I’ve just been reading a couple of papers which raise some interesting questions about the cycles in which technology is socialised, and particularly how these cycles affect the prospects for eDemocracy.
The first is by Alina Ostling of the European University Institute and is entitled ‘ICT in politics: From peaks of inflated expectations to voids of disillusionment’.
It notes that against a background of a long term decline of public confidence in politics it is easy to promote eDemocracy uncritically as a solution to deeper ills. The view is nicely summed up in this quote:
“At present, the rapid flow of new digital tools is causing peaks of inflated expectations and voids of disillusionment, while the perennial problems of democracy remain unresolved.”
On the one hand technology means that “citizens are able to easily connect with politicians and each other, and obtain a large variety of information to make informed decisions about a wide range of issues”.
But this technology could simply be an “amplifier of existing political trends”.
“Historically, new technologies rather reflect the society in which they develop, than shape and determine the society.”
Coupled to this, citizens may be so disengaged from politics that no amount of eDemocracy can re-engage them.
Ostling’s conclusion is that eDemocracy is (according to Gartner’s ‘hype cycle’) somewhere between “the phase of unrealistic expectations – when there are some successful applications of a technology but even more failures – and the trough of disillusionment because they fail to meet expectations and could quickly become unfashionable”.
Meanwhile, a separate paper by Scott Wright of the University of East Anglia, ‘Politics as usual? Revolution, normalisation and a new agenda for online deliberation’ discusses similar issues.
He suggests that on the one hand “wildly speculative claims” are made for eDemocracy such as bringing about the end of representative democracy, while on the other hand “relatively small changes are marked out as being revolutionary or transformative”. The competing claims for revolution and ‘politics as normal’ set up a false dichotomy, missing the point that revolutions can be almost low key.
If we start with the expectation that the internet will lead to particular types of massive change, there are two dangers. Firstly, that anything that is happening will pail into relative insignificance and be assessed as such. Secondly, that other, potentially revolutionary change, might be occurring but is ignored, dismissed or missed completely.
We need a more nuanced understanding of what a political revolution prompted by technology might look like, noting it could occur at any level in the political system over possibly long periods of time and might not involve any significant or sudden innovation.
The outcome of this might be that technology revolutionises the practice of existing institutions and practices.
