PEP-NET Online Discourse www.internet-discourse.eu
Forum: Evolution and Dangers

Owen Ambur, Daniel Heery, B. Hohberg, Dan Jellinek (^Main forum, Reaching all parts of society), X Larsson (^^Main forum Informed participation through eLearning?), Eric Legale, Maren Lübcke, Csaba Madarász (also * European Sphere sub-forum and wiki), Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, Konstantinos Parisopoulos (** Technical sub-forum and wiki, ^^Main forum Informed participation through eLearning?), Pedro Prieto-Martin, Simon Smith (* European Sphere sub-forum and wiki), Francesco Vignali, Richard Warren (** Technical sub-forum and wiki), Irina Zálišová (also * European Sphere sub-forum and wiki)

This sub-forum was set up to discuss the following questions:
•    How and in which ways can eParticipation contribute beneficially to changing the nature, processes and structures of politics and policy engagement?  For example, including many more individuals and interests (quantitatively, qualitatively and geographically); eliminating, by-passing or enhancing the role of elected or non-elected representatives; changing the relative power and roles of institutions and/or creating new institutions, etc.
•    How can eParticipation initiatives mitigate or avoid the dangers of unaccountability, street politics, mob-rule, take-over by the digital elite or narrow interests, trivialisation, short-termism, too much focus on single issues and too little policy balancing, apathy, lack of trust, etc.?

1.  Rationale
There are considerable hopes and fears about how the Internet may be changing politics, and many of these concern eParticipation. For some, eParticipation is fundamentally a democratising movement. A move possible due to the expansion of direct horizontal (citizen-to-citizen) and vertical (citizen-to-representative) communication. For others, disintermediation threatens the foundations of representative democracy and/or undermines the preconditions for reasonable deliberation. Others dispute the extent of the changes, suggesting that, while anyone can have their say online, the structure of the Web and the actions of powerful intermediaries still have a determining influence on who gets heard (Hindman 2009).

In the face of generally decreasing levels of democratic participation in Europe, much hope is being pinned on eParticipation to assist in reigniting public interest in, and access to, debates, elections and referenda though eVoting, ePetitions and eConsultation. The aim is, amongst others, to actively construct consensus on individual policy issues between a range of actors and interests organised in various types of policy networks. The risk of creating a 'bargaining democracy' revolving round elite representation, narrow interest focus, short-termism, single issues or trivialisation is nevertheless high. A form of participation which in turn may nurture an intensive, but not very extensive or inclusive form of participative policy-making, apathy and a lack of trust in the decision making process.


2.  Analysis
The following analysis is the outcome of an online discussion on http://www.internet-discurse.eu. The discussion took place 3-13 March 2009, with 90 registered users. The discussion was jointly organised by PEP-NET and the European eParticipation Study. The analysis address a number of issues including: who are the main stakeholders and why is the issue important to each, which technologies are and could be used, why and with what impact, who the intended beneficiaries and what the benefits are, what are the wider societal impacts, etc.

Beneficiaries and stakeholders
Who are the beneficiaries and stakeholders and how do they interact? Two broadly defined groups or beneficiaries, or stakeholders, can be defined. One is ‘civil society’ in its broadest sense, including citizens, businesses, stakeholder communities, non-profit and non-governmental organizations (NGO) etc. The other is ‘public sector organizations’ including, public administrations at all level (i.e. local, regional, national, pan-European), elected officials and politicians to mention a few (Meyerhoff Nielsen).

In terms of interaction one important aspect of the changing nature of politics and institutions is the question of the public sector "monopolising" and steering eParticipation in directions they themselves prefer. Can and does eParticipation challenge the public sector’s, at times, "monopolistic" hold on public debate? Is there a danger that the public sector through its sheer size, extent of their resources and power uses eParticipation (consultations, petitions and the like) as a mere "rubber stamp" for decisions already made without any real consultation? In some cases the answer is unfortunately yes. This steering and monopolization may be done by limiting access to information, making information difficult to understand, the process difficult to understand etc. (Prieto-Martin and Meyerhoff Nielsen). Some experts therefore argue that there is a real need to balance or break the virtual "monopoly of participation" that public authorities have had during all the 20th century. Not by removing the power and legitimacy of representative institutions, but by allowing (e)Participation (official and/or autonomous) to influence public discourse and decision making (Prieto-Martin). eParticipation, it is argued, is essentially a form of public “check and balance”. If the public is ignored two possible outcomes may be expected. One is will lead to popular demand for transparent and participative representation, while the other will lead to growing apathy. Evidence of both situations is found in the generally falling levels of voter turnout in Europe. Especially at local level evidence of increasing transparency and participative representation is emerging. That said, the national and EU level is harder to influence, but these are also the levels where more transparency and active engagement by citizens may be most needed.  Increasing the understanding and awareness of political processes and decision making in the general public will help balance powerful lobbies and interests operating in an environment often beyond public scrutiny (Prieto-Martin and Meyerhoff Nielsen).

One of the key arguments favouring eParticipation is the potential inclusion of marginalized and disadvantaged communities. But how may the dominance of single issues be avoided, and how can groups less prone to participation be encouraged to partake? Who should be encouraged to participate? The ‘usual suspects’, interest organisations and NGO's representing ‘sofa voters’ and marginalised groups and communities? How are those least likely to participate in public discourse and least likely to have the digital skills and competences to use the ICT enabled channels reached? (Meyerhoff Nielsen)

A mix of informal and autonomous eParticipation systems could encourage focus of political decision-makers and leadership on the need for increased and more representative popular participation. That said, any participation initiatives, electronically enabled or not, must be representative and pluralist by nature – and more importantly be able to prove this. Transparency and neutrality is therefore essential if the outcome of a given consultation or petition is to be seen as legitimate (Prieto-Martin and Meyerhoff Nielsen).

It may always be a minority which is the most avid participants but this does not mean that more participation should be discouraged. Key is a transparent, neutral, constructive manner of public debate and consultation, thus claiming legitimacy and ideally achieving efficient and effective public policies and outcomes. In this regard a "critical mass" of interests and opinions will lead to increased legitimacy of any consultation and should therefore be strived for. A critical mass of participation will also create a “free market" of (e)Participation initiatives, with the unrepresentative ones disappearing due to shear lack of use (Prieto-Martin).

So how can stakeholder participation be encouraged? One suggestion is the creation of participative networks for instance between municipalities. Another suggestion is through contextualization and the use of local issues to attract citizen and interest group participation. Both suggestions could be facilitated through the creation of online solutions for municipalities to use and focus, at least initially, on debates related to citizen’s everyday life (Vignali).

If municipalities, for instance, are to lead by example it is important to create a set of flexible tools and ensure that the use, purpose, objective and target groups are properly defined and identified. The idea has partly been tested in Denmark.  More specifically, DanmarksDebatten (sometimes know as Rostra) was developed and implemented by the National IT and Telecom Agency in 2003. DanmarksDebatten was subsequently made available to all municipalities with various degree of take-up. Some municipalities still prefer more traditional channels for local infrastructure hearings and consultations. Today DenmarksDebaten is integrated on the national citizens portal Borger.dk (http://e-demokrati.borger.dk/borger/index.html) (Meyerhoff Nielsen).  Spain has seen several initiatives of regional networks and municipalities sharing (e)Participation systems, including Consensus (started in 2001), officially used by 73 municipalities in Catalonia (http://www.consensus.cat/), the Participa en Andalucía (http://www.participaenandalucia.net/) used by a network of 84 municipalities in Andalusia and Ciudadanos 2010 (http://www.ciudadanos2010.net/) now used in several Spanish regions. Like in Denmark the Spanish initiatives have been less successfully in their top-down approach to eParticipation. Some experts argue that the user-interface, focus, methodological, institutional and technical solutions are not “attractive” enough to the stakeholders involved including politicians, municipal administration, citizens and interest groups (Prieto-Martin).

Key to user and stakeholder take-up of eParticipation is usefulness. Unfortunately many systems’ functionalities and communication style reflect the needs of the public authorities to keep control of the information published and direction of the resulting debate rather than aiming for qualitative outcomes of public participation. In this regard the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya has proposed a number of design fundamentals which need to be considered when designing (e)Participation systems (http://www.ckyosei.org/docs/e_Participa.VirtualEnvironmentsForCitizenParticipation.pdf) (Prieto-Martin).

In addition to the objectives, functionalities and design fundamentals the balance of on- and off-line activities needs to be got right to reach as wide and different an audience as possible. Getting the balance right should enable online participants to benefit from easier access to more and better information and enabling them to constructively contribute to debates more easily. On the other hand, offline events tend to attract the usual suspects who are confident at speaking at public meetings etc. (Heery). This mixed approach has been used with various degrees of success. One example is the Australia 2020 consultation with its mix of on- and offline citizens meetings, focus groups, online activities and functionalities. The designated website (http://www.australia2020.gov.au), although searchable and with some interesting functionalities mainly provide information on the initiative, its progress and outcomes (i.e. eInformation) (see also http://pep-net.eu/wordpress/?p=79) (Meyerhoff Nielsen).

Technologies
The use of technology for electronically enabled participation come into play in a number of ways, including:
•    Hardware and software choices related to the eParticipation platform
•    Open source or propriety solutions
•    Degree of customization
•    Mix of electronic and traditional channels
•    Etc.

In this regard the issue of anonymity and the anonymous contributions is of importance. The 2007 French General elections disappointed a large proportion of politicians. The reason was the harshness of the online debate and the posting of anonymous, at times insulting comments by political opponents on blogs and fora. This discredited debates and to some extent also the benefit of electronic channels of communication between citizens and candidates (Legale). This trend is not unique to the 2007 French elections. In a Danish context, bluntness and unnecessary "finger pointing", even racist and discriminatory comments, are finding their way into main stream media and debate (Meyerhoff Nielsen).

This raises two interesting questions:
•    Would compulsory identification be an answer? Or would it constrain public debate and discourage public participation?
•    Would eID and eIDM be as much of a solution to the issue you raise as it is a potential enabler of eVoting and eDemocracy?

One argument is that a culture of anonymity on the internet can have consequences for the quality of the content that is shared over the web. This is one reason why more and more social networking sites are encouraging their members to be open about their identity (Legale).

Another solution would be to make identification through eIDs and eIDM compulsory. That said, debates and those participating in them should not, and must not, be discouraged in European style democracies. Nor should participants be afraid of challenging the majority held opinion or playing "devil’s advocate". On the other hand overt "political correctness" is another extreme which should be avoided (Meyerhoff Nielsen) and it may be argued that the harshness of debate is not merely a question of a given contribution being match to a specific individual or organization,  but to responsibility and mature behavior (Prieto-Martin).

Responsibility, it is argued, comes when people are mature enough to accept and promote a consensus or compromise achieved through public debate. eParticipation solutions should therefore strive for stability and longevity so a sense of community ownership is created. In addition, the reputation of the eParticipation system, and not least the participants, should be directly linked to contributions made – whether anonymous or not. Constructive and qualitative input should be rewarded and obstructive behavior should be discouraged. Lastly, anonymous aliases and avatars are not necessarily associated with obstructive behaviour as seen in the 2007 French elections: people can make constructive suggestions and air valid opinions even when anonymous. Furthermore, anonymity may in fact promote the inclusion of minority and/or less popular opinion, which in turn strengthens civil society and public debate – especially in emerging democracies and totalitarian societies (Prieto-Martin, Zalisova and Meyerhoff Nielsen).

Rather than jumping directly into the transformation of citizen participation into the establishment of policies that have the force of law, the initial focus could be the missions, goals, and objectives that are appropriate for non-profit and public service organizations. A way to start is by simply documenting the missions, goals, and objectives of those organizations in a readily sharable format like the emerging Strategy Markup Language (StratML) (see also http://
Benefits, impacts and measurement
In discussing the benefits of eParticipation a number of questions were raised, including:
•    What are the potential benefits of technology enabled participation and who are the beneficiaries?
•    Under what conditions can eParticipation lead to a win-win situation in which both citizens and public sector organisations benefit? Can the benefits be measured?
•    What are the societal impacts of technology when it enables participation, and how are they felt by citizens, public sector organisation and, naturally, democracy?

Benefits to civil society (or citizens in particular) are commonly agreed to include improved access and ability to contribute to a public discourse with an opinion, argument, analysis or mesh of data and information (Meyerhoff Nielsen). Another benefits is  new, more interactive and less formal forms of eParticipation (e.g. blogs, social networks, virtual games, blogs etc.) which enable people to deliberate, discuss, form and express opinion as well as knowledge in their own suitable ways (Larsson^^, Parisopoulos^^).

For public sector organizations and elected officials the benefits include an ability to consult civil society – in particular citizens, business and other stakeholder – on issues ranging from local planning and budgetary issues to national elections and referenda. In theory eParticipation therefore leads to both richer public debate and better decision making by politicians and public administration (Meyerhoff Nielsen).

For both civil society and public sector organisations the general benefits of eParticipation tools include the potential to: Enhance deliberation, public debate and decision making; Enrich democracy though debate; Increase transparency and trust in public sector and political decision making through inclusion and accessibility to information and the decision-makers themselves (Parisopoulos**, Meyerhoff Nielsen).

Societal impacts
In relation to societal impacts the question begs whether eParticipation in itself contains and/or facilitates democratic attributes such as trust, openness, transparency and accountability? Or whether the key characteristic of eParticipation, as a concept and facilitator of public discourse, is its “neutrality” vis-à-vis the political system? (Zálišová)

Discussions on societal impact of eParticipation often revolve around two main models. The ‘optimistic’ model related to ICT views participation as an enabler of wider more inclusive engagement of civil society. The ‘pessimistic’ model in turn highlights the risk of destabilization of traditional decision making and legislative processes as a result of unstable and unpredictable public opinion feeding into the process by eParticipation (Madarász).

Related to the latter some are supportive of eParticipation, but to avoid destabilization they do not support a change in the current system of representative democracy. Others argue that eParticipation will result in change and will bring with it an element of ‘chaos’ into the existing political structures. Chaos does in the context of eParticipation not refer to J. Biggs sense of chaos in the esthetics of nature and art, nor does it refer to I. Prigogine’s un-balanced thermodynamics of chaos.. What is meant is that eParticipation will bring a sense of unpredictability to current socio-political structures as physical and geographical location becomes secondary and the fluidity of opinion, choice and position within civil society increase. The result may be a European style of democracy going beyond M. Vodrazka’s concept of a ‘chaocracy’ (M.Vodrazka, Chaokracie, Prague, 1997) (Zálišová).

eParticipation as a concept may nevertheless be used in a host of different political systems. In a non-democratic context for instance, the mix of on- and offline modes of participation may result in sophisticated mechanisms ensuring 99.99% levels of participation in local, regional and national elections as seen in former Eastern European Communist Regimes. This may be meant to look bottom-up and popular despite being a mere rubber-stamping exercises (Zálišová). In this regard an important societal factor is the prevailing political culture. A fact pointed out by the Council of Europe's recommendations on eDemocracy (P60) when stating that "the introduction of e-democracy has to take into account political characteristics and culture, and can be undertaken in order to emphasise a specific type of democracy or specifically defined democratic values." It is therefore important to take into account the impact of eParticipation on privacy, anonymity or appropriate communication styles – and more importantly recognize that these differ from place to place and community to community (Smith*, Meyerhoff Nielsen).

The social impact of eParticipation, thus differ depending on the local context and how civil society and the individual citizen take advantage of technology enabled participation (Smith*, Meyerhoff Nielsen). The approach taken (top-down or otherwise)does not therefore matter so much. Contextualisation and commitment should be emphasized in order to change the prevailing political culture and to encourage increased participation. A high level of commitment is arguably more relevant in the context of the ‘new’ democracies of Central and Eastern Europe where citizenship rights and skills are less entrenched and used (Madarász*, Smith*). Government and public administration interaction with citizens and stakeholders must therefore balance the legitimate need to understand and control participation (as a policy input) with the need to nurture experimental forms of participation requiring a supportive but hands-off approach by public sector organizations and politicians (Prieto-Martin*, Smith*).

The need to contextualize public debate makes it difficult to separate digital inclusion – and indirectly digital literacy as an enabler – and eParticipation in a democracy. Digital inclusion is therefore vital for a flourishing online democracy in which all partake. ICT enabled participation and democracy will otherwise never achieve the same level of serious consideration as street level petitions or other traditional modes of engagement. Digital inclusion therefore constitutes the first step in eParticipation during which outreach work to all parts of civil society and the promotion of digital literacy are essential components (Jellinik^, Meyerhoff Nielsen).

In a democratic context it is therefore essential to link eParticipation to e.g.:
•    The presence of freedom of choice, even of choice “not to (e)Participate”
•    A degree of political and community commitment
•    The overall level of maturity of civil society, which is hard to evaluate, but not impossible
•    The core content of the eParticipation process,  its aims and objectives
•    Advanced ICT, with unique personal eID and authentication, but enabled also to protect personal data from the abuse of authority in those cases when it´s necessary and required by citizens (Zálišová, Meyerhoff Nielsen)
•    The local context (Zálišová, Madarász, Smith)
•    Digital inclusion and skills (Jellinek, Meyerhoff Nielsen)

Measurement
The societal impact of eParticipation and the benefits to civil society and public sector organizations are difficult to assess. Often the real impact and benefits are found on the periphery. Still, this does not suggest that clear objectives, target groups or envisaged outcomes should not be integral to eParticipation initiatives (Madarász). Nor does it mean that the impact and benefits necessarily happen spontaneously. In fact, eParticipation requires certain resources and levels of commitment. A thorough process evaluation and impact assessment therefore ought to be intrinsic to good practice government-initiated eParticipation, just as it should form a component part of all public engagement strategies (Smith*).  So while the “…actual cost-benefit analyses of participation are, as far as we have been able to discern, virtually non-existent” (Involve 2005: 61*), the benefits are potentially underestimated, as they are too intangible, too long-term, and too affected by confounding variables to be captured by standard project evaluation methods. The evaluation of user experience (i.e. the intrinsic benefits) nevertheless tends to be better than the evaluation of real influence on policy (i.e. the instrumental benefits). This is partly due to multiple causation and the incremental nature of most policy-making and service-planning (Smith*, Meyerhoff Nielsen).

Still impact and benefit measurement related to eParticipation remains difficult (as pointed out above). It has been argued that too little attention is paid to current ICT tools, such as email, online information, online discussion forums, webcasts, podcasts, chat rooms, wikis, blogs, polls and voting, petitions, etc. This lack of attention negatively affect the potential benefit of ICT on citizen and stakeholder participation in the democratic process (Konstantinos**). A lack of attention which results in many eParticipation initiatives failing to attract widespread interest amongst citizens or politicians; while others are unrepresentative; lead to poor information or poor quality of debate; are monopolised by a few vocal contributors; or face security and trust issues. eParticipation initiatives thus risk non-delivery of the benefits they set out to achieve. More seriously increasingly innovative technology use may reinforce inequalities and the digital divide by privileged segments of society who are already politically active, resource rich, articulate and ICT literate (Parisopoulos**, Meyerhoff Nielsen).


3.  Recommendations
Recommendations following the above analysis are:
•    Advocate the dangers of "not doing (e)Participation”, or “not doing it properly”, rather than the continued focus on the dangers of (e)Participation itself. If public authorities do not do it right, somebody else will do, and the authorities will have less input and influence on public debate and ultimately have less control (Prieto-Martin).
•    Functionalities and communication style should reflect ease of use and qualitative outcomes of public participation and be included in the fundamental design of the eParticipation system (Prieto-Martin).
•    Start by documenting the missions, goals, and objectives of those organizations in a readily sharable format like the emerging Strategy Markup Language (StratML) (Ambur) and allow users to mesh available information and data from different sources thereby enriching the debate (Meyerhoff Nielsen).
•    A balance of on- and off-line activities must be struck to reach as wide and different an audience as possible (Heery).
•    eParticipation must in a democratic context be linked to (Jellinik, Madarász, Meyerhoff Nielsen, Smith, Zálišová, Council of Europe):
o    The presence of freedom of choices, even of choice “not to (e)Participate”
o    A degree of political and community commitment
o    The overall level of maturity of civil society, which is hard to evaluate, but not impossible
o    The core content of the eParticipation process,  its aims and objectives
o    Advanced ICT, with unique personal eID and authentication, but enabled also to protect personal data from the abuse of authority in those cases, when it´s necessary and required by citizens
o    The local context and committement
o    Digital inclusion and skills
•    Having clear objectives, target groups or envisaged outcomes should be integral to eParticipation initiatives (Madarász) as should cost-benefit analyses (Smith**, Involve**)
•    Pay more attention to the potential of current ICT tools, such as email, online information, online discussion forums, webcasts, podcasts, chat rooms, wikis, blogs, polls and voting, petitions, etc. Lack of attention negatively affects the potential benefits of ICT on citizen and stakeholder participation in the democratic process (Konstantinos**)