Bowling Together
Online Public Engagement
in Policy Deliberation
> About the report
Introduction
> Representation, Engagement and Democracy
> Two-Way Governance
> Connected Citizenship
> Appropriate Technologies For Online Engagement
> Global Case Studies
> References
> PDF (2.5MB!)
Introduction
Two convergent developments are likely to have a profound effect upon the future shape of democracy.
Firstly, there is a growing recognition on the part of many within the developed democracies that new relationships between citizens and institutions of governance must emerge if a crisis of democratic legitimacy and accountability is to be averted. As citizens have become less deferential and dependent, and more consumerist and volatile, old styles of representation have come under pressure to change. There is a pervasive contemporary estrangement between representatives and those they represent, manifested in almost every western country by falling voter turnout; lower levels of public participation in civic life; public cynicism towards political institutions and parties; and a collapse in once-strong political loyalties and attachments.
The US political scientist, Robert Putnam, in his famous book, Bowling Alone (from which this report derives its more positive title), argues that a decline in membership of civic networks has resulted in a precipitous drop in political engagement. People become engaged in civic and wider political affairs when they have acquired habits of communal connection - as these habits fade, political engagement atrophies. Whether or not one subscribes entirely to Putnam's theory of social capital, it is undoubtedly the case that most developed democracies are experiencing a collapse of confidence in traditional models of democratic governance. While there is no discernible popular disaffection from the idea of democracy, traditional structures and cultures of policy formation and decision-making are perceived as being remote from ordinary citizens.
A recent OECD report entitled Citizens as Partners, concludes that:
... democratic governments are under pressure to adopt a new approach to policy-making ... one which places greater emphasis on citizen involvement both upstream and downstream to decision-making. It requires governments to provide ample opportunity for information, consultation and participation by citizens in developing policy options prior to decision-making and to give reasons for their policy choices once a decision has been taken.
A Dutch report, from the ICT and Government Committee, asserts that:
Government in the Netherlands will face an insidious crisis if it does not quickly take measures to support new democratic processes. Failure to take such action will result in loss of legitimacy.
The Swedish Government's Democracy Commission reports that:
Our results show that several public fora for political discourse must be opened. In pace with globalisation, the tendency to prepare policy through negotiation, for example, results in inadequate opportunities for citizens to obtain access to information and demand accountability. It is necessary to allow more citizen groups - rather than particularly resourceful lobbyists - to participate in the design of the system of rules on an increasing number of levels. In this respect, IT can create opportunities both for receiving important information and for participating in discussions. IT can also improve contact at other political levels between citizens and decision-makers. We consider that it is important, for example, to look for methods for using IT in order to publicise views presented by consultative parties and increase the opportunities for citizens to have insight in and opportunities to influence bases for decisions, for example in conjunction with environmental impacts analyses.
The UK's Minister for e-commerce, Douglas Alexander MP, observed in a recent speech that:
The 2001 UK general election gave us the lowest turnout since universal suffrage - only 59% of the electorate were sufficiently engaged in the democratic process to take a stake in choosing their government. However, delve below these headline figures and the warning is even more stark. The detail of the demographics reveals that in the 18-25 age group over 60% did not vote. This group represents the democrats of the future and, if unaddressed, this level of disengagement would pose a threat to the long-term health of our democratic institutions.
and went on to declare that:
... it is now time to set all this activity into a clear policy framework and put e-democracy on the information age agenda. Government should set out what it means by e-democracy and how it intends to use the power of technology to strengthen democracy.
The second reshaper of democracy has been the rise of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs.) These offer a possibility of a new environment for public communication which is interactive, relatively cheap to enter, unconstrained by time or distance, and inclusive. Just as ICTs have had profound effects upon ways that people work, shop, bank, find news and communicate with friends and families, so they will establish new channels to connect citizens to hitherto remote institutions of governance.
Most developed democracies have established e-government agendas, which are mainly concerned to deliver government services online. E-government policies hold out the prospect of greater cost efficiencies as well as broader public convenience, but there is no intrinsic link between successful e-government and strengthened democracy. Some of the world leaders in e-government service delivery are far from being democracies. The challenge is to create a link between e-government and e-democracy - to transcend the one-way model of service delivery and exploit for democratic purposes the feedback paths that are inherent to digital media. So, instead of citizens simply being able to pay their taxes online (hardly a joy for most people), they would be able to enter into a public debate about how their taxes are spent.
There are at least four models of how e-democracy might work and it is as well if we identify these at the outset and explain which model we are concerned to explore in this report.
Firstly, there is the notion of direct or plebiscitary democracy. We entirely reject this as an alternative model of governance, for reasons outlined in the next chapter of this report. Evidence suggests that support for direct democracy is positively correlated with dissatisfaction with institutions of representative democracy. (Dalton et al) Indeed, one of the reasons for promoting e-democracy is to strengthen representative structures so that the allure of 'technopopulism' remains resistable.
Secondly, there are online communities. There are far more of these in existence than most people realise, constituting an autonomous civic network that can only be healthy for democracy. (Communities Online) We are interested in exploring how governments can connect with such online communities, but the main emphasis of this report is to examine whether and how governments themselves can initiate and sustain e-democracy exercises aimed at involving the public in the policy-making process.
Thirdly, governments are increasingly using online techniques as a means of gauging public opinion. These range from online surveys and polls to local referendums and citizen-initiated petitions. Most e-democracy experiments conducted by governments to date have been of this sort. Such exercises have their place in good governance, but fail to test the capacity of the internet to facilitate a broader and deeper approach to the process of public opinion formation.
Our main concern in this report is with a fourth model of e-democracy which is undoubtedly the most difficult to generate and sustain: online public engagement in policy deliberation. The emphasis here is upon the deliberative element within democracy. This has little to do with technological innovation and much to do with new thinking about how to enrich the democratic process. (See Bohman, Dryzek, Fishkin, Yankelovich)
Methods of public engagement can be described as deliberative when they encourage citizens to scrutinise, discuss and weigh up competing values and policy options. Such methods encourage preference formation rather than simple preference assertion. Public deliberation at its best is characterised by:
- access to balanced information - Polls, referenda and even government consultations do not require respondents to have access to any information before they state an opinion. Deliberative exercises are primarily concerned to discover what citizens think about issues once they have become reasonably informed about them. The provision of information to deliberating citizens needs to be comprehensive, balanced and accessible. It need not be the case that all participating citizens read or study information provided to the same extent, but efforts should be made to provide for all a basis for acting as informed deliberators.
- an open agenda - The questions asked of the public in non-deliberative policy exercises are simple and non-negotiable. For example, citizens may be asked whether an airport should be sited here or there; whether local taxes should be raised, lowered or kept the same. In deliberative exercises, whilst governmental and other promoters are likely to set out the broad parameters of the anticipated discussion, the agenda must be open to revision or expansion by the deliberating citizens. So, in the debate about the siting of a new airport, a deliberative agenda could move on to a discussion of the benefits of air travel as opposed to alternative methods, or a broader debate about the usual criteria for planning decisions.
- time to consider issues expansively - In most attempts to consult with the public, time is of the essence. Short, sharp results are sought via polls, referenda etc. Deliberative exercises must be temporally expansive, allowing citizens adequate time to think through an issue and then work out where they stand on it. The UK Parliament's online consultations tend to last for one month, allowing participants enough time to break in gently, contribute more than once and arrive at an evolved point of view.
- freedom from manipulation or coercion - All political exercises are at risk from manipulation, whether in subtle terms of rigging the questions asked or crude terms of pressurising participants to arrive at certain conclusions. Deliberative exercises must involve a high degree of protection of the independence and free thought of participating citizens. The analogy is with juries in courts of law, where the freedom of jurors from any influence but that of the factual evidence is paramount.
- a rule-based framework for discussion - Democratic deliberation is not to be confused with an anarchic free-for-all. People feel safer and discuss more freely when they are aware of the transparent rules of the debate. For example, there is no sense in rebuking an online discussion participant for submitting excessively lengthy messages several times a day; it makes more sense to declare at the outset a postings-per-day rule and a maximum message-length rule.
- participation by an inclusive sample of citizens - High-quality deliberation can be highly exclusive, but not if it purports to be democratic. Efforts must be made to recruit participants who are representative of those affected by or concerned about the issue being considered. In an online environment, this will inevitably involve confronting the digital divide and providing meaningful opportunities for those who would not usually participate in an online event. But the digital divide is not the only inequality: it also means creating opportunities for citizens who feel unconfident, less literate, politically alienated or socially marginalised.
- scope for free interaction between participants - Traditional consultation methods are based upon one-way flows: governments or other agencies ask the questions and citizens give their opinions. Deliberative exercises require two extra directional flows: citizens to government (so that participating citizens can in turn ask questions of those asking them to deliberate) and citizen to citizen (so that participants can exchange views with one another).
- recognition of differences between participants, but rejection of status-based prejudice - Some models of 'deliberative democracy' focus upon the elimination of differences between deliberating citizens, so that issues of class, gender or ethnicity are not allowed to distort the validity of participants' contributions. We would argue that differences between participants are more often likely to enhance the process of deliberation and allow richer experiential input. But effort must be made to ensure that prejudices based upon status do not diminish the value of any contributions.
The challenge for e-democracy is to create imaginative new ways of enabling the public to deliberate about policy issues. A number of recent reports have explored such a possibility, including Realising Democracy Online by Blumler and Coleman; Impact of the Emerging Information Society on the Policy Development Process and Democratic Quality by Gualtieri; E-Democracy in Practice by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities; ICTs and the Future of Democracy by Snellen; Open Channels: Developing Public Dialogue in Science and Technology by Kass; Consulting and Engaging Canadians: Guidelines for Online Consultation and Engagement by the Canadian Privy Council Office; and Electronic Civic Consultations: A Guide to the Use of the Internet in Interactive Policy-Making by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior.
All of the literature cited above contributes formidably to the debate about the future of citizen-government relations in the information age. We do not propose to re-invent the wheel here and cover the ground of these reports, although we shall certainly wish to draw upon them for evidence.
The purpose of this study is to examine some of the issues that have been neglected so far in the debate about e-democracy. We would identify four areas where new thinking is needed:
Firstly, there is a need to think through the democratic rationale for online public engagement in policy deliberation. There are a number of concerns about the cognitive capacity of the public to comprehend the policy process and contribute usefully to it; these should neither be uncritically accepted nor lightly dismissed. These concerns call for an evaluation of the role of the public within a democracy. Should the role of democratic citizens stop at voting or stretch to deliberating? Will a deliberating citizenry, which is connected to the policy process, undermine representation and lead to direct democracy? Or will it strengthen the democratic process and help restore public confidence in the traditional methods of democratic governance? How can public opinion become informed and informing? These are not totally new questions, although the potential of a more connected democracy has pushed them to the fore. This study attempts to link the rationale for online public engagement to wider democratic theory.
Secondly, it is vital that institutions of governance, including both elected politicians and policy-forming bureaucrats, consider carefully the impact of online public engagement upon their own practices. And it is equally important for them to work out how they can adapt their practices to a more engaged and connected political environment. This study outlines the kinds of changes that are required.
Thirdly, there are implications in all of this for the nature of citizenship. The skills and strategies required by citizens with access to new channels of participation in policy-making are bound to become more sophisticated than those required in the more limited world of 'analogue politics.' This study explores these new skills and strategies and reports some new evidence from UK and Danish polls of internet users on their expectations for e-democracy.
Fourthly, although it is taken as read throughout this study that technology is a potential tool of democracy, rather than the sci-fi designer of a new political world, there is a real danger of the discussion of technology being neglected in the debate about e-democracy. Technology is never neutral in any process, least of all the democratic process, and so it is important to think about desired ends in terms of appropriate technologies for their achievement. This study seeks to analyse the existing ICTs and offer some recommendations about best use.
Finally, so as to root this study in the real world, rather than a speculative universe of futuristic schemes for the democratic use of ICTs, we have included brief accounts of some recent international attempts to engage the public online in a deliberative fashion. These are not presented as examples of best (or worst) practice, but in order to show that some (although very few) initiatives are taking place and that these are still experimental, learning experiences rather than evolved models.
Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation by Stephen Coleman & John Gøtze
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