e-Participation
in local government‘ (ippr, 2002), the ippr uses the term ‘e-Participation’
to cover the use of information and
communication technology (ICT) by those outside the conventional apparatus
of government. Other terms are no doubt being brainstormed into existence in
think tanks and policy units around the globe.
The very words themselves have vastly different
readings and, as the ippr paper puts it, are ‘often used by different people at
different times to refer to a wide variety of different types of activity’
(ibid. p 12).
This core confusion should not be allowed to
disguise the change that has happened to date. Whatever one’s preferred
nomenclature, and whatever one’s political or technological position, it is
undeniable that technology – principally involving personal computers and the
Internet – has already altered the way that business operates and it is
starting to generate significant shifts in the personal lives of individuals,
especially in the developed western world.
Transforming social behaviour
On a typical Friday night in Cambridge, UK, many
young people will go out to meet friends. A year ago they would agree in
advance where to meet, and when. Now such planning is redundant – each will go
out separately and, on finding a good place for the evening, will call or text
(SMS) the rest of the group, who will then flock there.
This sort of change in social behaviour is of more
than academic interest – it is seriously challenging those who run pubs and
bars to find new attractors as they can no longer rely on people arriving and
just hanging around because they are meeting friends.
If technology is affecting these areas of life, why
should politics be exempt? It seems obvious that the process of government, the
institutions of the state and the limits of political activity will be affected
by the Internet and all that it brings with it. The questions then are, first,
how? And second, in what ways can this process be guided or driven to ensure
that the result is better government?
e-Democracy or e-Tatorship?
The
temptation is to bring an ideological commitment to a debate on e-Democracy,
and to ask such general abstract questions as will never conceivably find an
answer.
The assumption, for example, that e-Government and
e-Democracy are in some way coextensive is one that should be rejected. There
is no limitation on the use of computers and the Internet to mature
democracies, and no reason to assume that the technology is inherently
democratic; e-Dictatorship, e-State socialism and even e-Theocracy are all
perfectly imaginable.
A well-run dictatorship (perhaps we should call it
an e-tatorship) that makes optimal use of new technology may well do better in
meeting the material and cultural needs of its subjects than a necessarily
imperfect democracy, where personal liberty and effective administration often
conflict.
By contrast, a democratic state that simply applies
the disciplines of business use of information technology to the operation of
government may well find itself sacrificing individual privacy in the interests
of better administration, betraying its core principles for cost savings and ‘joined-up
government’ and damaging the very democratic values it is supposed to uphold.
Indeed there is, within the mature democracies, a
general belief that the Internet is primarily a tool with which to revitalise
their political system. As voter turnout falls, engagement with consultation
exercises declines and interest in democratic institutions diminishes, the view
is that sprinkling a little online fairy dust and launching numerous ‘e-Democracy’
initiatives will solve the problem.
The Internet: bad for democracy?
This may not be the case. The Internet may well
turn out to be bad for democracy in many ways.
Even if e-voting can be made secure, it encourages
those who want some form of direct democracy and prefer polls to elections.
Will representatives become delegates?
Online communities, divorced from any shared
neighbourhood ties, are far less stable and far more homogeneous than the
groups that democratic institutions were created to deal with. Can those
institutions survive?
Online consultation on policies or pending
legislation is presented as encouraging participation and active citizenship,
but it is just as easy to create the pretence of participation and change
nothing, or offer engagement but find no real interest. Can a democracy survive
if nobody is willing to work for it?
As campaigning moves online, the costs to all
candidates and groups will rise, and the early benefits will be lost as parties
and single-issue groups turn the Web into another medium for political
advertising, where only the loudest voices are heard. Is it good for democracy
to make getting elected even costlier?
These are just some of the problems that arise when
the Internet is used for politics. Are they sufficient to make us think again
about moves to e-democracy, or is there still enough to be gained to make it
worth the risk?
The implications are not just limited to the level
of state or national politics, or the process of electing a parliament or
senate. When we discuss politics for a networked planet then local initiatives
matter just as much as the governance of global institutions, and campaigning
organisations are as affected as political parties.
When considering the value – or dangers – of
e-Politics, many factors are significant: local civic networks; the changes in
our models of community and engagement, which online activity can bring; and
the use of the Internet to facilitate solutions to political problems that lie
beyond the nation state.
The ‘e’ is irrelevant
Finally, there is also a need to look at how the
network itself is governed, at the ways we democratise the ‘e’ rather than
making democracy electronic.
The breadth of this agenda is intimidating because
it can seem too large for any useful analysis to be performed. So it is worth
emphasising the core principle of all these discussions and projects: that,
in the end, the ‘e’ is irrelevant.
Our concern with
technology should be transitional, as we move from an essentially pre-computing
age of politics into a new political era, where technology supports political
systems but is effectively invisible. After all, good e-government is, or
should be, indistinguishable from good government, whatever the system or
ideology. Figuring out how we can reach that goal is the real purpose of our
debate.
