Conference on Participatory democracy at local level,

Yerevan, Armenia 19 June 2013

E-democracy: new forms of civic participation

Keynote speech by Amy Koopmanschap (Netherlands, SOC), Vice-President of the Congress

1.    E-democracy is a strange term.  It can mean anything and everything.  For most people it is just another term for e-voting.  However, it is much wider than that.

2.    The new media, new technologies, smart phones, Internet, are seeing and generating a whole new generation of new forms of civic participation.  Internet and new media are profoundly democratizing our society.   They are also challenging our local and regional authorities to be more responsive and visible, to listen.

3.    What do we mean by civic participation?  In the Netherlands we have what we call a citizen participation agenda, which is now in its third phase.  The first phase was about participation as we traditionally understand it.  The second phase was about involving our citizens in policy-making.  This third phase is about what we describe as “public participation”: how can local government link to initiatives in the municipality? 

4.    This last phase assumes that local government is a stakeholder in civil society, as opposed to being the main actor that can invite civil society to participate in its affairs.  So the goal-posts are moving. We are changing the way we conceive of local politics. It is moving from a hierarchical vertical structure to one which is much more horizontal, based much more on partnership and peer-to-peer relationships.  This is fundamentally changing our concepts of local democracy.  

5.    E-democracy is not responsible for this. It is not to blame. But it does tend to speed things up.  New technologies can act as a catalyst.  The sudden ease with which we communicate is itself having a democratizing effect on our societies at all levels.

6.    Are we ready for this? Some of our authorities are rising to the challenge while others, feeling threatened, seek to discredit and even censor the new media. Recently we have heard Twitter described as a menace.

7.    The problem is that some of our current political leaders belong to a generation which is still uncomfortable with this new technology.  They may be pleased to have a phone with lots of gadgets, but if some of these new applications are used to express political views, they are the first to denounce them as being undemocratic.

8.    I’m speaking as a traditional politician myself.  I use Twitter.  I invite you to sign up to my Twitter account (though I have to accept that not all of you are fluent in my native tongue). I don’t see how as a politician you can avoid forms of communication such as Twitter.

9.    But we should not be threatened by this.  We must rise to the challenge, rise to the expectations of our citizens who want to engage with us.  The days are over when we can hide in our offices!

10. Like many local politicians, I cut my political teeth fighting for local issues.  In my case it was in the field of nursing and healthcare.  As a political activist, you are trying to change the society around you for the better.  You are trying to influence politicians,  encourage and persuade them to take the right decisions, to make better policies.  You want to be listened to.  So the interaction between elected politicians and active citizens is very important.   We should not need to resort to occupying our city centres and putting up barricades.  That was the generation of ’68.  We should have moved on from that.  Today we have no excuse not to listen to our citizens – because we have the technology, we have the means to do so. 

11. Budgetary monitoring is one area – and a growing one - where we can encourage participation. In May 2011 we organised a seminar on participatory budgeting, with our colleagues in the European Committee of Local and Regional Democracy. One of the striking aspects of this type of activity is its educational role.  Our citizens best learn to be citizens by a hands-on approach. Grappling with something as mundane and as simple as a small budget for a public children’s play area is a sure way to help people begin to understand the complex decisions that need to be taken in the management of public affairs in every domain. 

12. Young people are an obvious focus of civic participation initiatives – not least because they have grown up with the Internet – and they are perfectly at ease with forms of communication which still seem new to us.

13. One of the advantages, the beauty, of e-democracy - is that it allows us to listen much more easily to the needs of particular groups in our society – groups that sometimes feel marginalised.  I’m thinking of immigrant groups, and those which have a very different culture than the majority.  I’m also thinking of the elderly, the disabled, single parents, people with chronic health problems, people who find it difficult to get out and attend meetings.    In the past it has been difficult to consult such people. They do not always have the time, the ability or the confidence to mobilise and fight for their interests.  But now we can reach them with special citizen forums and panels.  We can encourage and train them to formulate their own proposals and to consult horizontally, to get the views of people in similar circumstances, and to make their voices heard.

14. E-democracy is changing the face and shape of politics, traditional political parties are increasing competing against special interest groups and the ‘flash’ mobilisation of citizens on single issues.

15. One thing that new technology offers us is increased interactivity.  As you can get very fast feed-back from online forums, this can change the way that policies are drawn up.  The deliberative process can be speeded up.  Feedback from interested groups can improve the quality of texts and make our policies better fit the issues and problems that they seek to address.  This interactive policy-making, when properly managed, can be a huge bonus to the politicians and city managers.  It has huge potential for making our public administration more intelligent and responsive and improving our lives as a result.

16. Earlier I mentioned that we in the Netherlands are in the third phase of our participation agenda.  I would like to tell you some more.  Participation is not something that we just tack on to traditional government, like an appendix to our Charter of Self-Government.   In the Netherlands our Council for Public Administration has developed a public participation hierarchy of measures:
                   1. regulation
                   2. direction
                   3. encouragement
                   4. Facilitation and
                   5. letting go.

17. I would draw your attention to this last category – “letting go”.   Depending on the field of action, local government has to make an informed choice of what action to take itself and to know what citizens can do themselves, what support is available to them and what still is needed from the government.

18. We should no longer assume that all public life is best organised and managed by government at one level or another.  Sometimes civic society can manage things better with little or no interference from government.  As our societies mature, I believe that this will be an increasing trend.

19. This is not a new idea. Back in 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his famous work “Du contrat social” argued that citizens become public citizens through participation and that this act is therefore an essential element of democracy.  I believe that Rousseau was way ahead of his time, but that, with the help of e-democracy, his time has now come.