teledemocracy vs. deliberative democracy
Teledemocracy
Deliberative democracy
Public opinion and citizen feedback are
essential to good governance.
Aggregated opinions do not constitute public judgment.
Dynamic public discourse fosters a
healthy marketplace of ideas.
Political truths emerge from public deliberation, not from the
competition of ideas.
Effective political talk is vertical – between
The most effective political talk is lateral – between citizens.
citizens and policymakers.
With new technologies, citizens can
govern themselves.
Self-government requires collective decision making – thus
mechanisms of dialogue and collaboration.
The speed of new technologies can
enhance democracy.
Speed is inimical to public deliberation.
Free speech is the cornerstone of
democracy.
Democracy is founded on the principle of dialogue, not
monologue.
Public participation must be increased.
Quality, not quantity, is the measure of democratic
participation.
Citizens need equal access to information.
Information, usually seen as the precondition for debate, is
better understood as its by-product.
Source: Scott London, “Teledemocracy vs. Deliberative Democracy: A Comparative
Look at Two Models of Public Talk”, Journal of Interpersonal Computing and Technology, v. 3,
n. 2, pp. 33-55, 1995.
The Netherlander Jan van Dijk takes an entirely different approach. He
argues that there may also be a link between the concept of democracy and
judgment on the contribution of ICTs to the political system in general and to
democracy in particular. However, unlike Barber and London, he does not start
out from a binary contrast between democratic standards, or say that one can
only evaluate the pro-democracy effects of electronic media in the light of a
concept of democracy. Van Dijk draws on other assumptions, including the
conviction that information and communication technologies positively impact
democracy in a number of ways. The real reason to call in question the
conceptions of democracy is to avoid the “all-or-nothing” approach which had
lasted for two decades in the rhetoric on the subject, in the direct opposition
format of either direct democracy or representative democracy. In his opinion, if something
had become clear in this long debate it was, first of all, the conviction that “the
conceptions of democracy are much more complicated than a simple dualism
between direct and representative democracy”26.
In addition, van Dijk admits that, by the mid-1990s, the phase had passed in
which the decision on the interactions between democracy and new technologies
depends entirely on rhetoric and theory: ICTs had reached a considerably
advanced level of maturity and were assimilated into the daily practices of the
political system; they are no longer merely seen as possibilities for the future.
Therefore, it is possible to work with one eye on the conceptions of democracy
and another on the applications of ICTs in the political system, making plausible
connections between different conceptions of democracy and the applications
and technological solutions that can be implemented in real democracies.
Consequently, in more than one reformulation (2000, 2012, 1996), he tries to
draw parallels between the models of democracy and the applications and
functions of electronic democracy best suited to them. In his successive reelaborations, van Dijk settles on five to six views of electronic democracy,
subdivided into government-centered perspectives (models of legalistic and
competitive democracy) and citizen-centered perspectives (models of plebiscitary,
pluralist, participatory and libertarian democracy).
First, there is the model of legalist democracy, which is the classic model of
liberal democracy: procedural (democracy has to do with the rules of the game
and not the result of decisions), based on representative government, separation
of powers, system of checks and balances, fundamental rights and guarantees to
protect the freedom of individuals from authoritarian power, majority rule,
universal suffrage. Direct democracy and populism are rejected and feared. The
fundamental democratic deficit in the implementation of the model has to do
with the shortage of information necessary to guide and help citizens make
decisions. “So, following the legalist model ICT is designed and used as a means
to remove information shortages and reinforce the present political system by
more effective and efficient ways of information processing and organisation.
ICT is also applied to increase the transparency of the political system.”27 The
communication media or tool of preference of the model is the one that serves
two functions: a) provide more and better information; b) provide interaction, so
representative governments are more open and responsive to people.
Competitive democracy is a version of the same liberal-democratic pattern, but
with a very strong emphasis on the idea that democracy is ultimately a means of
selecting leaders. The election of representatives is placed at the center of
democratic concerns, and “politics has to be seen as an everlasting competition
between parties and their leaders for the support of the voting public”28. In this
model, ICT serves democracy when it lends itself to the goal of facilitating and
qualifying elections and campaigns and helps in the generalized and segmented
distribution and organization of all information necessary for a qualified electoral
decision. In addition, the use of technologies to provide government efficiency is
not without impact on democracy.
Plebiscitary democracy, unlike the other models composing the typology
proposed by Held, is generated specifically by van Dijk to deal with the view of
democracy assumed in teledemocracy applications. In this construct, channels of
direct communication between political leaders and citizens lead to the
amplification of citizen voice in public policies. Direct democracy is therefore
appreciated as a form of decision making and heeding, whenever possible, the
individual position of each citizen, through plebiscites. In this model, the most
important technological function for democracy is, therefore, the systems of
registering votes and opinions. The first applications of teledemocracy were
configured to meet the demands stemming from this model which, among other
things, resulted in the rebirth of plebiscitary perspectives in the United States29.
Pluralist democracy, as the name implies, is opposed to models of democracy
based on centralization of political decision and monopolization of power, which
result either from the belief that democracy is fundamentally a method in which
many select the few who lead them or the conviction that the distribution of
representation is strictly hierarchical and pyramidal. On the contrary,
democratically healthy public life is more horizontal than vertical, with citizens
involved in associations and civil society organizations, forced to cooperate and
negotiate solutions to their own problems. And political systems consist of various
interest and pressure groups and political parties that make up multiple minority
power centers. From such a perspective, ICTs can serve two functions. “First, the
multiplication of channels and stand-alone media supports the potential
pluriformity of political information and discussion”, in such a way that
practically all perspectives and all organizations are ensured the possibility of
expressing their own position. “Second, the advance of interactive
communication networks, in contrast to the allocution of broadcasting, perfectly
fits to a network conception of politics.”30
Participatory democracy emphasizes the contribution of citizens to the political
community through active political intervention in all phases of the democratic
process, from the formulation of social problems to the elaboration and
implementation of public policies. Participative democracy simply requires
making room for the intervention and cooperation of citizens in all spheres in
which political power is exercised on behalf of the people. The model, on the
other hand, repeats the individualist bias present in other conceptions of
democracy, as well as, consequently, methods of gauging the will of the people
through individual interest aggregation. The figure of the informed citizen is a
key part of this perspective. As far as technological functions go, those “able to
inform and activate the citizenry” are preferred − under two conditions: a)
projects and implementations should include everyone and not just the
information elite; b) the project should favor instruments of discussion31.
The libertarian view of democracy was the last model introduced by van Dijk
(2000; 2012), but refers to a view widely spread among early advocates of
democracy in cyberspace. Anti-statists par excellence and radical advocates of
freedom and self-determination of individuals, including their inviolable privacy,
libertarians accept anything that does not violate (or promote) their values,
including freedom to experiment with electronic technologies. Indeed, among
those who first embraced electronic technologies and the internet are the
advocates of the independence and autonomy of cyberspace and the new
electronic boundaries (Barlow, 1995; 1996). Whatever affirms the freedom of
individuals, of the communities and of societies over states, governments,
political systems, and corporations is endorsed by libertarianism.
After affirming that there is electronic democracy for virtually all tastes, Jan
van Dijk definitely concludes in favor of eclecticism: “The discussion between the
advocates of the models of democracy can not be solved. Only compromises can
be made”, he says. The author suggests that compromises involving all models of
electronic democracy should include the universal introduction of three
important goals: “(1) a more responsive government, (2) a better information
supply in both directions – the government and the public administration on the
one side and the citizenry at the other – and (3) a more transparent political
system”32.
Another interesting typology is the one proposed by Roger Hurwitz (1999),
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), based on three models – or
patterns – which he believes are commonly found in the history of democracy:
partisan, deliberative and monitorial.
In partisan democracy, “parties organize political activities primarily to get their
candidates elected and then to have their plans adopted, if they have any”, while
in deliberative democracy the proponents “organize around issues and call on
people as concerned citizens to express their views to decision makers”. Lastly, in
the monitorial model, “politics comes to life when there is great dissatisfaction
with a current state of affairs and finds expression in ad hoc protest movements
often directed at elected officials”33.
The deliberative democracy model has a particular interest in chat rooms (we are
in 1999), forums and other devices for conversation, means to exploit the
availability of information and eventual online access to authorities. The online
presence of parties, candidates and campaigns, in turn, serves the model of
partisan democracy. The monitorial model is reflected in the use of lobbying,
petition drives, demonstrations and mobilizations, which are the ways citizens
react to crises or to the perception of pressing social problems. Because it forms
communities of interest that transcend time, space, and the need of formal
presentation of participants, the internet is a powerful tool for this type of
democratic action, according to Hurwitz34.
The typology proposed by Lincoln Dahlberg, professor in New Zealand at
the time, is based on a very different perspective. Reader of Jürgen Habermas,
Dahlberg reflects one of the earliest influences in the sub-area of digital
democracy, situated around Habermas’s oeuvre, particularly The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere and Between Facts and Norms, and the
Habermasians of deliberative democracy. In common with the previous
categorizations, there is the premise that the perspectives described in the
typology should address discourses and practices (online political projects and
experiments with democracy on the internet), as well as theoretical models. That
leads Dahlberg to identify the three dominant camps in the domain of electronic
democracy. First, “a communitarian camp, which stresses the possibility of the
Internet enhancing communal spirit and values”; then, “a liberal individualist
camp, which sees the Internet as assisting the expression of individual interests”.
Last, the deliberative camp that shows up the internet in a positive light “as the
means for an expansion of the public sphere of rational-critical citizen discourse
– discourse autonomous from state and corporate power through which public
opinion may be formed that can hold official decision makers accountable”35.
One can identify the author’s purpose with his typology in three categories.
The first two camps represent two of the pioneering viewpoints in internet
rhetoric: the communitarianism of the precursors of virtual communities and of the
use of the internet for a democracy based on social capital and community
integration (Rheingold, 1993), and the teledemocracy perspective, with its strong
emphasis on the provision of information and on direct interactions between
citizens and decision makers, assuming the existence of a prepared and
determined political citizen, who lacks only adequate information and channels
of expression to make appropriate decisions. This way, Dahlberg made room to
accommodate the deliberative perspective of Habermasian origin, which refuses the
communitarian idea that the internet serves basically for the “pre-discursive
expression of shared values or private interests”36 and also refutes the liberalindividualism to which the internet serves primarily to channel individual
interests, established outside horizontal discussions among citizens. In contrast,
the “deliberative democrats argue that a ‘strong’ model of democracy requires a
public sphere of rational-critical discourse”. Or that a “respectful and reflexive
deliberation is demanded”, so that individuals may become publicly-oriented
citizens and, ultimately, a public opinion is developed that is able to “feed into
formal decision-making processes”37.
The Swedish political scientist Joachim Åström (2001), in turn, started out
from Barber’s binary taxonomy and added a third category, formulating three
models of e-democracy: quick, strong and thin democracy.
TABLE 3
Central dimensions of democracy according to Åström
Quick democracy Strong democracy Thin democracy
Aim
Power to the people Consensus
Efficiency/choice
Ground for legitimacy
Principle of majority Public debate
Accountability
Citizensʼ role
Decision maker
Opinion former
Customer
Interactive
Open
Discussion
Information
Mandate of the elected Bound
ICT use focusing
Decisions
Source: Joachim Åström, “Should Democracy Online Be Quick, Strong, or Thin?”,
Communications of the ACM, v. 44, n. 1, 1 Jan. 2001.
For Åström, quick democracy represents a possible stance in the debate on
electronic democracy. Like other models, it looks favorably on a considerable
increase of citizens’ direct participation in political decision making and requires
active citizenship. The representative model is seen as a practical necessity or a
necessary evil, to be avoided whenever possible, including through possibilities
offered by ICTs.
“Radical proponents of this model see ICT as the decisive means by which
direct democracy Athenian style can be implemented in today’s society,”
according to Åström. He goes on to add: “Through computer networks,
individuals’ views and opinions can be solicited, registered, stored, and
communicated, so direct democracy can be implemented not only at a local level
but nationally and even internationally.” So representative democracy would
then be “substituted by independent cybercitizens who act in a responsible
manner at the electronic agora, without any politician acting as an intermediary
and guardian”38.
Less radical proponents, in turn, do not want the complete abolition of the
representative system, but to “combine it – revitalize it – with direct elements”.
There are those who think of a government based on a political party and
chosen in elections, but which would make a kind of direct democracy work,
“put important bills and other political decisions to popular votes, just as it does
with legislative votes under representative democracy”39. And there are even
those who merely imagine the consulting use of opinion polls through
technology.
Unlike other models, with which the conviction of the importance of civil
participation is shared, quick democracy wants to “increase the speed of
decision-making processes”. How? By all methods that allow the swift assessment
of the will of the majority, through voting or other means of opinion polling
mediated by technology. Might citizens be up to it? Apparently, there is no
doubt: “In this view, all citizens are assumed to have at least the same amount of
wisdom as the elite”40. As seen, quick democracy is the form found by Åström to
somehow retrieve the criticized plebiscitary majoritarianism of teledemocracy.
Strong democracy, already known, is described as participatory, but, above all,
deliberative. It supposedly emerged as a countermodel to the pattern of weak
and thin democracy predominant in liberal-democratic states, which basically
require civil participation, only at electoral moments, and shield and isolate
policy decision makers from the sphere of citizenship. Strong democracy requires
more legitimacy in political decision making than that afforded by the election of
representatives, but it likewise doubts that the predetermined and unintended
will of individuals is able to bestow the necessary legitimacy on the system. The
only appropriate source of democratic legitimacy would be the process of
forming will and political opinion through deliberation.
Like quick democracy, the strong version presumes active citizenship, which
acts on issues of common interest, but unlike the former, strong democracy wants
to “slow down” decision making “by involving people in discussion and
deliberation processes”41. Electronic forums seem appropriate for this. This
model harbors sympathy for elements of direct democracy, but with caution,
since there is here a certain degree of skepticism regarding “raw public opinion”,
integral but not yet treated and refined. In Åström’s view, therefore, strong
democracy would disapprove of much of quick democracy. Besides, he considers
the rhythm the latter proposes for decision making hasty and believes that it is an
illusion to think that there is qualified opinion on complex social problems
readily available to be automatically and easily collected by electronic means.
“Voting and polling should be deliberative, and citizens informed by
information, discussion, and debate.”42
Thin democracy, the third model, is hardly interested in increasing civil
participation, since it deems the ordinary citizen “disinterested in politics and
unqualified for participation”. Basically, democracy has to do with choosing
leaders in open elections, based on their programs. The basis of legitimacy of
those who govern is resolved with accountability. The role of technologies in this
model is to be the means by which organizations spread information and obtain
support, instruments to facilitate the work of representatives and, ultimately,
channels for the provision of public services43.
But what, after all, was intended with the controversy of the models of
democracy and, consequently, of e-democracy? In the first place, to solve the
impasse that the controversy around teledemocracy had brought to the area.
The people who planned and executed the first projects were activists of the socalled New Left (Tsagarousianou, 1999, p. 189), and they were eventually flanked
on the right and on the left.
On the right by the defenders of the strict model of representative
democracy, which traditionally harbors, especially at that time, considerable
mistrust of the worth of the contribution of ordinary people to political decisions.
Given that citizens are not very rational and show little interest in public affairs,
and therefore could hardly achieve what Robert Dahl calls a “proper
understanding” of political issues, giving greater weight to citizens in the process
of political decision making is not exactly something that, in this perspective,
could be understood as requalification of democracy. It seems just the opposite,
dangerous technological populism.
The left flank is occupied by the viewpoint of a strong democracy, amenable
to any perspective of direct or participatory democracy, distrustful of
representative government and the anemic democracy it offers. The anticapitalist dimension of the far left perspective triggers a warning against
televoting, but the larger suspicions (presented earlier) attack the modality of
gauging citizens’ will through the devices of technology, with no qualified
interaction, without sufficient participation, with no in-depth clarification.
The formulations of the models of democracy have two purposes. The
purpose of Barber and London is to continue harassing teledemocracy through a
binary contrast between an adequate position, ours, and the wrong position,
theirs. But the most common purpose, present in the other authors, was to break
the siege on electronic democracy, represented by the attack on teledemocracy,
proposing an eclectic alternative. The conclusion reached by pluralist authors is
that technologies are capable of delivering more democracy, whatever the model
of preference of whoever formulates e-democracy projects. One may even dislike
the model favored by others, and it is quite clear that each author has his or her
own preferences, but it can be said that technology can do something for every
preferred emphasis, pattern or type of democracy. And that democracy, however
it is conceived, is the better for it.
Facing the last resistances
As we have seen, in the decade between 1996 and 2005, there is a
remarkable concentration of efforts to assess the impact of technology on
democracy and to formulate models of e-democracy. But equally noteworthy is
the way in which some of the harshest criticisms of the idea of digital democracy,
formulated in the previous decade, are tackled during the period of consolidation
of the area. Let us consider some of them and the counter-arguments presented.
Criticisms 1 to 3, originated in the previous period and already familiar to us,
will be treated briefly. The fourth, more complex, will be addressed at greater
length.
1. The more general idea that the use of communication technologies
alone can solve problems of democracy is false. For example, the fact
that we have the technological capacity to share political decisions
more broadly does not mean they become the responsibility of
citizens rather than the competence of elected representatives. It is
not merely a matter of technology, but of institutional design
(McLean, 1989): “Technology does nothing to solve the conceptual
problems that democracy generates”44.
This criticism seems to face a rhetorical scarecrow, created out of thin air just
to be easily quashed, advocating a technological automatism according to which
the mere existence of channels and possibilities would lead governments and the
bureaucracy to instantly transfer all possible data to citizens, and the citizens, in
turn, to pore over such information to consume and develop it. Well, in truth,
reliable, updated and abundant data made available to citizens are, as we know
today, essential for democracy, for improving peoples’ lives and even for the
advancement of society. But nothing is automatic in democracy, not even the
existence of the best technological means available.
Historically, interest aggregation was initially the most evident goal of
electronic democracy projects. It was not only the most compatible with the
stage attained by telecommunications in 1970-1990, but also the one that
required the least changes in political systems considerably shut off to citizens.
We cannot tell whether that was exactly what the developers and advocates of
the use of technologies to foster democracy wanted, but we can say that, under
the circumstances, it was the opportunity to obtain more democracy via
technologies. Technologies could be easily used to increase the supply of
information of their interest or collect their opinion or the popular feeling on
public issues, and such possibilities were often exploited.
What is regrettable is that advocates of a model quickly became detractors of
alternative patterns and quickly the goals that considered the interests and
opinions of individuals were treated as forms of commercial exchange and
citizens as private and privatized consumers. In some cases, the baby was thrown
out with the bathwater – electronic democracy was not democracy.
2. The type of democracy that emerged from electronic democracy was
“a debased, impoverished version of the true ideal. Democracy
becomes a mere device for registering preferences”45.
The problem with this criticism is confusing the function that a particular
technology can provide with a general judgment about democracy, resulting
solely from the fulfillment of that function. Having a communication channel
available that allows votes to be registered does not mean having a kind of
democracy based on the remote gauging of preferences. One thing bears no
relationship to the other. It simply means that we now have a democracy that
has at its disposal a resource to register the preferences of citizens even at a
distance, which, although it might not substantially change the democratic
quality of society, is at least one more thing to be incorporated into the repertoire
of resources of that society.
3. It is not only a matter of fostering a debased form of democracy
through technology, but also that the technologies of electronic
democracy ultimately foster antidemocratic asymmetries. It is the
famous argument that, due to inequality in access and use,
technologies represent yet another advantage, added to the repertoire
of those already predominant in society. The powerful thus become
even more powerful, to the detriment of the socially excluded, who, in
addition to other forms of exclusion, will also suffer from the
technological divide.
This argument does not represent a consistent objection to the idea of
electronic democracy either, unless it is demonstrated that the democratic
resources of technology were the cause of social inequality in a given society.
Problems of inequality and social exclusion are faced by addressing their true
causes, not preventing a society from developing just because the socially
included will have even more benefits to the detriment of the excluded.
Otherwise, not only will social exclusion not be reduced, but society will miss out
on opportunities to develop. In addition we have seen that, twenty years after
Street’s review, digital exclusion has become considerably smaller than social
exclusion. Therefore, atrophying the development of digital democracy does not
seem to have contributed, as predicted, to enhance social inequalities. Quite the
contrary.
4. If digital democracy is unable to produce more and better civil
participation and public deliberation, then it cannot help to improve
democracy.
In the decade between 1996 and 2005, we are still dealing, albeit not with the
same intensity, with the symptomatic issue of the reach of e-democracy. An
interesting argument regarding the subject was presented by the AngloAmerican political scientist Pippa Norris in an important book of 2001 called
Digital Divide. It is quite true that Norris’s argument is an explicit criticism of the
left-wing conception of e-democracy and that it is clearly positioned on the other
side, in a Schumpeterian model. But it is ultimately a consistent argument
against those who consider participation and deliberation necessary
requirements for the existence of digital democracy, a position she considers
excessively narrow. For Norris, those who adopt a concept of direct, strong or
plebiscitary democracy must anticipate a direct role for citizens in the decisionmaking process, defined as the eminent form of participation, but if political
participation and public deliberation are merely an important element of any
concept of democracy, they cannot be transformed into its single element.
The alternative model offered by Norris thus highlights other elements that
must be considered, such as
• “pluralistic competition among parties and individuals for all positions of
government power”;
• “civil and political liberties to speak, publish, assemble, and organize, as
necessary conditions to ensure effective competition and
participation”; and
• “Participation among equal citizens in the selection of parties and
representatives through free, fair, and periodic elections”46.
It is noted that participation here is limited to “participation in elections”.
The other two dimensions are explicitly typical aspects of liberal democracy: civil
and political liberties and electoral democracy. Participation and deliberation, in the
sense conferred on them by left-wing perspectives, “such as direct citizen
decision-making and deliberation in the policy process, or electronic voting”47,
are not on the horizon, which, on the other hand, would not make digital
democracy any less necessary or urgent, given that “in most societies throughout
the world it is the core institutions of representative government and civic society
that urgently need to be nurtured and strengthened”48.
Norris’s judgment on the disputes and controversies over the role of digital
technologies for democracy, carried out in the debate on the role of technologies
for direct or strong democracy, is that it is a substantially flawed debate for being
centered on requirements of participation in political decision, including in
deliberative participation. For her, this whole discussion can be considered
nothing more than “a distracting irrelevance, a buzzing mosquito, deflecting
attention from the potential function of Internet in strengthening the institutions
of representative governance and civic societies worldwide”49. The key issue, to
be repositioned towards the center, about the possibility of a digital democracy
therefore consists of how the two main actors of democracy, governments and
citizens, will use “the opportunities provided by the new channels of information
and communication to promote and strengthen the core representative
institutions connecting citizens and the state”50.
In this regard, opportunities for public participation and civic
engagement generated via new technology are important, as is the ability
of the Internet to provide information promoting the transparency,
openness, and accountability of governing agencies at national and
international levels, and to strengthen channels of interactive
communication between citizens and intermediary institutions51.
Public participation and civic engagement via digital means, but also etransparency, open government, e-accountability and interactive channels of
communication with the intermediary institutions of the state are all different
functions through which technologies have an impact on democracy. And the
current state of the internet allows some of them to be better executed than
others. So that even if typical functions of strong or direct democracy, such as
civic engagement and militant participation, do not seem to be well resolved in
digital democracy, there are typical functions of representative democracy much
better managed in digital media, such as support for minority parties in their
campaigns, the constitution of transnational networks of third-sector
organizations, the offer to journalists and stakeholders of greater and better
access to official documents and legislative proposals. Thus, according to Norris,
promoting participation in political decision making, besides being just one more
function capable of being performed through the internet, may not be the most
efficiently executed by digital technologies among other functions which also
benefit representative democracy.
It is unnecessary to dispute with Norris the value assigned to participation
and deliberation for the democratic quality of a society, nor the degree of
intensity demanded of each of them for the level of legitimacy of the liberaldemocratic state. Schumpeterians tend to consider that societies with a very
high-level of political participation of citizens are not only very difficult to
govern, but inevitably fail to deliver important democratic values such as
equality, freedom, pluralism, rights. And if at any moment the various fascisms,
with their mass civil participation, were the counterexample of what one wanted
to avoid, nowadays the right-wing populisms spreading through Western
democracies are sufficient reason to recommend prudence in adhering to the
hypothesis that participation is good in itself (Gomes, 2011). On the other hand,
Norris is certainly right in rejecting the “all-or-nothing” argument of digital
democracy based on extremely demanding requirements of democracy, such as
participation and deliberation in institutional policy decision making, which we do
not dare demanding from society at large to recognize it as truly democratic, yet
do so constantly and mistakenly regarding e-democracy.
Finally, the clear and binary contrast between participation and
representation hardly makes such sense as some might claim. As Norberto
Bobbio affirmed, “between pure representative democracy and pure direct
democracy there is not the qualitative leap that advocates of direct democracy
believe, as if between one and the other existed a watershed and the landscape
changed completely as soon as we passed from one margin to the other”52. It is
much more of a continuum in which participation and deliberation are, in
general, more means than ends in themselves. In this case, it should be noted
that not all participation necessarily involves participation in political decision
making, but that there are considerable gains in participation which entails, for
example, the expansion of the process of democratization of society. In this
respect there is something very interesting for democracy in the air when
democratization “consists not so much, as is often erroneously said, in the
transition from representative democracy to direct democracy, but rather in the
transition from political democracy in the strict sense to social democracy”53.
That means that not everything that is at stake in democracy relates to the
democratization of the state, or the occupation of the sphere in which political
decisions are made by active citizens, but to the increase of participants in
decision making within society itself, in trade unions, councils, organizations,
institutions.
1 Published in the US as Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996).
2 Å. Grönlund, “Democracy in an IT-framed Society: Introduction”, Communications of the ACM, v. 44, n. 1,
pp. 22-6, 1 Jan. 2001, p. 25.
3 H. Buchstein, “Bytes that Bite: The Internet and Deliberative Democracy”, Constellations, v. 4, n. 2, pp.
248-63, Oct. 1997, p. 248
4 B. R. Barber, op. cit., p. 208.
5 C. Weare, “The Internet and Democracy: The Causal Links Between Technology and Politics”,
International Journal of Public Administration, v. 25, n. 5, pp. 659-91, 20 Apr. 2002, p. 660.
6 H. Buchstein, op. cit., p. 248.
7 T. Vedel, op. cit., p. 234.
8 C. Weare, op. cit., p. 660.
9 Ibidem, p. 662.
10 L. Porebski, “Three Faces of Electronic Democracy”, Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on
Information Systems (ECIS), Gdansk, Poland, 2002, p. 1220, available at:
<http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=ecis2002>, accessed on: 11 Dec.
2017.
11 Ibidem, p. 1225.
12 B. R. Barber, op. cit., p. 223.
13 T. Vedel, op. cit., p. 234.
14 L. Porebski, op. cit., p. 1225.
15 F. C. Arterton, “Political Participation and ‘Teledemocracy’”, op. cit., p. 621.
16 H. Buchstein, op. cit., p. 260.
17 J. D. Nugent, “If E-Democracy Is the Answer, What’s the Question?”, National Civic Review, v. 90, n. 3,
pp. 221-34, Jan. 2001, p. 224.
18 Å. Grönlund, op. cit., p. 23.
19 K. Brants; M. Huizenga; R. van Meerten, “The New Canals of Amsterdam: An Exercise in Local
Electronic Democracy”, Media, Culture & Society, v. 18, n. 2, pp. 233-47, 1 Apr. 1996, p. 238.
20 L. A. Friedland, “Electronic Democracy and the New Citizenship”, Media, Culture & Society, v. 18, n. 2,
pp. 185-212, 1 Apr. 1996, p. 185.
21 T. Westen, “E-Democracy: Ready or Not, Here It Comes”, National Civic Review, v. 89, n. 3, pp. 217-28,
2000, p. 217.
22 T. Becker, “Rating the Impact of New Technologies on Democracy”, Communications of the ACM, v. 44, n.
1, pp. 39-43, 1 Jan. 2001, p. 39.
23 B. R. Barber, op. cit., p. 208.
24 Ibidem, p. 213.
25 Ibidem.
26 J. G. M. van Dijk, “Models of Democracy – Behind the Design and Use of New Media in Politics”,
Javnost – The Public, v. 3, n. 1, pp. 43-56, 7 Jan. 1996, p. 44.
27 Ibidem, p. 48.
28 Ibidem.
29 Ibidem, p. 49.
30 Ibidem, p. 50.
31 Ibidem, p. 54.
32 Ibidem, p. 55.
33 R. Hurwitz, op. cit., p. 657.
34 Ibidem, p. 660.
35 L. Dahlberg, “The Internet and Democratic Discourse: Exploring The Prospects of Online Deliberative
Forums Extending the Public Sphere”, Information, Communication & Society, v. 4, n. 4, pp. 615-33, 2001,
p. 616.
36 Ibidem, p. 620.
37 Ibidem.
38 J. Åström, “Should Democracy Online Be Quick, Strong, or Thin?”, Communications of the ACM, v. 44, n.
1, 1 Jan. 2001, p. 50.
39 Ibidem.
40 Ibidem.
41 Ibidem.
42 Ibidem.
43 Other typologies of models of democracy were explored in those years, but did not reach more
sophisticated levels of taxonomy. One worth mentioning is the typology of Arthur Edwards (1995) that
identifies three conceptions of electronic democracy: populist, liberal and republican. And that of Jens
Hoff (Hoff; Horrocks; Tops, 2000), with four models of e-democracy: consumerist, plebiscitary,
pluralist and participatory.
44 J. Street, op. cit., p. 32. The three criticisms are not John Street’s, but were reviewed by him in the cited
article.
45 Ibidem, p. 32.
46 P. Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 102.
47 Ibidem, p. 103.
48 Ibidem, p. 104.
49 Ibidem.
50 Ibidem.
51 Ibidem.
52 N. Bobbio, Il futuro della democrazia, Turim: Einaudi, 1984, p. 15.
53 Ibidem, p. 66.
Democracy is not easy to define. […] In this context, it’s not surprising that there are
numerous definitions of digital democracy. For some it refers to the use of digital tools to
provide information and promote transparency, for others it describes the ways in which
information and communications technologies (ICTs) can broaden and deepen participation,
while others talk of promoting empowerment by enabling citizens to make decisions directly
through online tools. We simply define the term as “the practice of democracy using digital
tools and technologies”.
Julie Simon et al.
A new internet
T
HE TEN-YEAR PERIOD BETWEEN 2006 AND 2015 consolidates the
trend of the new internet, characterized, first of all, by the significant
growth of the then relationship websites (later popularized as “social networking
websites”) and websites for sharing photos, videos, etc. (the so-called “social
media”). The new dominant idea in the market at this moment is Web 2.0,
interactive and cooperative, to which converge classic communitarian ideas of
the technological collective imagination. However, it is the very idea of website
and the classic web that is challenged by two innovations consolidated in this
period: the internet of applications and the mobile internet. The last decade
witnessed a new “race for machines” following the buying spree of home
computers in the 1990s, which is the quest for portable devices with processing
capacity and internet connection. Connection starts breaking free from home
and office computers and becomes mobile wherever we go thanks to portable
devices and cell phones. In short, the term “personal computer” now really starts
making sense. In addition, the application as a pattern of internet use
accompanies the boom of mobile device consumption, established in the 2010s
on a global level. Some iconic innovations of the period, such as MacBook Pro
(2006), which popularized the truly portable notebook, iPhone (2007) and the
Android operating system (2008), merely signaled the mainstream trend of
consumption and social adoption of technologies of communication.
In addition, the last decade has such singular characteristics compared to the
previous ten years that one can practically speak of a new internet. The internet
based on mobile devices, permanent connection and digital media applications
barely resembled the one based on web browsing and desktops, with intermittent
connection, in which a “virtual world” was breaking loose from the “real world”
and one needed to leave one to enter the other. The last decade was the years of
the ubiquity of digital technologies, in which e-, the prefix that designated the
new world of electronic communications, was replaced by the adjective smart, as
in smart TV, smartphone, smart gov, smart cities, smart democracy, the prefix
m-, from mobile, as in m-government and m-democracy, and the adjectives 2.0
and 3.0. And these are the years of the discovery of big data – the huge
repositories of collected, processed and usable digital data that promise to reveal
everything about everything – and establish the normative horizon of open
government data at the service not only of society but also of humanity.
From the point of view of the social use of digital communications, the last
decade is marked by hyperconnection (Gomes, 2016b) and its developments.
Hyperconnection is a state in which individuals always have at hand a device
that is hardly ever switched off or disconnected from the network. More than
that, in this state, people are increasingly surrounded by multiple devices, often
with redundant functions, through which they satisfy functions and needs such as
making social contact, updating themselves about facts, things and people that
interest them, obtaining information, talking with other people, transferring to
digital social networks content of all kinds and formats, keeping and making
appointments, orienting themselves in space and in life, overcoming boredom,
working, interacting, among other things.
Other important social phenomena are associated with hyperconnection.
The main one is social internet or internet based on social media, digital social
networks and the intense consumption or production of digital content.
“Content” is the term referring generally to any type of written, graphic or
audiovisual material (and all of them at the same time) available in digital
communications. The most relevant outcome of social internet is the
development of digital, online social environments, based on tools and
applications for social networking. We are not talking about each one of the
websites, applications and services for social networking making up a social
environment, so that there is a social environment for Facebook, another for
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and so on. Rather, each person has their own
social network within each of the digital networking services, made up of their
various friends, followers, followees, fans... or whatever name is given to the
people in contact with them. Digital environments serve as points of reference,
intellectual, affectionate, political, ideological, of identity, etc., according to the
divide each person deems important and uses as a criterion to select the
connections they will maintain online. In addition, in the state of
hyperconnection people are in touch with their own digital environment without
having to leave or “disconnect” from the traditional social environments in
which we are inserted – family, friends, colleagues, members of religious groups
or political parties, etc. There is nothing that imposes exclusionary choices like
doing a family activity or being with friends or being connected in your own
digital environment. Lastly, the digital environment is mobile and truly personal,
in the sense that, once the connecting devices are working, access to the digital
environment moves with us, at all times of the day and in all circumstances
possible: one can read, view, publish, share and interact with the digital
environment during class, in the quiet of one’s bedroom, in the bathroom, at
meetings, at the beach, on holidays, at the airport, according to one’s
convenience and interest.
First of all, it should be noted that in the explanation of the internal
movements of digital democracy, a few social events are of great importance. Just
as the cyber-libertarians of the 1990s were deeply impressed by the use of the
internet by the Zapatistas in 1993 and the demonstrations against the World
Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle in 1999, the first successful use of
online political campaigns (Howard Dean in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008)
greatly influenced the theme of digital elections and campaigns, and the protests
in Iran in 2009 and the so-called Arab Spring, which begins the following year,
had a deep impact on the themes of online political participation and the role of
the internet in demonstrations, political action, social mobilization, organization
of civil society and even revolutions.
In the world of cell phones that never turn off or disconnect, at an age in
which we all live at the same time, and complementarily, online and offline, in a
universe in which our basic needs of information and direction are solved by
tapping, clicking and typing on device screens, it seems quite plausible that the
means of digital communications, the actual communications and the online
environments they create have a considerable impact on democracy, politics and
government. After all, nothing is more evident for someone living in the
21st century than the increasing digitization of life.
There is nothing metaphysical in such awareness. Everyone realizes, for
example, that in contemporary society, the services sector involving interaction is
gradually switching or supplementing its traditional interfaces (the counter, the
booth, the clerk, the sales assistant, the form) with digital interfaces. The
purchase, the bank transaction, the contract, the contact, everything is done
more and more online. This also includes the provision of government services,
increasingly digitized worldwide. Moreover, our actual social, family and private
interactions have become increasingly mediated by digital communication
technologies, devices, machines, media and environments. From the most
routine forms of conversation, from the exchange of affection and public, private
and intimate information to the consumption and production of information, the
exchange of opinions, worldviews and perspectives, the satisfaction of guidance
needs, the attention to daily life and the life of those who are dear to us or those
who are merely the object of our curiosity. Thus, much of what we do every day,
such as consume, find directions, keep ourselves informed, close business
transactions or interact increasingly depends on the mediation of digital
technologies.
It is no surprise, then, that other less basic but equally important activities
and interests are similarly influenced by the digital media and environments
surrounding us. If we use digital social networks to keep up with politics, if we
turn to information available online for political guidance, if today our networks
of contacts and political relationships are generally based on websites and
interaction applications, why should it come as a surprise that the political
demonstrations we take part in are also digitally mobilized, that many of the
political initiatives we take are supported by digital media, that the social and
political campaigns we engage in have an online base?
Along the same lines, if we accept quite peacefully that the digitization of
interactions and relationships has a considerable impact on virtually everything
we do, we are equally ready to admit that this impact extends to other spheres of
life, including life in common, within the political community. After all, we live
in communities and states, under the law and regimes of common life, within the
reach of constraints and potential political conditions that establish the limits of
what are rights and what are duties for each one of us. In other words, our whole
life unfolds within the limits of the social contract and the political community,
and, naturally, according to how this political community is governed. Once the
progressive digitization of private life and social interactions is admitted, it seems a
natural consequence to admit that there is a growing technological mediation of public life, that
is, of that sphere of life in society that has to do with public affairs and issues,
with the functioning of political community and with its institutional form, the
state.
Public life necessarily entails a normative dimension, which means that it is not
related to things as they really are, but to the way things should be. Much of the
energy expended in politics, for example, has to do with views, with perspectives
of how decisions that affect everyone’s life should be made, with which public
policies are preferable and how they should be implemented to achieve this or
that end. As there is also a normative dimension in general, based on valueoriented views and perspectives, supporting and motivating protests,
demonstrations, revolutions.
Lastly, in the sphere of the state’s functioning system, this normative
dimension is even more imperative, since democracy is a response to preferences
about the choice of leaders, the organization, assignment and limitation of
political power, the decision making that affects the lives of all, the production of
laws, the configuration of the judiciary and the application of justice, the types of
rights and guarantees and to whom they are guaranteed.
The acknowledgment that politics and democracy also involve value-based
preferences and views does not, however, undermine the public perception that
the digitization of all spheres of life seems a natural path. The fact that public life
is constantly imbued with a dispute over values does not alter our common
perception that digital mediation provides us with channels, tools and resources
that decisively affect politics, governments and democracy. On the contrary, it
seems quite natural to our contemporaries that digital environments should
provide scenarios that are especially suitable for the dispute over values and
interpretations of social problems, for the answer to such problems in the form of
public policies to give shape and flow to demands from the world of everyday
life, for the friction of worldviews, agendas and preferences. Just as digital
channels serve adequately to pressure and monitor rulers and public officials, to
challenge decisions made by established bodies, to challenge the political and
intellectual hegemonies of any of the state powers.
Lastly, and to make a long story short, there is a growing consensus that
digital means, environments, projects and devices can serve to transfer power to
citizens, to the small fry of democracy, in the face of the social formats
(institutions, corporations, organizations) that compete with them for: a) the
capacity to make an impact on public policies, legislation and regulation; b) the
influence over elections and all manners of choosing leaders and their agendas;
and c) the possibility of constraining or controlling those who govern in this or
that direction.
So virtually everything that seems to be part of what is understood as
materialization or implementation of the democratic regime seems today to be
somehow intertwined with means, environments and uses of digital technologies.
It does not matter whether such technologies are understood as mere instruments
or channels, or, more demandingly, as means and mediators, or in their ultimately
demanding form, as a condition of possibility to have more and better democracy.
The idea that democracy, in particular, and public life, in general, are in
some way intertwined with the universe of digital communications derives,
according to the argument I have been developing, from the social perception of
the digitization of everyday life. Since intimate life and social life are so digitized,
that is, based on interactions mediated by digital technologies, it seems to follow
logically that public life is subject to the same regime. Digital technologies
surround us so naturally that they are almost confused with the landscape and
are no longer thematized or questioned. Digital technologies increasingly
resemble those skills acquired in remote times, such as writing or speaking, that
we no longer think about; rather, we think by means of them, through them. It is
therefore becoming increasingly unusual and extravagant to imagine that we can
do anything without the environment of our digital technologies. Which leads us
directly to the following questions: If everything in our life is increasingly digital,
why should only democracy be analog? If the ubiquitous technology allows us to
do much of what interests us online, why should only democracy be left offline?
Themes and trends in recent years
Following the trend observed at the end of the previous decade, the level of
direct attention given to the theory of e-democracy remained well below it
deserved until 2004. Apparently, the function which the theory of e-democracy
served, the discussion on the possibility, models, problems and perspectives of
democracy in digital means and environments was no longer as necessary or as
urgent as it was until the mid-2000s. Until then, as we have seen, the theoretical
framework and conceptual justification of the expectations of the use of
technology to produce more and better democracies seemed decisive to establish
a place for e-democracy in society, politics and science. As far as political
environments and society in general go, the theory of e-democracy served to
provide legitimacy and thus mobilize funds and support for experiments with
teledemocracy or electronic democracy projects, so that people and
organizations would feel encouraged to design and implement democratization
initiatives through technology. In societies such as ours, what would be more
capable of granting legitimacy to a new phenomenon, and one surrounded by
suspicion and skepticism, than democracy itself as an idea and normative
horizon?
Regarding science, digital democracy followed the same course as any new
discipline or new scientific field, especially in the humanities: it had to open its
way with several reasoned and well-founded justifications until the path was
cleared of the most skeptical challenges and most severe criticisms. In the case in
point, how better could legitimacy be sought than placing e-democracy in the lap
of democratic theory? The conceptual discussion of the possibilities and limits of
e-democracy, therefore, had a purpose, but it was not an end in itself; its
relegation to a lower, but consistent and constant, level seems therefore to be a
symptom that the field is moving towards scientific consolidation and that,
apparently, the idea that democracy may greatly benefit from technology is no
longer challenged or misunderstood as it has been in the recent past.
But where did e-democracy go, considering that it disappeared from the titles
of articles and chapters and the center stage? It was simply assimilated, more or
less explicitly, into the framework of the products. Whether articles, reports or
projects of digital democracy, part of them is usually devoted to the
argumentative defense of e-democracy or to justifying the initiative, experiment
or phenomenon, based on some of the requirements and values of democracy,
such as equality, justice, participation, popular sovereignty, transparency,
pluralism, deliberation. In the second decade of the 21st century, digital
democracy is one of those ideas whose time has apparently come, and basically
all that is left of the task of justifying projects, initiatives or phenomena is to
precisely claim the fact that they are e-democratic projects, initiatives or
phenomena.
Moreover, and unlike previous periods, in the last ten years of digital
democracy the discussion is no longer focused on the general possibilities of
electronic democracy, but has unfolded into different questions about the various
subthemes, each one with its own adventures and histories of consolidation,
including in a highly interdisciplinary manner. Instead of simply asking questions
about whether the internet can indeed have an impact on democracy, politics
and the state, each line now asks how we can have more and better participation,
deliberation, transparency, pluralism, rights, etc. by means of digital
technologies. Or how we can tackle and overcome the limits of the various levels
of digital divide.
On the other hand, a kind of new model of digital democracy emerged
during this period with the consolidation of a literature that starts out from or
assumes premises of something that, in the absence of a better name, we might
call grassroots democracy, a trend in political theory that values the community,
minority groups, interests at the core of society, participation, political action in
protests, mobilization, demonstrations, and, sometimes, confrontation. A leftwing trend in general, represented by researchers from the spheres of civil society
and social movements, who had long kept at a reasonable distance from edemocracy, considered elitist, capitalist, consumerist and incapable of solving
even the problems of digital divide, much less of social exclusion and injustice.
The scarecrow of oppressive or elitist technology drove them away from the field
of digital democracy and kept them skeptical or antagonistic. In the 2010s,
however, a grassroots trend emerged in the internet and political studies that
considerably raised interest in the democratizing worth of digital technologies.
Judging from the academic attention to the subthemes, there was an
extraordinary growth in attention to digital protests, online activism, emovements, digital collective action and online engagement since the Arab
Spring and the boom of digital protests worldwide (see Chart 4). Digital
environments and websites and applications of digital social networks are
naturally at the base of all this.
The main subthemes addressed by the advocates of grassroots democracy in
their studies are grouped under “internet and society” and represent the great
innovation in the cross between politics and democracy in the field of digital
democracy in recent years. In general, the approach to these various topics
includes a considerable degree of normative content often related to democratic
issues: struggles for justice and rights, popular sovereignty, reaction to
oppression, struggle for freedom and against inequities, defense of minorities and
vulnerable groups, protests against violations of rights and injustices. Thus, the
last six years in particular have seen the rise of a new democratic momentum in
which technology is put at the service of the oppressed, the wronged, those who
fight and demonstrate for justice, rights, recognition, equality, and freedom.
CHART 4
Publications on the subthemes of internet & society – 2006-2015
However, beyond the prevalence of e-democracy in online political matters,
as seen in the attention given to traditional left-wing political themes, it is
necessary to understand precisely the behavior of traditional themes of digital
democracy in the last eleven years (see Chart 5). For example, the theme of
participation has grown exponentially and prevails over all others, also
confirming the trend of the late preceding decade. At the peak of the analyzed
production, in 2012, it accounted for 55% of production in the area of edemocracy, remaining at a very high level since then, despite a brief downward
oscillation. If we were to assess the importance of the use of technologies for
citizen participation from the number of projects, volume of funds invested,
reports or studies of multilateral organizations that review and encourage edemocracy, we would probably achieve the same results.
There are many reasons for the success of e-participation in the field of
digital democracy, starting with the breakdown of the theme shown above,
involving a large range of important activities for democracy and, it should not
be forgotten, for the government: public consultations, petitions, participation in
decision making, electronic and/or online voting, mobilization of citizens by
public authorities, regulation, etc. Many and varied aspects can be and are the
subject of e-participation projects or issues of concern for governments, society,
social and business organizations and multilateral organizations, all convinced
that, at the current stage of the use and spread of technologies, they can be
addressed or resolved by means of digital instruments.
A second reason for the prominence of e-participation in the set of concerns
related to digital democracy has to do with the increased scientific diversification
of researchers in the field of e-democracy. Communication researchers, political
scientists and democracy theorists predominated in the area of e-participation in
the first decade, but from the 2000s onward, public administration and especially
computer science increased their share significantly in the area. In the last
decade, for example, researchers in computing accounted for almost half of
publications on the subject. This is probably the most relevant factor explaining
the growth of e-participation compared to the other themes of digital democracy.
There is, moreover, a new and apparently very consistent theme in the field
of e-participation, which is crowdsourcing, collective collaboration, generally in
the interface with digital government or electronic parliament, which has been
growing exponentially since 2010. We can include here things like collective eparticipation
• in public policies (Charalabidis et al., 2012; Macintosh, 2004;
Rethemeyer, 2006);
• in government decision making (Garcia; Vivacqua; Tavares, 2011;
Linders, 2012);
• in fostering transparency (Bertot; Jaeger; Grimes, 2010; Carlo Bertot;
Jaeger; Grimes, 2012; Zinnbauer, 2015);
• in legislative procedure (Christensen; Karjalainen; Nurminen, 2015;
Heikka, 2015), etc.
As is typical of this period, crowdsourcing, or citizen-sourcing (Nam, 2012),
pays close attention to new digital participation resources, based on social media,
web 2.0 and mobile devices (Brovelli; Minghini; Zamboni, 2016; Charalabidis et
al., 2014; Wang et al., 2017). In fact, due to the rapid and intense growth of
attention, a considerable increase of the theme can be predicted in the coming
years.
CHART 5
Academic attention to subthemes of digital democracy by year – 2006-2016
E-deliberation is a subject whose behavior was considerably erratic over the
period, peaking in 2009 and facing some decline since then. Although it
continued being an important subarea of digital democracy, especially in the
study of projects applied to the discussion of citizens among themselves and with
public authorities, the area drifted away, especially at the end of the decade,
from its traditional reference point of deliberative democracy. Perhaps this
reflects the actual internal movement of deliberative democracy, which lost part
of its élan in democratic theory, branching out into much more applied and
pragmatic directions. Apparently, the authors of these new developments in the
field show less interest in what happens in the mobile internet and in social
media and 2.0 applications than the authors of the first wave of deliberative
democracy.
Interestingly, specifically regarding the subfield of “online politics”, there is a
striking growth of interest in discussions carried out in digital environments. The
study of online discussion, subdivided into three main themes – discussion and
political talk, divergence and polarization, selective exposition and heterogeneity
– is a singularity of current research, with growing and intense production since
at least 2008. It is not, however, a metamorphosis of the area of public
deliberation specific to digital democracy, since in general the bibliography does
not reflect a normative approach of the democratic type. What researchers are
most curious about is the fact that people increasingly talk to each other about
politics, often to fiercely diverge and polemicize, thereby generating a tendency
for polarization and the formation of echo chambers or digital bubbles, closed
environments of high affinity among its members. The theoretical framework is
not grounded on the Habermasian tradition, nor even on democratic theory, but
on theoretical and methodological models of communication and psychology,
such as the spiral of silence theory and the hypothesis of selective exposure.
Finally, we have the case of e-transparency, a typical theme of this last period.
At first sight, public transparency is not afforded the same importance in the area
of digital democracy as it has received in democratic theory, political science and
public administration. For government areas, for society, for multilateral
organizations and even for the scientific field, transparency, especially public
transparency, was a key theme at the turn of the century and remains so.
Transparency, on the one hand, and its counterparts that fill liberal democracies
with dread, corruption, physiology and opaqueness in government, are now a
matter of general concern. Why then is the subject of e-transparency still
modestly addressed worldwide, and if it has any importance in Brazil, is this
basically a response to a law that forces public administration itself to engage in
fiscal e-transparency? Why does not e-transparency have the same power as edeliberation or, above all, of e-participation?
I have not found a satisfactory answer to that question. But what I can say to
mitigate the sense that e-transparency does not receive the treatment it deserves
is that issues of digital public transparency have in fact prospered considerably in
the form of the themes of open government and open government data. That it
is, therefore, in the interface of the areas of digital democracy and digital
government that transparency finally gets the importance it deserves, as seen in
Chart 6.
CHART 6
Academic attention to e-transparency and open government
This gives us the opportunity to close this reconstruction of the course of
digital democracy with the hypothesis of the interface between e-democracy and digital
government. As Chadwick explained, there is even a social division of labor
between the two areas: “Public administration scholars, public policy analysts,
and public management specialists focus on e-government, whereas political
communication specialists, social movement scholars, and democratic theorists
sharpen their analytical tools on e-democracy”1. However, deep down the
connection between the two areas, albeit not direct, is certainly feasible.
The theme of e-government is more recent than the theme of e-democracy.
It appears around 1996 (Milward, Snyder, 1996), but only actually constitutes a
discipline at the start of the current century. The phase of teledemocracy, for
example, did not have a corresponding “telegovernment” phase, although,
naturally, the government in particular and the state in general were always
among the dimensions considered when debating the use of technology to solve
democratic deficits in liberal democracy. But the dominant approach was always
based on the normative horizon of democracy, its requirements, values and
principles.
And it always maintained a strong interface with digital democracy, from
which, supposedly, it derives much of its social legitimacy. Of course, not
everything of value in the idea of a government based on digital technologies
refers to democratic requirements, such as transparency, participation or
deliberation, or the values of democracy. To a large extent, it is enough that it
refers to social requirements and values stemming from other normative
horizons, such as ideas of effectiveness, efficiency, rationality, and economy. Or
to the principle that the role of digital government, of an electronic parliament,
of a smart city, etc., is simply to improve people’s lives. “Improving people’s
lives” may be something other than increasing political equality or public
transparency, enhancing participation or leading elected representatives to share
power with citizens, which are important democratic triggers, since it may mean
something like improving the quality of life of citizens, reducing the burden of
bureaucracy or the deficiency of public services to which they are entitled.
On the other hand, one must also consider that values such as increasing the
efficiency of digital government or principles such as “governments need to
improve citizens’ lives through technology” may gain a considerable boost from
the normative horizon of democracy. Thus, it is obvious that governments that
deliver good public services via digital means are good, but if e-public service
delivery is designed focused on the citizen, the sovereign of the state, and not
state bureaucracy, it will be even better. That is also true of, for example, smart
cities. And if the digital state, besides being efficient, modern, rational and
economic, is also transparent and participatory, there will be no loss of any of the
intrinsic values of the new public administration and there will additionally be a
considerable increase in its democratic quality. Introducing an e-democratic “virus” in
the e-government system seems, therefore, an important contemporary imperative for
better societies. And “better”, today, means also more democratic. More edemocratic.
New trends in digital democracy
Having come so far, where do we go? There are two ways to approach this
question, albeit briefly. The first is to find out where we are heading, which
themes and fields of applications are currently attracting the attention of
researchers, managers and society. The second is to suggest the themes we
should address, if digital democracy is to offer consistent answers to the demands
of democracy. In the first case, the main factor is identifying dominant trends,
while in the second case, it is more important to identify possible gaps in the
field.
Where are we heading? We summarize a few important trends that deserve
the attention of people who are already involved or who will become involved
with digital democracy in the coming years.
• With the consolidation of the idea of digital democracy, the golden age
of the theory of e-democracy has passed and the approach tends to be
more and more practical, applied and segmented. Unless some kind
of new challenge to the legitimacy of digital democracy appears on
the horizon, these trends are more likely to prevail. Practical
problems related to technological models, specific characteristics of
digital solutions used or studies of experiments (projects, initiatives
implemented) and experiences (spontaneous ways of using digital
technologies that influence or are applicable to democracy) tend to
focus attention over the next years. In addition, the tendency of
themes to become autonomous shall probably persist, with at least
some of them transformed into specific fields, as is currently
happening with e-participation, e-deliberation and the subarea of
internet and society. The trend towards fragmentation, however, if
not corrected, could lead to the loss of the overall perspective of
digital democracy. This would lead, as is already happening in the
case of e-participation, to indices of digital participation in which
autocratic countries score very high, as if the democratic quality of
the type of participation involved were superfluous for e-democracy
(Lidén, 2012, 2015). Or to confusions, such as viewing digital
democracy as one of the subtopics of digital government, completely
reversing not only the history of the larger area, but common sense in
political theory. The risk, therefore, is of the newly-autonomous
themes becoming detached from the idea of digital democracy, which
does indeed involve technology, but for which democracy is
indispensable. There would be no gain in this.
• In this sense, the attempt of applications and fields with increasing
autonomy to reconnect with digital democracy may become an
important counter-trend in the area of e-democracy. This need has
already been particularly felt in the area of digital government, in
which a considerable concentration of attention in providing
electronic services or in digital solutions for smart cities and smart
government tends to lead to a disconnection with e-democracy and its
requirements, denounced by many authors (Anderson; Bishop, 2005;
Chadwick, 2003; Hoff; Scheele, 2014; Kardan; Sadeghiani, 2011).
This strengthens the trend to force the introduction of democratic
criteria in e-government initiatives and projects to redirect, for
example, digital solutions and applications of public service delivery
to e-democracy (Chen, 2010; King; Cotterill, 2007; Lee; Lee, 2014;
van Velsen et al., 2009). It seems natural to imagine that this trend
will be reinforced as fragmentation increases.
• Another clear trend, already outlined above, refers to the new
technological pattern sm+m, that is, social media + mobile. This has been
the dominant trend in the 2010s, and nothing seems to indicate that it
will abate in the coming years. The idea that social media is the new
pattern of social use of the internet is already strong in some subareas,
such as digital government (Bonsón et al., 2012; Feroz Khan et al.,
2014; Mossberger; Wu; Crawford, 2013; Porumbescu, 2016; Small,
2012), internet and society (Breuer; Landman; Farquhar, 2015;
Kaun, 2016; Valenzuela, 2013), crowdsourcing in public policies
(Charalabidis et al., 2012; 2014; Spiliotopoulou et al., 2014), open
government (Gunawong, 2015; Stamati; Papadopoulos;
Anagnostopoulos, 2015; Wirtz; Daiser; Mermann, 2017) and eparticipation (Alarabiat; Soares, 2016; Dini; Saebo, 2016; Vogt;
Förster; Kabst, 2014). Social media may occasionally be replaced by the
label 2.0 (Henman, 2013, Nam, 2012, Pankowska, 2016; Sun; Ku;
Shih, 2015), with similar meaning. In the same way, the use of m- to
denote mobile digital technologies for communication is becoming
the current version of the classic e-, for electronic, which has prevailed
for forty years. M- is already clearly evident as a trend in the various
subareas of digital government (Gouscos; Drossos; Marias, 2005; Lee;
Tan; Trimi, 2006; Ogunleye; van Belle, 2014; Sheng; Trimi, 2008;
Trimi; Sheng, 2008) and in the theme of e-participation (Thiel et al.,
2015; Thiel; Lehner, 2015). In the next decade, the major area of
digital politics, state and democracy will increasingly be sm+m.
• Finally, there seems to be unanimity in the conviction that big data is
the theme of the hour. We are all, from democracy theorists to
computer scientists, from political communication scholars to
mathematicians, from health professionals and researchers to political
scientists, from bioinformatics scholars to economists and physicists,
imagining the fantastic applications to solve specific problems of each
area or multidisciplinary issues which will result from access to
massive amounts of digital data, information about people, their
circumstances and conditions, about society, about governments,
about the economy, about things and, above all, about the
relationships among them. It is not simply a matter of the volume of data, but
of the added computational intelligence employed in gathering and using them. As
Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford pointed out in a recent article: “Big
Data is less about data that is big than it is about a capacity to search,
aggregate, and cross-reference large data sets”2. From a technological
point of view, this implies that more and more we have to deal with
issues related to “maximizing computation power and algorithmic
accuracy to gather, analyze, link, and compare large data sets”3, but
from the point of view of politics and democracy, there are doubts as
to whether all this will help us create better societies, better
government and improve people’s lives, or if the opposite is most
likely to happen. This is a hot issue that research is just starting to
address.
• Big data, however, is just the beginning of a thematic thread. Next in
line is open data. It’s not just a matter of having large databases, but of the
political and democratic phenomena of open data and the opening of data. Open
data can be defined, according to Marijn Janssen and colleagues, as
“non-privacy-restricted and non-confidential data which is produced
with public money and is made available without any restrictions on
its usage or distribution”4. The premise behind the idea of open data
is that public bodies are generally the largest generators or gatherers
of data in most spheres of social life and must be compelled to make
this data available to society for whatever purposes individuals and
groups deem appropriate.
• Which inevitably leads us to the third theme of the tetrad, open
government (or public) data. The opening of government data has a
few important implications, first and foremost regarding the actual
government. By opening their huge databases to public access, public
bodies and government agencies, in a sense, agree to give up the
control that gave them discretionary power, non-accountable to the
public, only to the internal hierarchy of the public sector itself. This
means sharing power and, ultimately, exposing themselves.
• And so we come to the fourth theme, deeply interconnected with the
third, the issue of so-called open government. The expression has become
extremely popular in recent years, especially after President Barack
Obama published the famous Memorandum on Transparency and Open
Government on his first day in office and, in September 2011, signed the
Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative, still in force,
aimed at encouraging and engaging governments in promoting
transparency, combating corruption and using technologies to
strengthen democratic governance. As defined by Albert Meijer and
colleagues, the opening of government “is the extent to which citizens
can monitor and influence government processes through access to
government information and access to decision-making arenas”5.
This implies at least two important dimensions of digital democracy:
e-transparency and e-participation, in addition to a third dimension,
already stated above: open governments should be collaborative
(McDermott, 2010). In any case, the fact is that academic attention,
political attention and normative efforts regarding the opening of
government by digital means grew rapidly in those years (as Chart
6 shows).
Having reached the end of this account, after seeing how we got here, how
the idea of digital democracy developed and was consolidated and the new
trends in this area, we still have time to ask ourselves how e-democracy is helping
us to deal with the problems of democracy. We have seen the progress of the
themes of participation, public deliberation in digital media and environments
and, finally, grassroots e-democracy, so that the deficit correlated with low
political participation among the population and civic apathy has deserved due
consideration. The liberal problem of invisible governments and the opaque
state, and the problem of new and old democracies related to patrimonialism,
physiology and patronage and, ultimately, corruption can only be faced with
more transparency, more accountability of political agents, more monitoring by
citizens. We are at the core of the most recent agenda related to e-transparency,
to forms of participation of a monitorial e-democracy, and finally to open data
and open government. It is too early to say to what extent governments will
move down that road, but the direction seems very promising.
There is, however, a gap that has not been adequately filled concerning the
contribution of e-democracy to existing democracies, which relates to the limits
of the rule of law and to problems in extending rights, guarantees and freedoms
equally to all citizens. It cannot be said that the theme of violation of rights, of
injustices and structural oppression and of equal and effective access to justice is
not being addressed. But it must be admitted that the enhancement and
consolidation of a society of rights, specifically political rights and freedoms, and
the role of digital resources in monitoring and reporting violations of rights are
not yet a main task of digital democracy, documented in academic attention.
This is a line of research and action that still needs to be built.
To conclude
So, are we all reconciled with the idea of digital democracy? Certainly not.
Several are the sources from which still emerge challenges to the idea that
something truly worthwhile can stem from the application of digital solutions to
produce political, governmental, legislative and social solutions. In fact, it is often
a question, as we have seen in the history of literature on the subject, of requiring
digital democracy to be more democratic than real democracies. This makes no
sense, since e-democracy is not a type of democracy, but the use of technologies
to strengthen, correct or improve existing democracies. Or even to implement or
improve democratic dimensions of authoritarian states. If society or its rulers
decide to improve their democracy or to make certain institutions and processes
more democratic, the current state of technology and the uses citizens make of it
are indispensable resources to achieve those goals. Technology can both deliver
participation and deliberation and deliver public transparency, pluralism, open
governments, interaction between citizens and authorities, reinforcement of
access to rights and justice, defense of rights and guarantees, denunciation of
violations and abuse, mobilization, engagement.
Digital democracy is merely the set of resources, tools, projects, experiments, experiences and
initiatives that exploit technologies to produce more democracy and better democracies. It is that
simple. In a political system with low interest in participation, for example, the
digital democracy of that society will hardly be participatory, because the
technological resources will be used preferentially for other applications. That
has nothing to do with technology, but with the preferences of society, its rulers
and its institutions. In this case, it would not be reasonable to criticize digital
democracy for not delivering as much participation as anyone would wish. It
would be wiser to criticize the low interest in participation by governments and
institutions.
Moreover, those who demand unified digital solutions to the democratic
deficit of certain states and societies, however broad they may be, seem to have
difficulty in understanding that complex and pluralistic democracies can hardly
be built on the basis of a single element. It is curious, in this sense, how criticisms
of digital democracy are always more simplistic than the lists of the complex
problems of contemporary democracy in democratic theory. Sentences such as
“we need a more lively and participatory democracy, controlled by citizens” do
not address complicated obstacles that stand in the way of democracy, such as
the need for growing technocracy (decisions based on specializations and
technical expertise), for increased bureaucracy, the “ungovernability” of mass
democracies, among others. Complex democracies have so many needs that to
think that everything can be solved with more technological resources for
participation or deliberation sounds rather naive. On the other hand,
undermining the worth of the plethora of digital solutions for improving
democracy just because the digital democracy kit employed by a given society
does not assign the same value as I do to function x or y as an adequate remedy
for most of the democratic deficits of that society does not seem reasonable or
justified. Ours are societies that, besides being complex, are considerably
pluralistic, so that there is no “model” of democracy in which we all might fit or
a democratic emphasis that could satisfy all our needs.
Finally, the obstacles to the exercise of democracy are so numerous and
diverse that any help from technology, in any dimension, should be considered
welcome. The simplest set of digital democracy resources would already mean an
increase in the quality of existing democracy, even more so in the case of a
consistent e-democracy that has a significant, pro-democracy impact on public
life, the political system and the state.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With a PhD in philosophy, Wilson Gomes is a researcher in the areas of
political communication and democracy, government and politics in digital
environments and full professor of communication theory at the School of
Communication of the Federal University of Bahia (Ufba). He is the author of
papers and books in the area of communication and politics, including
Transformações da política na era da comunicação de massa (Transformations in Politics
in the Age of Mass Communication – Paulus, 2004), Jornalismo, fatos e interesses
(Journalism, Facts and Interests – Insular, 2009) and A política na timeline (Politics
in the Timeline – Eufba, 2014). He coordinates the Center for Advanced Studies
in Digital Democracy (CEADD) of Ufba and the National Institute of Science
and Technology in Digital Democracy (INCT.DD).
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Democracy in the Digital World - Wilson Gomes.pdf
Democracy in the digital world: History, issues and themes, 2018
In times of crisis of representation the question of what kind of democracy can be achieved through the expansion of new technologies emerges with renewed vigor. Is it direct democracy or yet another appendage of representative democracy? Is it democracy as understood by classical liberals, libertarians or communitarians? Is it deliberative or participatory electronic democracy? In the first book of the Digital Democracy series, Professor Wilson Gomes draws on ten years of research on the subject to present a historical cross section of the idea of electronic and digital democracy, addressing themes such as transparency, public sphere, participation and political deliberation. PhD in Philosophy and coordinator of the Center for Advanced Studies in Digital Democracy of the Federal University of Bahia (Ufba), Gomes divides his book into three periods: "1970-1995 - The origins of the idea of electronic democracy – Teledemocracy"; "1996-2005 - The consolidation of the idea of digital democracy"; and "2006-2015 - The state of digital democracy". As Gomes summarizes: "The history of the idea that it was possible to improve democratic processes through information technology can naturally go a long way back, as the invention and, above all, the massification of new communication media have always been accompanied by renewed hopes for improvement in democracy and public life...Read more
