Internet: Viagra for political engagment?

Help, it’s going down!

There is serious concern that political engagement is declining and a divide is emerging between citizens, policy and politics. Obvious symptoms are declining percentages of voters turning up for each election and the eroding membership base of political parties. Robert D. Putnam uses evidence of these trends to open his famous analysis, Bowling Alone, on the collapse of American communities and social capital.

But wait a minute! Although I am not a member of a political party or trade union, I don’t exactly feel politically disengaged. Whenever there is discussion of an extension to the airport in Antwerp near where I live, I write to the newspapers and outline why it wouldn’t be economically sound. When the Belgian minister of environment safeguards a small plot of land from becoming yet another supermarket parking lot, I write to her indicating that finally a difference between the green and social-democratic parties is showing (I even got an answer!). I give money to Greenpeace to get some serious lobbying done on the global environment, as this issue is getting more complex than I can handle as a citizen. Surely, by giving money to x and not y, I contribute to setting the political agenda!). Personally, I know two city council members, and if there is an issue on the city council agenda I have strong feelings about, I’ll make sure they know.

And I am certainly not alone in engaging in politics in these ways. Political parties and voting statistics may have been adequate vehicles and gauges for political engagement throughout most of the twentieth century, but do we really still need them now that we have better education, and a myriad of communication channels and information flows at our disposal?

To match the statistics on declining voter turnout and party membership, there are also several indicators that people engage differently. People organise their protests outside the institutional frameworks of parties, and the distance between political representatives and citizens is much smaller than it was just decades ago. We engage more in petitions and protest activities. That, and more, is all going up.

So is political engagement really going down? Maybe, but I would argue that the change is not dramatic – above all, it’s transmogrifying into new ways of political engagement. We are finding ways of contributing to democracy that match modern society; that reflect the substantial improvements in general education over the past decades; that reflect pressures from work, family and friends on our management of time; and that reflect the complexity of society and the need for professionalism in political engagement.

Phew, we have a cure

In the midst of this worry about declining political engagement and fascination with the way it’s changing, many have expressed hope and made predictions that the diffusion and use of the Internet will enrich traditional democracy by generating e-democracy.

Apart from the general improvements widespread access to the Internet may bring, such as access to information and communication opportunities, we can discern Internet applications that are specific to democracy. I tend to put them on a scale, ranging from agenda setting, to debating, to consultation and decision-making. E-voting does not feature on my list. If we were all able to vote over the Internet for the next elections, it might be of great comfort to many, but probably only provide an increase in engagement among those with severe mobility impairments. If designed properly, according to the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines, e-voting might even reach out to citizens who are visually impaired.

But a wider increase in political engagement will not come from making it easier to vote. Even having abundant information on a variety of issues will not make much of a difference. My assessment, currently, is that the ability to influence political agendas and debate will be more significant. For that to be attractive, however, we need to make two improvements to current e-democracy trends of activity.

First, the issues need to be more local. Having a national debate about bio-engineered food is fine, but it will only attract the usual participants. Localising e-democracy works. In Utrecht last year, a website was attributed for helping to shut down a soya factory that had been expanding and polluting the neighbourhood with traffic and odour for years. Locals video-interviewed citizens and political candidates on the issue just months before the elections, and put everything up on the web. The website became the basis of information for local community meetings, and even now the discussion has shifted to what to do with the buildings.

Secondly, we need to move beyond text-based interactions. Too much of what goes on online relies on good typing and especially good language skills. Those are not the most developed skills people have! I am sometimes amazed how easily my children of 6 and 9 play their roller coaster on the computer and can assess what needs to be done to manage the virtual theme park. Why don’t we engage people with local politics by building multi-player Sim-City environments where they can ‘play’ rather than chew their way through thick bundles of paper? E-democracy needs to be more fun, and less like tedious homework.

But will it help?

I have few doubts that technology offers many ways to enrich political engagement. As an active citizen, I encourage that development. But as a professional, being concerned with social quality, there is more pressure from the question of whether technology widens rather than simply enriches political participation. Do more and more different segments of the population now engage with democracy than before we had these Internet tools? Or is it just a case of the same active people doing things differently today?

That two million Dutch citizens used the website www.stemwijzer.nl in the run up to the May 2002 elections is impressive. It’s very attractive to be able to run through a series of statements, indicate whether you agree or not and receive ‘voting advice’ at the end of it. It deepens my understanding of why I feel sympathy for one party, gives me something to think about when that party has different views on specific issues (change party? update my views? just disagree?). But are these two million people now doing online what they otherwise did over a beer with their friends and by reading newspapers or watching television? How many are actively triggered by this Internet application to become participants in, rather than objects of, democracy?

In the 1970s, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson wondered where the blind person’s identity stops: at his fingers, at the handle of the white cane, or at the tip of the white cane? ‘Nonsense,’ he said. It’s all part of the same system and needs to be approached as such. The same is valid when addressing e-democracy. It’s not about the applications; it’s not about tools. It’s about the changes in the system, technology, and people – the whole lot. Consequently, it’s not technology alone that’s going to make an Internet-permeated society an e-democracy. As Bill Thompson writes in his contribution to this debate, it’s all about transforming social behaviour.