Digital democracy: threat or an opportunity?

FOR: Digital disruption has breathed new life into democracy

Dig­i­tal dis­rup­tion may have sub­vert­ed democ­ra­cy in some respects, but in oth­ers it has revi­talised it. With­in gov­ern­ment, dig­i­tal tools are being used to engage cit­i­zens and improve ser­vice deliv­ery. The Lon­don Data­s­tore, a pub­licly acces­si­ble repos­i­to­ry of datasets cov­er­ing every­thing from health to trans­port and the local econ­o­my, is an exam­ple of trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment under­pinned by dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy.

Else­where, elect­ed offi­cials are engag­ing cit­i­zens direct­ly in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process. “Madrid and Barcelona have used online plat­forms to facil­i­tate par­tic­i­pa­to­ry deci­sion-mak­ing on a num­ber of issues, includ­ing the city bud­get,” says Pao­lo Ger­bau­do, senior lec­tur­er in dig­i­tal cul­ture and soci­ety at King’s Col­lege Lon­don. In France, the Par­lement et Citoyens ini­tia­tive lets cit­i­zens offer input on live leg­is­la­tion.

This is part of what Dr Ger­bau­do calls a “dig­i­tal democ­ra­cy trend” that has also led to the “devel­op­ment of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry plat­forms adopt­ed by a num­ber of dig­i­tal par­ties, such as the Pirate Par­ties in north­ern Europe, the Five Star Move­ment in Italy and Podemos in Spain, which have devel­oped inter­nal deci­sion-mak­ing sys­tems so their mem­bers can make pro­pos­als and vote on var­i­ous issues”.

Giving the disenfranchised a voice and a way to get involved

Those par­ties, which began as insur­gents, have each made sig­nif­i­cant progress at the bal­lot box and more main­stream par­ties – Dr Ger­bau­do cites Labour in the UK, the Span­ish Social­ist Work­ers’ Par­ty and the Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Ger­many – have start­ed aping their meth­ods.

“Until only 20 years ago, there was no way to par­tic­i­pate in pol­i­tics with­out join­ing a polit­i­cal par­ty or organ­ised inter­est group, attend­ing meet­ings and knock­ing on doors,” says Pro­fes­sor Helen Mar­getts, direc­tor of the Oxford Inter­net Insti­tute. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, and in par­tic­u­lar the advent of social media, has changed that. As well as the direct involve­ment in deci­sion-mak­ing, social media pro­vides a new chan­nel through which to par­tic­i­pate in democ­ra­cy.

That par­tic­i­pa­tion has been derid­ed as “click­tivism” but, accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Mar­getts: “Tiny acts can and do scale up to large-scale mobil­i­sa­tions and cam­paigns for pol­i­cy change that have brought major shocks and sur­pris­es to polit­i­cal regimes all over the world.” She cites “the so-called ‘Twit­ter rev­o­lu­tion’ of Tunisia or ‘Face­book rev­o­lu­tion’ in Egypt in 2011, or the largest demon­stra­tion in Roman­ian his­to­ry in the autumn of 2017, which appears to have been co-ordi­nat­ed via the mes­sag­ing app Slack”.

It is a bit­ter irony that the virtue of these plat­forms for the Arab Spring’s rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies – the fact they are rel­a­tive­ly unre­strict­ed are­nas for free expres­sion – is the vice for those rail­ing against the free-roam­ing bots and trolls which prej­u­dice elec­tions. This con­tra­dic­tion is per­haps typ­i­cal of democ­ra­cy in the social media age, char­ac­terised by Pro­fes­sor Mar­getts as “a democ­ra­cy built on workarounds and fix­es, a messy solu­tion for a dis­or­gan­ised, chaot­ic pol­i­tics”.

AGAINST: Digital transformation threatens the very system of democracy

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has whis­tled through every aspect of our lives, from social inter­ac­tions to cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na and indus­tri­al strat­e­gy. Only in pol­i­tics, though, might the her­ald­ed rev­o­lu­tion be lit­er­al rather than metaphor­i­cal: com­pa­nies might fear the man with a sharp pitch deck; gov­ern­ments fear the man with a sharp pitch­fork.

Over the last decade, dig­i­tal dis­rup­tion has height­ened that anx­i­ety, putting pres­sure on incum­bent gov­ern­ments and reshap­ing democ­ra­cy in fun­da­men­tal, some­times detri­men­tal, ways.

The most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment in that decade has been “the rise of social net­works, and the way in which they have cre­at­ed a new space of polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion and opin­ion-for­ma­tion”, says Dr Ger­bau­do. “Social media has pro­duced a cri­sis of author­i­ty which engulfs jour­nal­ism, acad­e­mia and pol­i­tics, where many peo­ple do not trust any­more the infor­ma­tion they are pro­vid­ed.”

Rather than cre­at­ing a hor­i­zon­tal forum for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, as many antic­i­pat­ed, social media has in fact ampli­fied cer­tain voic­es – “hyper­lead­ers”, as Dr Ger­bau­do calls them – “who act as a key point of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for the dif­fuse net­worked crowd”. Unchecked, these hyper­lead­ers can mutate into author­i­tar­i­ans, he says.

Leaving the digital door open for malign actors

Much has been writ­ten about the role of social media plat­forms in host­ing or dis­sem­i­nat­ing “fake news”, and there is no doubt that a “post-truth” media land­scape is also a threat to democ­ra­cy. “Greater access to infor­ma­tion has not been accom­pa­nied by a dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy allow­ing peo­ple to dis­cern true from false infor­ma­tion,” says Dr Ger­bau­do.

A fur­ther threat to pub­lic bod­ies is that, because of the pace of dig­i­tal change, they are out­flanked by nim­bler and less account­able pri­vate actors. “Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion today requires risk; for every suc­cess there were a thou­sand fail­ures, at least. Gov­ern­ment does not work like that,” says Yasar Jar­rar, vice chair of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Future of Gov­ern­ment at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. Unable to fail and bur­dened by bureau­cra­cy, gov­ern­ments may ulti­mate­ly be ren­dered redun­dant.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has also cre­at­ed vast spaces over which gov­ern­ment has lit­tle or no remit, which throws into ques­tion the rela­tion­ship between cit­i­zens and state. “Who looks after our kids online? If gov­ern­ments will not do that, then our rela­tion­ship with them – the social con­tract – will change,” says Dr Jar­rar.

As well as the dis­rup­tion cre­at­ed by new modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the rapid advance of pri­vate tech com­pa­nies, democ­ra­cy faces a direct threat from malign actors. Hacked emails, bot farms and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of fake news were promi­nent in the 2016 US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Ulti­mate­ly, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion could pre­cip­i­tate the undo­ing of gov­ern­ment as we know it. Dr Far­rar con­cludes: “Gov­er­nance is key for the func­tion­ing of our soci­eties, gov­ern­ments are not.”