E-democracy

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E-democracy, a portmanteau of electronic and democracy, comprises the use of electronic communications technologies, such as the Internet, in enhancing democratic processes within a democratic republic or representative democracy. It is a political development still in its infancy, as well as the subject of much debate and activity within government, civic-oriented groups and societies around the world.

The term is both descriptive and prescriptive. Typically, the kinds of enhancements sought by proponents of e-democracy are framed in terms of making processes more accessible; making citizen participation in public policy decision-making more expansive and direct so as to enable broader influence in policy outcomes as more individuals involved could yield smarter policies; increasing transparency and accountability; and keeping the government closer to the consent of the governed, increasing its political legitimacy. E-democracy includes within its scope electronic voting, but has a much wider span than this single aspect of the democratic process.

E-democracy is also sometimes referred to as cyberdemocracy or digital democracy. Prior to 1994, when the term e-democracy was coined in the midst of online civic efforts in Minnesota, the term teledemocracy was prevalent. "Teledemocracy", coined by political scientist Ted Becker in 1981, combined elements of e-democracy with those of "deliberative democracy" coined about the same time. "Teledemocracy" then is an umbrella term that includes both "e-democracy," "deliberative democracy" and many types of "direct democracy." ^{[citation needed]}

1 Practical issues with e-democracy
2 Internet as political medium
3 Benefits and disadvantages
4 Electronic direct democracy
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Practical issues with e-democracy

The challenge for governments and bureaucracies, as well as for individuals and groups, is to develop tools and adapt processes so as to meet the aspirations of e-democracy. There are numerous practical and theoretical issues which have yet to be scoped, understood or solved, and work is underway in many democracies on a wide and diverse set of experiments and trials to test approaches and techniques.

One major problem which needs to be overcome for e-democracy to be a success is that of citizen identification. For secure elections and other secure citizen-to-government transactions, citizens must have some form of identification that preserves privacy and maybe also one which could be used in Internet forums. The need to allow anonymous posting while at the same time giving certain contributors extra status such as biologists can be solved using certain cryptographic methods. In the United Kingdom there is much contention about the introduction of the British national identity card.

Another such problem would be that there are many vested interests that would be harmed by a more direct democracy. Amongst these are politicians, media moguls and some in big business and trade unions. These organizations are likely to oppose meaningful application of e-democracy concepts. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Internet as political medium

The Internet is viewed as a platform and delivery medium for tools that help to eliminate some of the distance constraints in direct democracy. Technical media for e-democracy can be expected to extend to mobile technologies such as phones.

There are important differences between previous communication media and the Internet that are relevant to the Internet as a political medium. Most importantly the Internet is a many-to-many communication medium where radio and television, which broadcast few-to-many, and telephones broadcast few-to-few, are not. Also, the Internet has a much greater computational capacity allowing strong encryption and database management, which is important in community information access and sharing, deliberative democracy and electoral fraud prevention. Further, people use the Internet to collaborate or meet in an asynchronous manner—that is, they do not have to be physically gathered at the same moment to get things accomplished. Due to all these factors, the Internet has the potential to take over certain traditional media of political communication such as the telephone, the television, newspapers and the radio.

[edit] Benefits and disadvantages

Some traditional objections to direct democracy are argued to apply to e-democracy, such as the potential for governance to tend towards populism and demagoguery. More practical objections exist, not least in terms of the digital divide between those with access to the media of e-democracy (mobile phones and Internet connections) and those without, as well as the opportunity cost of expenditure on e-democracy innovations.

Contemporary technologies such as electronic mailing lists, peer-to-peer networks, collaborative software, wikis, Internet forums and blogs are clues to and early potential solutions for some aspects of e-democracy; equally, they are bellwethers of some of the issues associated with the territory, such as the inability to sustain new initiatives or protect against identity theft, information overload and vandalism.

[edit] Electronic direct democracy

Electronic direct democracy is a form of direct democracy in which the Internet and other electronic communications technologies are used to ameliorate the bureaucracy involved with referenda. Many advocates think that also important to this notion are technological enhancements to the deliberative process. Electronic direct democracy is sometimes referred to as EDD (many other names are used for what is essentially the same concept).

EDD requires the ability to register votes on issues electronically. As in a direct democracy, in an EDD citizens would have the right to vote on legislation before parliament, author new legislation and recall representatives at any stage.

Ross Perot was for a time a prominent advocate of EDD when he advocated "electronic town halls" during his 1992 and 1996 Presidential campaigns in the United States.

A contemporary example that takes an evolutionary approach to EDD is where representatives independently conduct referenda on issues using the Internet or other electronic communications technologies. This potential step toward electronic direct democracy does not require any constitutional changes as it simply strengthens the relationship between the constituent and the representative. ^{[citation needed]}

EDD as a system is not fully implemented anywhere in the world although Switzerland, already partially governed by direct democracy, is moving towards such a system. [1]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] General

access2democracy — Views on eDemocracy
Democracies Online Newswire (Do-Wire) — Announcements from Steven Clift about e-democracy, e-government, politics online and more.
DEMO-net - The eParticipation Network — European Network of Excellence researching eParticipation and eDemocracy
e-DC (e-Democracy Centre) — Academic Research Centre on electronic democracy. Directed by Alexander H. Trechsel, e-DC is a joint-venture between the University of Geneva's c2d, the European University Institute in Florence and the Oxford University's OII.
Electronic Democracy at the Open Directory Project
Get involved — The Queensland (Australia) Government's eDemocracy site, including online consultation, ePetitions and Internet broadcast of Parliament.
IPOL - a portal on Internet and politics — The website including primary and secondary research resources related to online participation, e-democracy and the use of the Internet by parliaments and assemblies; edited by Stephen Ward, Wainer Lusoli and Rachel Gibson.
Irish E-democracy — Irish E-democracy Initiative.
New Zealand eDemocracy — eDemocracy research in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Publicus.Net — Steven Clift's articles, e-democracy resource links, and special section on e-government and democracy.
Google group that was started with the goal of creating a network of initiatives which reside on the TOP (Transparent Open Public) principles of political activities. We share concepts, ideas and suggestions about the Internet as a media, OpenSource as a paradigm and Democracy as the ultimate goal.

[edit] Australia

[edit] Germany

Demos-project

[edit] United Kingdom

DirectGov Government Consultations — UK citizens shape government policy by taking part in online consultations.
Hansard Society eDemocracy Programme — eDemocracy innovation, research and scrutiny.
They Work For You — Experimental political advocacy site, which scrapes the UK Parliamentary record and turns the debates into an easily searched means of keep tabs on Members of Parliament.
UK Local E-Democracy website — The local government e-democracy projects being sponsored by the UK government.

[edit] United States

American Democracy and Computer Mediated Communication - A Case Study in Minnesota — Ph.D. by strategist and e-democracy.org co-founder G. Scott Aikens.
E-Democracy.Org — The Minnesota-based project that coined the term "e-democracy" in 1994.
Seattle Democracy Portal

[edit] Spain

Democracia Directa Digital (D3)

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