E Ekklesia The Challenge of Direct Democracy and the Ancient Athenian Model (original) (raw)
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Ε-Ekklesia: The challenge of direct democracy and the Ancient Athenian model
In the present thesis we will examine the new possibilities that internet use can offer to democracy to become more direct and give citizens the opportunity for full participation in policy making. We will discuss the possibility of the creation of an e-ekklesia, on the model of ancient Athens, where every citizen will be able to expose his views and suggestions. We will also note the meaning and importance of the responsibility of citizens in a democracy and will see whether the average citizen feels responsible for the current political situation and what this means for the present democracy.
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Recently the impressive growth of the Web, and the Internet in general, has been considered as a promise that may both challenge and boost our representation of democratic institutions. It is well known that modern democracies are based on the possibility to control and even replace who rules by the force of the best arguments. More generally, the control of the government, and the effectiveness of democracy, is possible, if the citizens can access information. Hence, the promise of the Internet mainly relies on the fact that people may more freely access information, because it seems it cannot be controlled or manipulated by the political power.
Electronic democracy: a Concept under Construction
Representative democracy remains essentially a representative government that was created precisely to avoid all the citizens to participate directly in political decision-making. Implementation of direct participation’s instruments in the form of e-democracy creates a conflict within this government, a conflict that can be solved only by a renewal of representative democracy concept, even its substitution by another idea committed to reconciling representation and participation. This paper aims a reflection on a legal concept of government capable of integrating e-democracy. Such integration highlights the interdependent character of the link between democracy and human rights that are exposed to very new threats in the digital era. The possibility to introduce e-democracy is conditional upon the reinforced protection of such digital rights and freedoms as well as recognition of new rights based on personal self-determination.
E-Participation as a Possible Upgrading of Representative Democracy
After less than 120 years of fully fledged rep-resentative democracy, and with the crisis and possibly even the dead end of the existing way of production, questioning the future of democracy is back again. It is claimed that direct democracy may be the next step of the development of the political system. The present arti-cle considers a less ambitious project, presenting a possi-ble upgrading of representative democracy in Slovenia, a country with a short history of functioning represent-ative democracy and with the experience of an experi-ment in direct democracy, which collapsed together with the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. The article presents a model that should enable the widening of democratic participation in decision making, and discusses the pos-sible engagement of increasingly educated civil society in political deliberation, making use of the internet and new media. The proposed Slovenian model of junctures of democracy emerged after intensive and prolonged discus...
SOCIAL MEDIA ROLE IN CREATING DIRECT E-DEMOCRACY
European Diplomatic Academy Journal, 2023
The article is dedicated to the use of social media as a tool in promoting and achieving direct democracy or at least the betterment of the democratic systems by highlights how social media facilitates individuals’ political expression as a base for a direct democracy construction. The main theme of the study is concentrated around the idea of strengthening of direct democracy and rebirth in XXI century of a new Athenian agora and democracy, of a new Callisthenes experiment emphatically called “Democracy Web 2.0” and social media perspectives in promoting an ever increased involvement and role of citizenry in policymaking and democratic action and in a great variety of new forms.
The Promise of E–Democracy and the Internet: Myths about Digital Agoras?
2015
The advance of digital technology in the field of politics in the last 20 years has raised expectations about enhancing the potential of the long dominant model of representative democracy. The need to reinvigorate the overall political process has been talked about since the first signs of a decline in civic engagement in the second half of the twentieth century. In the meantime, technological gadgets, and, especially the great versatility of Internet applicability have indeed contributed to better communication between political elites and their people and for sharing information on an unprecedented scale. Yet, the key challenge still seems barely to be touched upon: how to provide the meaningful participation of politically awakened individuals in decision‐making processes within states. In this chapter we offer a brief survey of the European and United States achievements in the field of e‐voting and Internet‐voting in order to show how political, technical and security concerns...
e-Democracy: Rethinking Democracy Under ICT’s Light
XXIII World Congress of Philosophy, 2013
This paper is an effort to remark the importance of re-conceptualize what is democracy considering the importance that the new technologies, especially concerning to the information and communication. It is important to redefine the model of political action according to the technological advance of our era, and for that is necessary a discussion in which the philosophical aspect get in touch with technology to re-dimension the scope of democracy nowadays. To prepare the field for this new concept of e-Democrcy, first of all I present the case of an earlier attempt to revitalize democracy with new technologies, it is the case of cable TV, and after that I show the reason for its fail. After the exposition of the cable TV case, I show some of the conditions that are necessary to make the transition from analog democracy to digital democracy or e-Democracy.
Drawing on critical considerations of the so called "electronic democracy", the paper empirically explores to what extent the internet tools provided by the local governance institutions in the course of electronic democracy are enabling the expression of the "voices of citizens" as well as participation in decision making. Content analysis of questions and answers stemming from the official webpage of one Lithuanian municipality has been conducted; altogether, the sample entails 310 questions or suggestions of citizens and answers from the municipality. The results show that participation of citizens via internet-based voice opportunities represents a trivialization of participation issues by mainly constructing the citizens as complain-holders about everyday issues. Participation by influencing political decisions could not be obtained.
Adoption, E-Participation, and Legal Frameworks, 2012
In the 21 st century, the ability of citizens to participate in online democracy is a key issue for governments in the developing nations because of its attendant benefits. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) facilities support the establishment of electronic interaction between citizens and the various organs of government. Towards this, a variety of efforts have been made, and many systems have been developed, but few attempts have been made to combine more than one mode of access for e-Democracy system. It is difficult for people with visual impairment to be involved in issues of governance and communicate with government representatives such as public office holders. For these people, having access to an electronic means of communicating with these representatives is necessary as a way of enhancing participatory democracy among the citizens. In this chapter, the authors propose an access method for e-Democracy system using Multimodal SMS, Voice and Web (Multi-SVW) system. The system was implemented using VoiceXML and PHP for the user interfaces and MySQL as the database. The system was evaluated using cognitive walkthrough strategy. The results of the usability evaluation suggest that the prototype Multi-SVW application presented in this chapter has "good usability" based on the total mean rating. The system provides accessibility options to citizens who are able-bodied and citizens who are blind or vision impaired as a way of promoting digital citizenship.