E-Democracy vs. Open Democracy

Plug-in democracy: from ideal to standard

If we take a closer look at the various e-democracy mechanisms⁵ tested in France since the early 2000s – often consultations within the framework of public works projects (roads, airports, waste management systems, etc.) – we see that not only are the three points cited above present on each occasion, but that they have given rise to a “procedurisation” of e-democracy mechanisms. The procedurisation of online democracy has translated into the sequentialisation of the activities contained within the various mechanisms (investigate, debate, deliberate). As such, each point is a stage in a linear and chronological succession. Time is devoted first to gaining information, then to discussing the issue at stake, and finally to making a decision.
Aware of the main criticisms levelled against e-democracy debate mechanisms, their designers, while sticking to their procedural approach, have consistently attempted to correct the flaws inherent in this schematisation of democracy. The initiators of such public debates, and the agencies that advise them, often call on social scientists or information and communications specialists before giving thought to the type of tool that will work within these bounds: we would add reputation-management or -rating systems used to assess the relevance of specific pieces of information and the use of wiki tools – which encourage collective authorship or annotation of documents in order to allow a consensus to emerge – as a means of constructing mechanisms such as social-networking websites to foster the aggregation of collectives allowing expert opinions to be voiced, to cite only these examples. Each stage of the procedure thereby became a “brick” of software, building on the previous one in a very linear fashion.
This way of approaching e-democracy, defined within the framework of an ordered and linear procedure, in many ways fits in with common practice in web design: in the world of content-management systems (CMS), a website is a collection of bricks (modules, plug-ins, add-ons, etc.), each developed independently and intended to offer specific functionalities. One module is designed to allow collaborative authorship, a second is used for ratings, while a third provides the link with social-networking content-sharing websites.
The creators of these websites generally use CMSs that are available free of charge on the internet (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.), which each come with their own “bank” of additional modules. The use of these CMSs, which are often open-source and free, not only allows users to make a huge saving on software development – a claim trumpeted by the very designers of these CMSs – but also to benefit from the debugging work done by other users of the same CMSs (who often happen to be web designers) and the huge amount of work going into developing new modules offering functionalities that were not initially available, or to make the software interoperable with social-networking or content-sharing websites (YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
The search for the Holy Grail – the term “killer application” would actually be more appropriate in the world of the internet – would in that respect entail the development of a standard system allowing a linear and standardised organisation of public debate consistent with the ideal of democracy, perceived as a clearly defined procedure. The difficulty – and numerous researchers concur on this point – is that this system has not achieved a critical mass ensuring its relevance and guaranteeing its representative nature. It must be acknowledged that this occasionally forces the designers of these websites to hire teams of contributors to a debate on these public debate websites, thereby making a mockery of public participation.

It must be understood that one can go further than simply looking at democracy – or e-democracy in this case – from a procedural perspective. Our decision to do so stems from clearly defined philosophical and political options. Our aim is not to take part as such in the debate between proceduralists and substantialists, but rather to observe practices that inform democracy, not as a procedure or a value, but rather as an investigation into itself, an experimentation – a way of looking at things that is in our view consistent with current trends in e-democracy in the United States, since the arrival of Barack Obama and his team in the White House. It is no doubt this alternative to proceduralist democracy covering the field of pragmatic American philosophy – one that is rarely understood in France – that contains the reasons some people have such difficulty comprehending the innovations represented by the migration from the notion of e-government to that of government 2.0 – and why others have trouble using these innovations as a source of inspiration. None of French politicians’ many and varied field trips to the United States, claimed by their parties as being aimed at finding inspiration in the methods of Barack Obama, will do. At the very best, they hope to achieve something akin to a B-series film – to use a cinematographic analogy – prompting parties to claim to use the same methods as Barack Obama, or even to claim to have inspired them, as did Ségolène Royal, a former French presidential candidate, only a few months ago. Ségolène Royal had no doubt forgotten the earlier role of a certain Joe Trippi, who advised another losing presidential candidate, this time in the United States, Howard Dean.

Debugging e-democracy?

Aside from the perfectibility of the various mechanisms adopted, researchers have put their fingers on two types of flaw in experiments in e-democracy conducted in France over the last ten years or so. The first relates to the issue of democracy as a procedure, the second concerns the dissymmetry inherent in a form of democracy envisaged as a discursive regime in a rational sphere.

a telling illustration of the ambiguity of the promises of e-democracy in this Council of Europe video recounting an e&http://www.fondapol.org/home/research/all-publications/publication/titre/e-democracy-vs-open-democracy.html?page=4#8209;democracy forum organised in October 2008.⁶

In a pure and perfect system, in which citizens are free, equal and not bound by any prior commitments, the procedural approach could prove relevant by allowing the emergence of a debate in which deliberation, defined as the search for a rational consensus, is based on a persuasive exchange. It would nevertheless appear that, in practice, e-democracy experiments conducted in France have failed dismally in producing the anticipated effects. In this respect, while it is possible to join with Thierry Vedel in criticising the promises inherent in the notion of e-democracy, “which claims to use the power of machines to offset the powerlessness of human beings”,⁷ it makes fairly symmetrical sense to examine this equally idealistic stance that boils down to seeing democracy as a rational sphere based on the primacy of the discursive regime. Bear in mind that by posing this question, our aim is not to reify the “technophilia” hypothesis, according to which machines can “save” or “re-enchant” democracy – to use the formula dear to Bruno Latour – but rather to imagine how communications technologies, which are expressive and rational, put the spotlight back on democracy itself.