E-DEMOCRACY

E-democracy is a combination of the words electronic and democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, incorporates 21st-century information and communications technology to promote democracy. It is a form of government in which all citizens are presumed to be eligible to participate equally in the proposal, development, and creation of laws. E-democracy encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination of  expanding democracy.

Types of E-democracy

·        Representative democracy

The radical shift from representative government to internet-mediated direct democracy is not likely. However, a "hybrid model" that uses the internet to allow for greater government transparency and community participation in decision-making is on the horizon. Committee selection, local town and city decisions, and otherwise people-centric decisions would be more easily facilitated. The principles of democracy are not changing so much as the tools used to uphold them. E-democracy would not be a means to implement direct democracy, but rather a tool to enable more participatory democracy as it exists now.

·        Electronic direct democracy

Proponents of E-democracy sometimes envision a transition from a representative democracy to a direct democracy carried out through technological means, and see this transition as an end goal of e-democracy. In an Electronic Direct Democracy (EDD) (also known as open source governance or collaborative governance), the people are directly involved in the legislative function by electronic means. Citizens electronically vote on legislation, author new legislation, and recall representatives (if any representatives are preserved).

·        Liquid democracy

Liquid democracy or direct democracy with delegable proxy would allow citizens to choose a proxy to vote on their behalf while retaining the right to cast their own vote on legislation. The voting and the appointment of proxies could be done electronically. Taking this further, the proxies could form proxy chain, in which if A appoints B and B appoints C, and neither A nor B vote on a proposed bill but C does, C's vote will count for all three of them. Citizens could also rank their proxies in order of preference, so that if their first choice proxy fails to vote, their vote can be cast by their second-choice proxy.

·        Wiki democracy

One proposed form of e-democracy is "wiki democracy", with a government legislature whose codex of laws was an editable wiki, like Wikipedia. J Manuel Feliz-Teixeira believes we have the resources to implement wiki democracy today. He envisions a wiki-system in which there would be three wings of legislative, executive and judiciary roles for which every citizen could have a voice with free access to the wiki and a personal ID to continuously reform policies until the last day of December (when all votes would be counted). Advantages to wiki democracy include a no-cost system with the removal of elections, no need for parliament or representatives because citizens directly represent themselves, and ease of access to voice one's opinion. However, there are obstacles, uncertainties and disagreements. First, the digital divide and low quality of education can be deterrents to achieve the full potential of a wiki democracy. Similarly, there is a diffusion of innovation in response to new technologies in which some people readily adopt novel ways and others at the opposite end of the spectrum reject them or are slow to adapt. It is also uncertain how secure this type of democracy would be because we would have to trust that the system administrator would have a high level of integrity to protect the votes saved to the public domain. Lastly, Peter Levine agrees that wiki democracy would increase discussion on political and moral issues, but he disagrees with Feliz-Teixeira who argues that wiki democracy would remove the need for representatives and formal governmental structures.

BY  FUMBUKA  SEIF  S

42554  BAPRM   III