The internet might no longer be seen as the saviour of business, but it is increasingly seen as the saviour of democracy - as glimpsed in January 2002, when leader of the UK House of Commons Robin Cook suggested we should have online voting in the next general election (1). But can information technology (IT) invigorate political participation?
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There are obvious advantages to extending people's interactions with the government on to the internet. Paying taxes online? Great. Having the option of emailing your MP? Why not? But why are mundane practical issues like how we vote given such prominence? What about a bit more attention on what people vote for?
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The UK government's interest in online voting has risen since the disastrously low turnout in the June 2001 election. In the months running up to the election, political commentary focused more on the electoral process than on any clash of political ideas. The 'voter apathy' problem became the big issue, as if it was the electorate's moral duty to vote to keep politics healthy, rather than the job of politicians to give us some healthy politics in the first place (2).
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At a time when the public is estranged from political institutions, and when big political ideas are notable by their absence, technical processes can seem like progressive political forces. So the recent Hansard Society briefing None of the Above: Non-voters and the 2001 Election concluded that 'non-voters are not less interested in politics - just less well-informed and less connected to the established political process' (3).
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This statement says much about how politics is perceived today, assuming that if the public were better informed and more 'connected' to political processes, it would be more engaged with politics. But the question remains unanswered: 'connected' to what? What is the actual substance of the political process, beyond its infrastructure and traditions?
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None of the Above suggests a number of technical remedies to counter low voter turnout, such as 'the provision of better information', 'citizenship education', and 'a space for "none of the above" on the ballot paper' (4). This last recommendation captures how the underlying problem is being evaded - with an attempt simply to shift the problem of political disengagement from the non-voter's own mind to a new space for non-voters on the voting ballot.
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As a result of the desperate preoccupation with technical process over political substance, many believe electronic communication to be synonymous with political engagement.
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So according to UK prime minister Tony Blair, 'the information revolution can revitalise our democracy' (5) - while former adviser to Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, claims that 'the internet offers a potential for direct democracy so profound that it may well transform not only our system of politics but our very form of government' (6).
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When the old-fashioned vote no longer lends legitimacy to governments, grand political claims are made for communications technology. It is far easier to solicit an email containing feedback than it is to earn a vote, which suggests real support.
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Proponents of e-democracy are not without their critics - but discussion of the issue tends to be of a technical nature. So most of the criticism levelled at Robin Cook's suggestions for online voting focused on technical obstacles. Ken Ritchie, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, raised 'legitimate questions about the security of internet voting and about access to the technology' (7). BBC News Online's technology correspondent Mark Ward pointed out that 'voting via the web has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, largely because a referendum or election using electronic voting has gone horribly wrong' (8).
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These comments miss the point - that IT is being used by politicians as a distraction from the emptiness of contemporary politics, and that politics is being redefined as a set of technical transactions. So the UK government's office of the e-envoy boasts that the citizens' portal UKonline 'receives over one million hits per week and has over 33,000 registered users (as of 1 November 2001)' (9). Can such technical statistics really tell us anything about the health of our democracy?
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The 'CitizenSpace' section of the UKonline website encourages people to 'get more involved in the democratic process', by commenting on government consultation documents and by joining forums where you can exchange views with other citizens (10). But members of the public have always been free to pass judgement on policy, give feedback to MPs, and talk to one another about politics, without having a playground supervisor to help them. By devoting so many resources to hosting discussion forums, instead of giving the public something to discuss, our political leaders are effectively abdicating their leadership responsibilities.
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E-democracy is not what it claims to be. In many ways, it is actually anti-democratic - demanding less of government in the way of public accountability than traditional democracy does, because public input into e-democracy is not necessarily of any consequence.
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This is acknowledged by Dr Stephen Coleman and Dr John Gøtze in Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation, where they describe a 'worst-case scenario for online engagement': 'where politicians and bureaucrats tokenistically adopt all kinds of e-initiatives, such as online consultations and discussion fora, but retain existing structures of policy formation, so that the public's input is "worked around" by powerfully entrenched institutions.' (11)
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But Coleman and Gøtze nevertheless favour online public engagement as a progressive step for democracy. Addressing the conundrum 'If significant numbers of citizens do not even vote, what evidence is there that they want to enter into policy debate?' (12), their solution is to dignify existing everyday conversation as though it were policy debate: 'The cultural informality and personal invisibility of online discursive space offers a possibility of allowing the conversational whispers of conventionally private conversation to enter the public debate' (13).
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Coleman and Gøtze then go on to dignify silence as though it were speech: 'In online discussion listening (and lurking) can be just as important a function as speaking (message posting)' (14). This blurring of boundaries between formal political procedures and informal babble sacrifices the institutions of democracy on an altar of 'openness', 'listening' and 'accountability'.
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The inevitable end result is communication for its own sake, with zero political content. So the Hansard Society's Strategic Guide for Online MPs flags up 'the possibility of engaging constituents who may not be primarily interested in politics....Humour, commentary, even local sporting news, are all likely to bring visitors to a site, and so to bring constituents and MPs together.' (15)
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The champions of e-democracy redefine routine activities as though they are democracy in action. These e-vangelists seize upon IT, not for its genuine technological potential, but in an opportunistic way, to dress up banality in the clothes of the new. Unless they are challenged, they can only further degrade political debate.
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Sandy Starr has consulted and written on internet regulation for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and for the European Commission research project RightsWatch. He is a contributor to Spreading the Word on the Internet: Sixteen Answers to Four Questions, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2003 (download this book (.pdf 576 KB)); From Quill to Cursor: Freedom of the Media in the Digital Era, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2003 (download this book (.pdf 399 KB)); and The Internet: Brave New World?, Hodder Murray, 2002 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).
Read on:
No votes for e-democracy, by Mark Birbeck
Was it the UK's first internet election? by Sandy Starr
Where communication is king by Tiffany Jenkins
(1) 'Intent on change, Radical Robin returns to the fray', Guardian, 7 January 2002
(2) See The apathy debate
(3) None of the Above: Non-voters and the 2001 election (.pdf 163 KB), p11
(4) None of the Above: Non-voters and the 2001 election (.pdf 163 KB), pp9-10
(5) Click 2001: Cyber Space Odyssey: The Internet in the UK Election (.pdf 368 KB), p4
(6) Cited in Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation (.pdf 2.54 MB), Stephen Coleman and John Gøtze, p8
(7) Reformers sceptical of online voting, Guardian Unlimited, 7 January 2002
(8) E-voting: a load of old ballots?, BBC News Online, 7 January 2002
(9) UK online annual report 2001,p53
(10) See the CitizenSpace section of the UKonline website
(11) Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation (.pdf 2.54 MB), Stephen Coleman and John Gøtze, p13
(12) Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation (.pdf 2.54 MB), Stephen Coleman and John Gøtze, p15
(13) Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation (.pdf 2.54 MB), Stephen Coleman and John Gøtze, p16
(14) Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation (.pdf 2.54 MB), Stephen Coleman and John Gøtze, p17
(15) A Strategic Guide for Online MPs (.pdf 136 KB), Tom Steinberg, p3
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