E-democracy
Encyclopedia
E-democracy refers to the use of information technologies and communication technologies and strategies in political and governance
processes. “e-democracy is concerned with the use of information and communication technologies to engage citizens, support the democratic decision- making processes and strengthen representative democracy." Democratic actors and sectors in this context include government
s, elected officials, the media, political organizations, and citizens/voters. E-democracy aims for broader and more active citizen participation
enabled by the Internet
, mobile communications, and other technologies in today's representative democracy
, as well as through more participatory or direct forms of citizen involvement in addressing public challenges.
To develop these public-sector portals or platforms, governments have the choice to internally develop and manage, outsource or sign a self-funding contract. The self-funding model creates portals that pay for themselves through convenience fees for certain e-government transactions. Early players in this space include govONE Solutions, First Data Government Solutions and Nicusa.com, a company built on the self-funded model.
Social network
ing is an emerging area for e-democracy, as well as related technological developments, such as argument maps and eventually, the semantic web
. Those are seen as important stepping stones in the maturation of the concept of e-democracy. The social networking entry point, for example, is within the citizens' environment, and the engagement is on the citizens' terms. Proponents of e-government perceive government use of social networks as a medium to help government act more like the public it serves. Examples of state usage can be found at The Official Commonwealth of Virginia Homepage, where citizens can find Google
tools and open social forums.
Government and its agents also have the opportunity to follow citizens to monitor satisfaction with services they receive. Through ListServs, RSS feeds, mobile messaging, micro-blogging services and blogs, government and its agencies can share information to citizens who share common interests and concerns. Some government representatives are also beginning to use Twitter
which provides them with an easy medium to inform their followers. In the state of Rhode Island
, for instance, Treasurer Frank T. Caprio
is offering daily tweets of the state's cash flow.
, on the Internet
, and in popular consciousness
, there is a strong and generally unchallenged view that the Internet is the new electronic cradle of democracy. The original source of this view is probably the relatively unfettered speech found in Internet newsgroups, mailing list
s, blog
s, wiki
s and chat room
s.
The Internet currently does have several attributes that encourage thinking about it as a democratic medium. Part of this can be traced to the design principles that were established early in its evolution. The lack of centralized control suggests to many people that censorship
or other attempts at control will be thwarted. Other attributes are a result of social design in the early days, the strongly libertarian support for free speech, the sharing culture that permeated nearly all aspects of Internet use, and the outright prohibition on commercial use by the National Science Foundation
, for example. The Internet's most significant contribution was the idea of unmediated many-to-many communication on a large scale, through newsgroup
s, chat rooms, MUD
s, and many other modes. This type of communication ignored the boundaries established with broadcast media, such as newspaper
s or radio
, and with one-to-one media, such as letters or landline telephones. Finally, because Internet is a massive digital network with open standards, universal and inexpensive access to a wide variety of communication media and models could actually be attained.
Some practical issues involving e-democracy include: effective participation; voting equality at decision stage; enlightened understanding; control of the agenda; and inclusiveness.
and participation
. Civic engagement can be understood to include three distinct dimensions: political knowledge (what people learn about public affairs), political trust (the public's orientation of support for the political system), and political participation (conventional activities designed to influence government and the decision-making process).
The information capacity available on the Internet allows citizens to become more knowledgeable about government and political issues, and the interactivity
of the medium allows for new forms of communication with government, i.e. elected officials and/or public servants. The posting of contact information, legislation
, agendas
, and policies makes government more transparent
, potentially enabling more informed participation both online and offline. For more information, visit transparent-gov.
According to Matt Leighninger, the internet impacts government in two main ways. The first way is the empowerment of individuals. People who have an interest in current political issues and the capacity to learn about them now have access to the information they need to be equipped to make an impact on public policy. Using online tools to organize, people can more easily be involved in the policy-making process of government. The first impact has also lead to a greater amount of public engagement efforts. Government officials are pressured by more highly informed, opinionated, and potentially effective citizens to make more of an effort to address the public's concerns.
The second way the Internet impacts government is that the Internet empowers groups of people. Social media sites support networks of people; online networks are currently significantly affecting the political process. Pressures from these networks are causing an increase in politicians' efforts to appeal to the public in campaigns. The combination of face-to-face relationships and social networking is a potentially powerful force for the future of politics and e-democracy.
. Technical media for e-democracy can be expected to extend to mobile technologies, such as cellphones
.
Most importantly, the Internet is a many-to-many communication medium, whereas radio
and television
, which broadcast few-to-many, and telephones, which broadcast few-to-few, are not. Also, the Internet has a much greater computational capacity, allowing strong encryption and database
management, which is important in community information access and sharing, deliberative democracy
and electoral fraud
prevention. Further, people use the Internet to collaborate or meet in an asynchronous manner—that is, they do not have to be physically gathered at the same moment to get things accomplished.
Using the Internet as a political campaigning tool has become a cheaper and more convenient alternative for many politicians, in comparison to traditional door-to-door knocking or telephone campaigning. Candidates are also beginning to use social networking sites to reach younger audiences, creating potential supporters to campaigns. E-mail chains and political blogs also have had a major impact with online campaigning. Views are expressed by adding comments to political blogs or web pages. Point-and-click advertising (interactive advertising online) also has influenced traditional mail or television campaigning.
The lower cost of information exchange on the Internet, as well as the high level of reach that the content potentially has, makes the Internet an attractive medium for political information, particularly amongst social interest groups and parties with lower budgets.
For example, environmental or social issue groups may find the Internet an easier mechanism to increase awareness of their issues, as compared to traditional media outlets, such as television or newspapers, which require heavy financial investment. Due to all these factors, the Internet has the potential to take over certain traditional media of political communication, such as the telephone, the television, newspapers and the radio. The civil society
has gradually moved into the online world.
Another example is openforum.com.au
, an Australian non-profit eDemocracy project that invites politicians, senior public servants, academics, business people and other key stakeholders to engage in high-level policy debate.
Novel tools are being developed that are aimed at empowering bloggers, webmasters and owners of other social media, with the effect of moving from a strictly informational use of the Internet to using the Internet as a means of social organization not requiring top-down action. Action triggers, for instance, are a novel concept designed to allow webmasters to mobilize their viewers into action without the need for leadership. These tools are also utilized worldwide: for example, India is developing an effective blogosphere
that allows internet users to state their thoughts and opinions.
. Public-policy researcher Hans Klein
at the Georgia Institute of Technology
notes that participation in such forums has a number of barriers, such as the need to meet in one place at one time. In a study of a civic association in the northeastern United States, Klein found that electronic communications greatly enhanced the ability of the organization to fulfill its mission.
There are many forms of association in civic society. The term interest group conventionally refers to more formal organizations that either focus on particular social groups and economic sectors, such as trade unions and business and professional associations, or on more specific issues, such as abortion, gun control, or the environment. Other traditional interest groups have well-established organizational structures and formal membership rules, and their primary orientation is toward influencing government and the policy process. Transnational advocacy networks bring together loose coalitions of these organizations under common umbrella organizations that cross national borders.
The Internet may serve multiple functions for all of these organizations, including lobbying elected representatives, public officials, and policy elites; networking with related associations and organizations; mobilizing organizers, activists, and members using action alerts, newsletters, and emails; raising funds and recruiting supporters; and communicating their message to the public via the traditional news media.
In 2007 was a rumour that telephone and cable companies are going to create a two-tiered Internet. This new Internet will have a fast lane and a slow lane and companies and individuals will have to pay to use them. Large companies will have the money to pay for the fast lane, whereas others won't be able to make their voices heard via the Internet. What this means for our democracy is that low budgeted campaigns and less wealthy candidates for office won't be able to run for office as effectively as the richer ones. This will have a large affect on local democratic especially because they tend to be less funded than national democratic groups. This two-tiered Internet will silence the lower class and low middle class voices in general and make our right to freedom of speech less heard. In November 2010 a bill was passed that would ensure that "net neutrality" would be kept. This means that a two-tiered Internet isn't a possibility in the near future, but the fact that it was thought of and because of our business minded economy it's plausible that a form of the two-tiered Internet could exist later. This is a scary thought because it would make it so that only the largest and wealthiest campaigns would be run and heard of and smaller campaigns would never have a chance to even get their values out into the public.
-State were rather frightening, such as the one told by George Orwell
in his Nineteen Eighty-Four
. While technologies can be used for the good and bad, certain institutional framework conditions may either support or hamper the use of electronic means for the benefit of democratic processes. Risks and opportunities of the digitization of democratic processes depends therefore to a large extent upon the particular institutional framework conditions of the chosen democratic model (which is mainly set out in the Constitution
, including the type of the underlying social contract
, specific aspects of the rule of law
, representative democracy
or direct democracy
, etc.).
s, peer-to-peer
networks, collaborative software
, wiki
s, Internet forums and blog
s, are clues to and early potential solutions for some aspects of e-democracy.
A number of non-governmental sites have developed cross-jurisdiction, customer-focused applications that extract information from thousands of governmental organizations into a system that brings consistency to data across many dissimilar providers. It is convenient and cost-effective for businesses, and the public benefits by getting easy access to the most current information available without having to expend tax dollars to get it. One example of this is transparent.gov.com, a free resource for citizens to quickly identify the various open government initiatives
taking place in their community or in communities across the country.
Another valuable source is USA.gov — the official site of the United States government. The website is directly linked to every federal and state agency. The information provided by the website is valuable to all citizens, and non-citizens, of the current news and regulations of the U.S. government. These are just some examples of e-government's influence in the Internet.
E-democracy leads to a more simplified process and access to government information for public-sector agencies and citizens. For example, the Indiana
Bureau of Motor Vehicles simplified the process of certifying driver records to be admitted in county court proceedings. Indiana
became the first state to allow government records to be digitally signed, legally certified and delivered electronically by using Electronic Postmark technology. In addition to its simplicity, e-democracy services can reduce costs. The Alabama
Department of Conservation & Natural Resources, Wal-Mart
and NIC developed an online hunting and fishing license service utilizing an existing computer to automate the licensing process. More than 140,000 licenses were purchased at Wal-Mart stores during the first hunting season, and the agency estimates it will save $200,000 annually from service.
Electronic democracy can also carry the benefit of reaching out to youth as a mechanism to increase youth voter turnout in elections and raising awareness amongst youth. With the consistent decline of voter turnout
, e-democracy and electronic voting mechanisms can help revert that trend. Youth, in particular, have seen a significant drop in turnout in most industrialized nations, including Canada
, the United States
and the United Kingdom
. The use of electronic political participation mechanisms may appear more familiar to youth and, as a result, garner more participation by youths who would otherwise find it inconvenient to vote using the more traditional methods. Electronic democracy can help improve democratic participation, reduce civic illiteracy and voter apathy and become a useful asset for political discussion, education, debate and participation.
s of some of the issues associated with the territory, such as the inability to sustain new initiatives or protect against identity theft
, information overload
and vandalism
.
Some traditional objections to direct democracy are argued to apply to e-democracy, such as the potential for direct governance
to tend towards the polarization of opinions, populism
, and demagoguery. More practical objections exist, not least in terms of the digital divide
between those with access to the media of e-democracy (mobile phones and Internet connections) and those without, as well as the opportunity cost
of expenditure on e-democracy innovations.
Furthermore, there are still those who are skeptical to the amount of impact that they can make through online participation. Although the government projects supply information, IT illiteracy and the digital divide are grounds to discourage participation. The political advances on the Internet can potentially dishearten non-users to adapt the new technologies.
(EDD) is the strongest form of direct democracy
, in which people
are involved in the legislative function. Many advocates think that also important to this notion are technological enhancements to the deliberative process. Electronic direct democracy is sometimes referred to by many other names, such as open source governance
and collaborative governance
.
EDD requires electronic voting
or some way to register votes on issues electronically. As in any direct democracy, in an EDD, citizens would have the right to vote on legislation, author new legislation, and recall representatives (if any representatives are preserved).
Technology for supporting EDD has been researched and developed at the Florida Institute of Technology
, where the technology is used with student organizations. Numerous other software development projects are underway, along with many supporting and related projects. Several of these projects are now collaborating on a cross-platform architecture, under the umbrella of the Metagovernment project.
EDD as a system is not fully implemented in a political government anywhere in the world, although several initiatives are currently forming. Ross Perot
was a prominent advocate of EDD when he advocated "electronic town halls
" during his 1992 and 1996 Presidential
campaigns in the United States
. Switzerland
, already partially governed by direct democracy, is making progress towards such a system.
Senator On-Line
, an Australian political party running for the Senate in the 2007 federal elections, proposed to institute an EDD system so that Australians can decide which way the senators vote on each and every bill. A similar initiative was formed 2002 in Sweden where the party Aktivdemokrati
, running for the Swedish parliament
, offers its members the power to decide the actions of the party over all or some areas of decision, or alternatively to use a proxy with immediate recall for one or several areas.
The only mainstream direct democracy party currently registered with any country's electoral commission [checked against each country's register] is the UK's People's Administration Direct Democracy party. The People's Administration have developed and published the complete architecture for a legitimate reform to EDD [including the required Parliamentary reform process]. The People's Administration advocates using the web and telephone to enable the majority electorate to create, propose and vote upon all policy implementation. The People's Administration's blueprint has been published in various forms since 1998 and the People's Administration is currently the only direct democracy party registered in a vote-able format anywhere in the world - making transition possible through evolution via election with legitimate majority support, instead of potentially through revolution via violence.
Liquid democracy, or direct democracy with delegable proxy, would allow citizens to choose a proxy to vote on their behalf while retaining the right to cast their own vote on legislation. The voting and the appointment of proxies could be done electronically. The proxies could even form proxy chains, in which if A appoints B and B appoints C, and neither A nor B vote on a proposed bill but C does, C's vote will count for all three of them. Citizens could also rank their proxies in order of preference, so that if their first choice proxy fails to vote, their vote can be cast by their second-choice proxy.
democracy has changed drastically because of the use of technology. Political pluralism and dialogue, are new meanings of democracy which have been forged by the emergence of new public decision-making policies in the internet. The evolution of modern technology has changed classic understandings such as political dialogue and political accountability. Americans are drastically moving to their mobile devices for updates on the news. A survey that was released with this years report finds that nearly half of all Americans (47%) now get some form of local news on a mobile device or cell phone. Americans are now turning to mobile devices mostly to access news that serves immediate needs such as weather, movie times, information on local businesses and traffic in their area. Today the web news is beginning to increase. Cable news and news platforms are starting to shrink and decline. More people are saying that they get their news from the web than newspapers. The internet now follows only television among American adults as a destinations for news. Local mobile ad revenue is growing fast, stations in 2009 made 29 million from mobile devices. “I expect that figure to skyrocket into the billions within two years as the transition from desktops and laptops to hand-held devices takes off,” said Gordon Borrell
Similarly, in Austria, they have the components of an advanced internet system unlike China, but they do not have the political and social norms calling for citizen’s opinions to be heard. In a study conducted that interviewed elected officials in Austria’s parliament opinions were widely and strongly against e-democracy. They believed that the citizens were “uninformed” and their way of expressing their opinions should only be to vote; sharing opinions and ideas was only the job of the elected. Their officials have a contrasting idea of their roles than those in the US, here the citizens opinion is respected and called for, and their power is up to the citizens, our opinions do not take away from their influence. In Austria, on the other hand the elected officials have no tolerance for their powers to be diminished in the slightest, including by allowing citizens to openly express ideas and opinions about politics because it makes the people in power vulnerable to the citizens. Austria’s blatant negative opinion on e-democracy shows that it is necessary for a nation to have openness in political thought from citizens for e-democracy to thrive.
Governance
Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of management or leadership processes...
processes. “e-democracy is concerned with the use of information and communication technologies to engage citizens, support the democratic decision- making processes and strengthen representative democracy." Democratic actors and sectors in this context include government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
s, elected officials, the media, political organizations, and citizens/voters. E-democracy aims for broader and more active citizen participation
Participation (decision making)
Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions - and ideally exert influence - regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including...
enabled by the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, mobile communications, and other technologies in today's representative democracy
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
, as well as through more participatory or direct forms of citizen involvement in addressing public challenges.
Tools and types
There has been a significant growth in E-democracy in the last four years. Public- and private-sector platforms provide an avenue to citizen engagement while offering access to transparent information citizens have come to expect.To develop these public-sector portals or platforms, governments have the choice to internally develop and manage, outsource or sign a self-funding contract. The self-funding model creates portals that pay for themselves through convenience fees for certain e-government transactions. Early players in this space include govONE Solutions, First Data Government Solutions and Nicusa.com, a company built on the self-funded model.
Social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
ing is an emerging area for e-democracy, as well as related technological developments, such as argument maps and eventually, the semantic web
Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
. Those are seen as important stepping stones in the maturation of the concept of e-democracy. The social networking entry point, for example, is within the citizens' environment, and the engagement is on the citizens' terms. Proponents of e-government perceive government use of social networks as a medium to help government act more like the public it serves. Examples of state usage can be found at The Official Commonwealth of Virginia Homepage, where citizens can find Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
tools and open social forums.
Government and its agents also have the opportunity to follow citizens to monitor satisfaction with services they receive. Through ListServs, RSS feeds, mobile messaging, micro-blogging services and blogs, government and its agencies can share information to citizens who share common interests and concerns. Some government representatives are also beginning to use Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
which provides them with an easy medium to inform their followers. In the state of Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
, for instance, Treasurer Frank T. Caprio
Frank T. Caprio
Frank T. Caprio is a Managing Director at Chatham Capital a mezzanine finance firm with offices in Atlanta, Dallas and Providence. He had a twenty year political career which included being elected as the former General Treasurer of Rhode Island...
is offering daily tweets of the state's cash flow.
Practical issues
A number of practical issues surround e-democracy. In the mediaMass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, and in popular consciousness
Collective consciousness
Collective consciousness was a term coined by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim to refer to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society...
, there is a strong and generally unchallenged view that the Internet is the new electronic cradle of democracy. The original source of this view is probably the relatively unfettered speech found in Internet newsgroups, mailing list
Mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...
s, blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s and chat room
Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...
s.
The Internet currently does have several attributes that encourage thinking about it as a democratic medium. Part of this can be traced to the design principles that were established early in its evolution. The lack of centralized control suggests to many people that censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
or other attempts at control will be thwarted. Other attributes are a result of social design in the early days, the strongly libertarian support for free speech, the sharing culture that permeated nearly all aspects of Internet use, and the outright prohibition on commercial use by the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
, for example. The Internet's most significant contribution was the idea of unmediated many-to-many communication on a large scale, through newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
s, chat rooms, MUD
MUD
A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...
s, and many other modes. This type of communication ignored the boundaries established with broadcast media, such as newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s or radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, and with one-to-one media, such as letters or landline telephones. Finally, because Internet is a massive digital network with open standards, universal and inexpensive access to a wide variety of communication media and models could actually be attained.
Some practical issues involving e-democracy include: effective participation; voting equality at decision stage; enlightened understanding; control of the agenda; and inclusiveness.
Citizens' roles
The Internet provides a distinctive structure of opportunities that has the potential to renew interest in civic engagementCivic engagement
Civic engagement or civic participation has been defined as "Individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern."-Forms:...
and participation
Participation (decision making)
Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions - and ideally exert influence - regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including...
. Civic engagement can be understood to include three distinct dimensions: political knowledge (what people learn about public affairs), political trust (the public's orientation of support for the political system), and political participation (conventional activities designed to influence government and the decision-making process).
The information capacity available on the Internet allows citizens to become more knowledgeable about government and political issues, and the interactivity
Interactivity
In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels:...
of the medium allows for new forms of communication with government, i.e. elected officials and/or public servants. The posting of contact information, legislation
Legislation
Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...
, agendas
Political agenda
A political agenda is a set of issues and policies laid out by an executive or cabinet in government that tries to influence current and near-future political news and debate....
, and policies makes government more transparent
Transparency (philosophy)
In epistemology, transparency is a property of epistemic states defined as follows:An epistemic state E is weakly transparent to a subject S if and only if when S is in state E, S can know that S is in state E;...
, potentially enabling more informed participation both online and offline. For more information, visit transparent-gov.
Civic participation in terms of E-Democracy
In general, civic engagement can be thought of the consumption of services provided by governmental institutions. The Internet provides a connection to these institutions; it can be used as a tool to be used for the process of interaction with said institutions. According to Roas Tsagarousianou, e-democracy has three sub-fields: "information provision, deliberation, and participation in decision-making." In terms of E-Democracy, civic engagement takes the form of social networking, organization, and online forums.According to Matt Leighninger, the internet impacts government in two main ways. The first way is the empowerment of individuals. People who have an interest in current political issues and the capacity to learn about them now have access to the information they need to be equipped to make an impact on public policy. Using online tools to organize, people can more easily be involved in the policy-making process of government. The first impact has also lead to a greater amount of public engagement efforts. Government officials are pressured by more highly informed, opinionated, and potentially effective citizens to make more of an effort to address the public's concerns.
The second way the Internet impacts government is that the Internet empowers groups of people. Social media sites support networks of people; online networks are currently significantly affecting the political process. Pressures from these networks are causing an increase in politicians' efforts to appeal to the public in campaigns. The combination of face-to-face relationships and social networking is a potentially powerful force for the future of politics and e-democracy.
Internet as a campaign tool
The Internet is viewed as a platform and delivery medium for tools that help to eliminate some of the distance constraints in representative democracyRepresentative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
. Technical media for e-democracy can be expected to extend to mobile technologies, such as cellphones
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
.
Most importantly, the Internet is a many-to-many communication medium, whereas radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, which broadcast few-to-many, and telephones, which broadcast few-to-few, are not. Also, the Internet has a much greater computational capacity, allowing strong encryption and database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
management, which is important in community information access and sharing, deliberative democracy
Deliberative democracy
Deliberative democracy is a form of democracy in which public deliberation is central to legitimate lawmaking. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional democratic theory in that authentic deliberation, not mere...
and electoral fraud
Electoral fraud
Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud affect vote counts to bring about an election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates or both...
prevention. Further, people use the Internet to collaborate or meet in an asynchronous manner—that is, they do not have to be physically gathered at the same moment to get things accomplished.
Using the Internet as a political campaigning tool has become a cheaper and more convenient alternative for many politicians, in comparison to traditional door-to-door knocking or telephone campaigning. Candidates are also beginning to use social networking sites to reach younger audiences, creating potential supporters to campaigns. E-mail chains and political blogs also have had a major impact with online campaigning. Views are expressed by adding comments to political blogs or web pages. Point-and-click advertising (interactive advertising online) also has influenced traditional mail or television campaigning.
The lower cost of information exchange on the Internet, as well as the high level of reach that the content potentially has, makes the Internet an attractive medium for political information, particularly amongst social interest groups and parties with lower budgets.
For example, environmental or social issue groups may find the Internet an easier mechanism to increase awareness of their issues, as compared to traditional media outlets, such as television or newspapers, which require heavy financial investment. Due to all these factors, the Internet has the potential to take over certain traditional media of political communication, such as the telephone, the television, newspapers and the radio. The civil society
Civil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
has gradually moved into the online world.
Another example is openforum.com.au
Open Forum (Australia)
-History:The site was launched after a 2007 survey suggesting it would be an official government-run service. -History:The site was launched after a 2007 survey suggesting it would be an official government-run service. -History:The site was launched after a 2007 survey suggesting it would be an...
, an Australian non-profit eDemocracy project that invites politicians, senior public servants, academics, business people and other key stakeholders to engage in high-level policy debate.
Novel tools are being developed that are aimed at empowering bloggers, webmasters and owners of other social media, with the effect of moving from a strictly informational use of the Internet to using the Internet as a means of social organization not requiring top-down action. Action triggers, for instance, are a novel concept designed to allow webmasters to mobilize their viewers into action without the need for leadership. These tools are also utilized worldwide: for example, India is developing an effective blogosphere
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...
that allows internet users to state their thoughts and opinions.
Electronic support for local democratic groups
Citizens' associations play an important role in the democratic process, providing a place for individuals to learn about public affairs and a source of power outside that of the state, according to theorists like Alexis de TocquevilleAlexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
. Public-policy researcher Hans Klein
Hans Klein
Dipl.-Ing. Hans KleinIn German an engineer's degree is called Diplom-Ingenieur was a German World War I fighter ace credited with 22 aerial victories...
at the Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...
notes that participation in such forums has a number of barriers, such as the need to meet in one place at one time. In a study of a civic association in the northeastern United States, Klein found that electronic communications greatly enhanced the ability of the organization to fulfill its mission.
There are many forms of association in civic society. The term interest group conventionally refers to more formal organizations that either focus on particular social groups and economic sectors, such as trade unions and business and professional associations, or on more specific issues, such as abortion, gun control, or the environment. Other traditional interest groups have well-established organizational structures and formal membership rules, and their primary orientation is toward influencing government and the policy process. Transnational advocacy networks bring together loose coalitions of these organizations under common umbrella organizations that cross national borders.
The Internet may serve multiple functions for all of these organizations, including lobbying elected representatives, public officials, and policy elites; networking with related associations and organizations; mobilizing organizers, activists, and members using action alerts, newsletters, and emails; raising funds and recruiting supporters; and communicating their message to the public via the traditional news media.
In 2007 was a rumour that telephone and cable companies are going to create a two-tiered Internet. This new Internet will have a fast lane and a slow lane and companies and individuals will have to pay to use them. Large companies will have the money to pay for the fast lane, whereas others won't be able to make their voices heard via the Internet. What this means for our democracy is that low budgeted campaigns and less wealthy candidates for office won't be able to run for office as effectively as the richer ones. This will have a large affect on local democratic especially because they tend to be less funded than national democratic groups. This two-tiered Internet will silence the lower class and low middle class voices in general and make our right to freedom of speech less heard. In November 2010 a bill was passed that would ensure that "net neutrality" would be kept. This means that a two-tiered Internet isn't a possibility in the near future, but the fact that it was thought of and because of our business minded economy it's plausible that a form of the two-tiered Internet could exist later. This is a scary thought because it would make it so that only the largest and wealthiest campaigns would be run and heard of and smaller campaigns would never have a chance to even get their values out into the public.
Benefits and disadvantages
Information and communications technologies are neither democratic nor undemocratic; they are merely means to an end and not normative by their nature. They are tools that may be deployed to achieve certain goals. And these goals may even be contradictory (e.g. both coercive control and participation can be fostered by digital technology). While many celebrate the Internet as a tool for democracy, it should not be forgotten that the earlier visions of an InformatizationInformatization
Informatization or informatisation refers to the extent by which a geographical area, an economy or a society is becoming information-based, i.e., increase in size of its information labor force. Usage of the term was inspired by Marc Porat’s categories of ages of human civilization: the...
-State were rather frightening, such as the one told by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
in his Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
. While technologies can be used for the good and bad, certain institutional framework conditions may either support or hamper the use of electronic means for the benefit of democratic processes. Risks and opportunities of the digitization of democratic processes depends therefore to a large extent upon the particular institutional framework conditions of the chosen democratic model (which is mainly set out in the Constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
, including the type of the underlying social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
, specific aspects of the rule of law
Rule of law
The rule of law, sometimes called supremacy of law, is a legal maxim that says that governmental decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws with minimal discretion in their application...
, representative democracy
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
or direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
, etc.).
Benefits
Contemporary technologies, such as electronic mailing listElectronic mailing list
An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to...
s, peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
networks, collaborative software
Collaborative software
Collaborative software is computer software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve goals...
, wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s, Internet forums and blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, are clues to and early potential solutions for some aspects of e-democracy.
A number of non-governmental sites have developed cross-jurisdiction, customer-focused applications that extract information from thousands of governmental organizations into a system that brings consistency to data across many dissimilar providers. It is convenient and cost-effective for businesses, and the public benefits by getting easy access to the most current information available without having to expend tax dollars to get it. One example of this is transparent.gov.com, a free resource for citizens to quickly identify the various open government initiatives
Open Government Initiative
The Open Government Initiative is an effort by the administration of President of the United States Barack Obama to "creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government." . The directive starting this initiative was issued on January 20, 2009, Obama's first day in office.The philosophy of the...
taking place in their community or in communities across the country.
Another valuable source is USA.gov — the official site of the United States government. The website is directly linked to every federal and state agency. The information provided by the website is valuable to all citizens, and non-citizens, of the current news and regulations of the U.S. government. These are just some examples of e-government's influence in the Internet.
E-democracy leads to a more simplified process and access to government information for public-sector agencies and citizens. For example, the Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
Bureau of Motor Vehicles simplified the process of certifying driver records to be admitted in county court proceedings. Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
became the first state to allow government records to be digitally signed, legally certified and delivered electronically by using Electronic Postmark technology. In addition to its simplicity, e-democracy services can reduce costs. The Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
Department of Conservation & Natural Resources, Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
and NIC developed an online hunting and fishing license service utilizing an existing computer to automate the licensing process. More than 140,000 licenses were purchased at Wal-Mart stores during the first hunting season, and the agency estimates it will save $200,000 annually from service.
Electronic democracy can also carry the benefit of reaching out to youth as a mechanism to increase youth voter turnout in elections and raising awareness amongst youth. With the consistent decline of voter turnout
Voter turnout
Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...
, e-democracy and electronic voting mechanisms can help revert that trend. Youth, in particular, have seen a significant drop in turnout in most industrialized nations, including Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The use of electronic political participation mechanisms may appear more familiar to youth and, as a result, garner more participation by youths who would otherwise find it inconvenient to vote using the more traditional methods. Electronic democracy can help improve democratic participation, reduce civic illiteracy and voter apathy and become a useful asset for political discussion, education, debate and participation.
Disadvantages
Equally, these technologies are bellwetherBellwether
A bellwether is any entity in a given arena that serves to create or influence trends or to presage future happenings.The term is derived from the Middle English bellewether and refers to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of a castrated ram leading his flock of sheep.The movements of...
s of some of the issues associated with the territory, such as the inability to sustain new initiatives or protect against identity theft
Identity theft
Identity theft is a form of stealing another person's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name...
, information overload
Information overload
"Information overload" is a term popularized by Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book Future Shock. It refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information...
and vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
.
Some traditional objections to direct democracy are argued to apply to e-democracy, such as the potential for direct governance
Governance
Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of management or leadership processes...
to tend towards the polarization of opinions, populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
, and demagoguery. More practical objections exist, not least in terms of the digital divide
Digital divide
The Digital Divide refers to inequalities between individuals, households, business, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies and Internet connectivity and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information...
between those with access to the media of e-democracy (mobile phones and Internet connections) and those without, as well as the opportunity cost
Opportunity cost
Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the best alternative that is not chosen . It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices. The opportunity cost is also the...
of expenditure on e-democracy innovations.
Furthermore, there are still those who are skeptical to the amount of impact that they can make through online participation. Although the government projects supply information, IT illiteracy and the digital divide are grounds to discourage participation. The political advances on the Internet can potentially dishearten non-users to adapt the new technologies.
Electronic direct democracy
Electronic direct democracyDirect democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
(EDD) is the strongest form of direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
, in which people
People
People is a plurality of human beings or other beings possessing enough qualities constituting personhood. It has two usages:* as the plural of person or a group of people People is a plurality of human beings or other beings possessing enough qualities constituting personhood. It has two usages:*...
are involved in the legislative function. Many advocates think that also important to this notion are technological enhancements to the deliberative process. Electronic direct democracy is sometimes referred to by many other names, such as open source governance
Open source governance
Open-source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is...
and collaborative governance
Collaborative governance
Collaborative governance is a process and a form of governance in which participants representing different interests are collectively empowered to make a policy decision or make recommendations to a final decision-maker who will not substantially change consensus recommendations from the...
.
EDD requires electronic voting
Electronic voting
Electronic voting is a term encompassing several different types of voting, embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes....
or some way to register votes on issues electronically. As in any direct democracy, in an EDD, citizens would have the right to vote on legislation, author new legislation, and recall representatives (if any representatives are preserved).
Technology for supporting EDD has been researched and developed at the Florida Institute of Technology
Florida Institute of Technology
Florida Institute of Technology, also known as Florida Tech, is an independent private technical research university located in Melbourne, Florida, United States. Founded in 1958 as Brevard Engineering College, the institute has been known by its present name since 1966. Florida Tech's curriculum...
, where the technology is used with student organizations. Numerous other software development projects are underway, along with many supporting and related projects. Several of these projects are now collaborating on a cross-platform architecture, under the umbrella of the Metagovernment project.
EDD as a system is not fully implemented in a political government anywhere in the world, although several initiatives are currently forming. Ross Perot
Ross Perot
Henry Ross Perot is a U.S. businessman best known for running for President of the United States in 1992 and 1996. Perot founded Electronic Data Systems in 1962, sold the company to General Motors in 1984, and founded Perot Systems in 1988...
was a prominent advocate of EDD when he advocated "electronic town halls
Town meeting
A town meeting is a form of direct democratic rule, used primarily in portions of the United States since the 17th century, in which most or all the members of a community come together to legislate policy and budgets for local government....
" during his 1992 and 1996 Presidential
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
campaigns in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Switzerland
Politics of Switzerland
The politics of Switzerland take place in the framework of a multi-party federal parliamentary democratic republic, whereby the Federal Council of Switzerland is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government and the federal administration and is not concentrated in any one...
, already partially governed by direct democracy, is making progress towards such a system.
Senator On-Line
Senator On-Line
Senator Online is a registered Australian political party that contested the 2007 Federal election. In the five states the party contested, it received on average 0.06% of the vote with the greatest success in Victoria where it received 0.09% of the vote Senator Online (Internet Voting...
, an Australian political party running for the Senate in the 2007 federal elections, proposed to institute an EDD system so that Australians can decide which way the senators vote on each and every bill. A similar initiative was formed 2002 in Sweden where the party Aktivdemokrati
Aktivdemokrati
Aktiv Demokrati is a Swedish political party that wants to enable direct democracy mixed with representative democracy based on demand by each individual through safe digital solutions like the Internet, telephones or automated teller machines....
, running for the Swedish parliament
Parliament of Sweden
The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...
, offers its members the power to decide the actions of the party over all or some areas of decision, or alternatively to use a proxy with immediate recall for one or several areas.
The only mainstream direct democracy party currently registered with any country's electoral commission [checked against each country's register] is the UK's People's Administration Direct Democracy party. The People's Administration have developed and published the complete architecture for a legitimate reform to EDD [including the required Parliamentary reform process]. The People's Administration advocates using the web and telephone to enable the majority electorate to create, propose and vote upon all policy implementation. The People's Administration's blueprint has been published in various forms since 1998 and the People's Administration is currently the only direct democracy party registered in a vote-able format anywhere in the world - making transition possible through evolution via election with legitimate majority support, instead of potentially through revolution via violence.
Liquid democracy, or direct democracy with delegable proxy, would allow citizens to choose a proxy to vote on their behalf while retaining the right to cast their own vote on legislation. The voting and the appointment of proxies could be done electronically. The proxies could even form proxy chains, in which if A appoints B and B appoints C, and neither A nor B vote on a proposed bill but C does, C's vote will count for all three of them. Citizens could also rank their proxies in order of preference, so that if their first choice proxy fails to vote, their vote can be cast by their second-choice proxy.
ICTs and political participation
E-democracy has become a term that is used widely but also has widely different instantiations. We take as our definition of e-democracy, the use of ICT to support the democratic decision-making processes. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a major role in organizing and informing citizens in various forms of civic engagement. ICTs are used to enhance active participation of citizens and to support the collaboration between actors for policy-making purposes within the political processes of all stages of governance.Macintoch, Ann (2006). To support governments take advantage of the innovative e-participation pilots taking place at the national, regional and local level there is a need to know and understand more precisely what is happening elsewhere. Although some governments and research centers have already undertaken a number of surveys in this area there is no standard way to describe the approach and detail the outcomes.Overall, there are many things that come into factor when dealing with ICTs and e=participation.Civic engagement of youth through the Internet
There has been much speculation about the Internet’s potential to facilitate the engagement of younger citizens in politics. This group of young people, under the age of 35, frequently labelled Generations X and Y, have been noted for their lack of political interest and activity for the last two decades. The younger generation is less likely to have established long-standing habits of media use, and is willing to experiment with new technologies and formats. Young adults view the benefits of new technologies as a means of gaining advantage in education, employment, and in the political realm. Younger people have ease with Internet technology and are more likely than older citizens to use web-based platforms to research and access political information. However, there is no clear consensus about the capacity of new media, including the Internet and social networking websites, to engage young people in the democratic process.Digital & Media Democracy
In the era of globalizationGlobalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
democracy has changed drastically because of the use of technology. Political pluralism and dialogue, are new meanings of democracy which have been forged by the emergence of new public decision-making policies in the internet. The evolution of modern technology has changed classic understandings such as political dialogue and political accountability. Americans are drastically moving to their mobile devices for updates on the news. A survey that was released with this years report finds that nearly half of all Americans (47%) now get some form of local news on a mobile device or cell phone. Americans are now turning to mobile devices mostly to access news that serves immediate needs such as weather, movie times, information on local businesses and traffic in their area. Today the web news is beginning to increase. Cable news and news platforms are starting to shrink and decline. More people are saying that they get their news from the web than newspapers. The internet now follows only television among American adults as a destinations for news. Local mobile ad revenue is growing fast, stations in 2009 made 29 million from mobile devices. “I expect that figure to skyrocket into the billions within two years as the transition from desktops and laptops to hand-held devices takes off,” said Gordon Borrell
Diffusion of E-Democracy
The strict censorship of the nation would reflect e-democracy and it would not be able to be utilized to its full extent.Similarly, in Austria, they have the components of an advanced internet system unlike China, but they do not have the political and social norms calling for citizen’s opinions to be heard. In a study conducted that interviewed elected officials in Austria’s parliament opinions were widely and strongly against e-democracy. They believed that the citizens were “uninformed” and their way of expressing their opinions should only be to vote; sharing opinions and ideas was only the job of the elected. Their officials have a contrasting idea of their roles than those in the US, here the citizens opinion is respected and called for, and their power is up to the citizens, our opinions do not take away from their influence. In Austria, on the other hand the elected officials have no tolerance for their powers to be diminished in the slightest, including by allowing citizens to openly express ideas and opinions about politics because it makes the people in power vulnerable to the citizens. Austria’s blatant negative opinion on e-democracy shows that it is necessary for a nation to have openness in political thought from citizens for e-democracy to thrive.
See also
- AktivdemokratiAktivdemokratiAktiv Demokrati is a Swedish political party that wants to enable direct democracy mixed with representative democracy based on demand by each individual through safe digital solutions like the Internet, telephones or automated teller machines....
- Collaborative governanceCollaborative governanceCollaborative governance is a process and a form of governance in which participants representing different interests are collectively empowered to make a policy decision or make recommendations to a final decision-maker who will not substantially change consensus recommendations from the...
- Collaborative e-democracyCollaborative e-democracyCollaborative e-democracy is a democratic conception which combines key features of direct democracy, representative democracy, and e-democracy...
- DemoexDemoexDemoex, an appellation short for democracy experiment, is a local Swedish political party and an experiment with direct democracy in Vallentuna, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. It uses the Internet to make it possible for any member to participate in the local government...
- Democracy Experiment - Direct democracyDirect democracyDirect democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
- E-Government
- E-participationE-participatione-participation is the generally accepted term referring to "ICT-supported participation in processes involved in government and governance". Processes may concern administration, service delivery, decision making and policy making...
- Electronic civil disobedienceElectronic civil disobedienceElectronic civil disobedience, also known as ECD or cyber civil disobedience, can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobedience often involves the computers and/or the Internet and may also be...
- Emergent democracyEmergent democracyEmergent democracy refers to the rise of political structures and behaviors without central planning and by the action of many individual participants, especially when mediated by the Internet...
- eRulemakingERulemakingElectronic rulemaking is the use of digital technologies by government agencies in the rulemaking and decision making processes. An interdisciplinary electronic rulemaking research community has formed as a result of funding under the auspices of the...
- HacktivismHacktivismHacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...
- Internet activismInternet activismInternet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as e-mail, the World Wide Web, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience...
- Media democracyMedia democracyMedia democracy is a set of ideas advocating reforming the mass media, strengthening public service broadcasting, and developing and participating in alternative media and citizen journalism. The stated purpose for doing so is to create a mass media system that informs and empowers all members of...
- Online consultationOnline consultationOnline consultations or e-consultations refer to an exchange between government and citizens using the Internet. They are one form of online deliberation. Further, online consultation consists in using the Internet to ask a group of people their opinion on one or more specific topics, allowing for...
- Online deliberationOnline deliberationOnline deliberation is a term associated with an emerging body of practice, research, and software dedicated to fostering serious, purposive discussion over the Internet...
- Open access poll
- Open politics
- Open source governanceOpen source governanceOpen-source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is...
- ParoleWatchParoleWatchParoleWatch was a website that provided public access to data on convicted felons in New York State who were coming up for parole review. The project's aim was to let citizens "communicate their views on would-be parolees to the New York State Parole Board."...
- ParticipationParticipation (decision making)Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions - and ideally exert influence - regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including...
- Participatory democracyParticipatory democracyParticipatory Democracy, also known as Deliberative Democracy, Direct Democracy and Real Democracy , is a process where political decisions are made directly by regular people...
- Parliamentary informaticsParliamentary informaticsParliamentary informatics is the application of information technology to the documentation of legislative activity. The principal areas of concern are the provision, in a form conveniently readable to humans or machines, of information and statistics about:...
- Party of Internet DEmocracyParty of Internet DemocracyThe party of Internet DEmocracy （Hungarian: Internetes DEmokrácia pártja. Abbreviated IDE） was a Hungarian political party, which was established at 23 July 2004 in Gyöngyös.- Aims of IDE :...
, a political partyPolitical partyA political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
in HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The... - Public WhipPublic WhipThe Public Whip is a parliamentary informatics project that analyses and publishes the voting history of MPs in the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
- Radical transparencyRadical transparencyRadical transparency is a management approach in which all decision making is carried out publicly. The term was used by Daniel Goleman in his book...
- Second SuperpowerSecond Superpower"Second Superpower" is a term used to conceptualize a global civil society as a world force comparable to or counterbalancing the United States...
- Smart mobSmart mobA smart mob is a group that, contrary to the usual connotations of a mob, behaves intelligently or efficiently because of its exponentially increasing network links. This network enables people to connect to information and others, allowing a form of social coordination. Parallels are made to,...
- TheyWorkForYouTheyWorkForYouTheyWorkForYou is a website run by mySociety, a project of registered charity UK Citizens Online Democracy, and is a tool for political campaigners and those interested in the Parliamentary activities of UK MPs, Lords, and Northern Ireland MLAs....
- Varieties of democracy
- Voting Advice ApplicationVoting Advice ApplicationA voting advice application or voting aid application is an Internet application that helps voters find a party that stands closest to their preferences. VAAs are a new phenomenon in modern election campaigning....
External links
- Access2democracy.org, NGO - E-democracy: from theory to practice.
- Council of Europe's work on e-Democracy - Including the work of the Ad Hoc Committee on e-Democracy IWG established in 2006
- Edc.unigue.ch - 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.
- Experientia.com - Professional blog gathers information on creative ways to increase citizen participation in the websites of public authorities and local governments.
- E-Democracy.org
- E2D Electronic Direct Democracy organisations
- ICELE - International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy, a UK driven international project exploring tools, products, research and learning for local e-democracy.
- Institute for Politics Democracy and the Internet
- Interactive Democracy - Notes on how technology can improve democracy.
- Esri.salford.ac.uk, IPOL - A portal on Internet and politics — Website including primary and secondary research resources related to online participation, e-democracy and the use of the Internet by parliaments and assemblies; edited by Stephen Ward, Wainer LusoliWainer LusoliWainer Lusoli is an Italian academic, trained as a political scientist and quantitative policy analyst. He has worked on issues concerning political participation, electronic democracy, digital identity, social computing and cloud computing....
and Rachel Gibson. - Transparent-Gov.com
- World E-democracy-Forum.com
- ICEGOV - International Conference on Electronic Governance
- Democracies Online Exchange - Large global discussion group on e-democracy
- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/opinion/03wed1.html