The concept of e-democracy dates from the early days of Internet. To my understanding, it embraces everything that connects political processes and the web. Back in the 90s high promises were linked to the web and its implications for democracy and participation. One early example is the Electronic Town Hall, but nowadays e-democracy stands for many approaches such as e-activism, e-politics, e-participation or latest government2.0.
While the early beginnings were optimistic, they had often not fulfilled promises. Such is the example of new venues to engage digital citizens to participate directly through e-voting. Another example was e-government, which encompasses different layers such as networking government institutions, and makes or offers more direct services to citizens. On the contrary, civil society such as NGOs or social movements embrace the potential of web for their activism earlier, quicker and deeper. Already back in 1999, the Seattle protests were effectively organized over the web.
There are many reasons why especially governments respond slowly to the potentials of the web, and why civil society uses the web strategically. But both sides have not really used the potential of the web to enhance participation. From my point of view two difficulties arise: (1) Government institutions and most NGOs are not yet willing to open themselves for an authentic two-way conversation. (2) Information is still in many cases not transparent and citizens are not being offered to participate.
Developments during the last year show some interesting new approaches to enhance participation. Tara Hunt calls it feedback2.0 (listen and learn) in her interesting government2.0 presentation. She says in her presentation:
“We need to change the way we approach service, viewing the public not as a recipient, but as more of a partner.”
One great example of enhancing more participation in political processes has been realized in Kenya. Mzalendo is a website, ” which is a volunteer run project whose mission is to keep an eye on the Kenyan Parliament.” One of the initiator is Ory Okolloh, who has been interviewed by BBC. The website offers valuable information on decision making processes in the Kenyan parliament and opens new ways of participation for active citizens. I have not yet discovered such a promising “watchdog” website in Europe, meaning how Germany lags behind.
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Well Christian, I ‘ll have to talk to Tara Hunt because we’re precisely editing a web app call Feedback2.0, and it is really intented to set up a direct dialogue between an organization and a community.
Of course we’re looking to e-democracy as a very good use case for our product…
I’ll let you know of our progress in that direction.
While I agree with your view on the yet-to-be-used potential of using the web for the democratic process, I think it is necessary to differentiate between enhancing two-way communication and the creation of a new relationship between politicians / administration and the public on one side, and the use of the web for electoral processes and online decision making. The web can undoubtedly improve communication and thus improve political participation, but in my opinion, when it comes to e-voting, you have to keep in mind also the risks of fraud or technical failure. I think that the new potential of the web lets us forget about new risks that come with it sometimes. I am the last person that wouldn’t embrace the opportunities the web offers – I just like to point out that its not all better just because its online.
On the topic of the “watchdog”-website you mentioned: Check out http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de, a project that started in Hamburg in 2004, monitoring the politicians in the city’s parliament, creating a platform for direct communication with every member of it and publicising what every individual member of parliament voted for in the ballots.
Interestingly, in combination with a new electoral law that was agreed upon by public referendum a year later, and that gave the voter the option of voting for certain local candidates instead of voting for a party and its programme, this website actually made a difference, as candidates and members of parliament were under a whole new pressure and their individual standpoint suddenly was tracable back to them.
Even though decided by referendum, the new electoral law was abolished shortly after by decision of the ruling party in Hamburg. The initiative “Mehr Demokratie” (More Democracy)is currently working on a new referendum that will make referendums legally binding in future.
Yes you are right: E-democracy has up to now failed to keep its promises. However, there are a lot of encouraging examples in Europe and especially in Britain and Germany. Look e.g. at the database http://www.e-participation.net, a joint project of politik-digital.de and the British Council. In Germany numerous moderated online dialogues have taken place which connected citizens and governments and managed to achieve concrete results. Some of these have meanwhile be realised or implemented. Forerunners are the cities of Hamburg and Berlin. See also the e-participation blog http://www.demos-monitor.de
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