The ongoing fiscal crisis and recent government shutdown in the United States have people talking about using technology for more direct decision-making. Some see opportunities in these new frontiers, while others warn of hidden dangers.
«We are in the middle of a paradigm shift,» says Dirk Helbing, a sociologist at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. «You need to have a higher degree of autonomy [in today’s world], and that comes down to a more participatory approach in governance.»
Helbing, whose work has focused on using technology for widespread direct participation in decision-making, sees great challenges but also great opportunities in the rift dividing the US population and its politics.
To him, online platforms could give Americans and others around the world a chance to get rid of the outdated top-down governance approach and allow them to take ownership again.
«Active participation in voting creates a higher level of identification. You feel it’s your country, you have an impact on the way things are being done. This is really important to avoid a political class divided from the people.»
Looking for new models
Congressman Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, saw similar opportunities when he founded the Madison Project, an online platform that lets American citizens view and physically mark up legislation that is being debated in Congress. It has turned into one of the most prominent direct democracy-related initiatives in the US.
Seamus Kraft, who co-founded the OpenGov platform which hosts the Madison Project, says there’s always renewed interest in such models after a display of US government dysfunction like the shutdown.
«Folks look at the stalemate or whatever the showdown du jour might be and say, this is not working,» Kraft tells swissinfo.ch. «I think [our project] has piqued people’s interest because it has something to do with government and started with government and it works better than the system we have in place today.»
The Madison Project works within the current US governance system and was born out of a specific need to understand legislation at hand on a particular topic (see box). It is less radical than having everyone vote on every issue online, as some direct democracy activists have proposed, but Kraft thinks that’s precisely why it works.
«We’re not giving everybody a vote on everything, but that’s not the way the Constitution and republican governance is supposed to operate,» Kraft says.
«We don’t have the ability to have everyone in a town hall setting with the time to speak their piece in person. That’s just not possible with the size of our country and how busy people are in today’s world. But what we can do is take that town meeting or hearing and put it on the internet and have it open all the time.»
‘American Idol’ Congress
But Matt Lewis, a senior contributor to the conservative website The Daily Caller and a contributor to news magazine The Week, believes direct democracy and technological advancements have actually hurt the democratic process in the United States by over-influencing politicians whose jobs have been thrown into disarray as a result.
«Our system was designed for politicians to have a little bit of a cushion to do what they believe is right, even if it’s politically unpopular at the moment, and we’ve essentially removed that filter,» Lewis tells swissinfo.ch.
«Now, it’s an American Idol-type Congress, where people are under immense and immediate pressure to keep not just their constituents but essentially everyone happy [or they get voted out]. I would argue that is altering and affecting their decision-making process and I think it’s fair to say that the type of thing that would lead to a government shutdown may come from this brave new world.»
The country’s founders, Lewis argues, consciously decided to elect representatives who were believed to be «better» than the general population and more likely «take the long view». He believes the founders feared direct democracy and the possibility that everyday citizens could be swept up into the «passion of the moment» if left to decide on every issue for themselves.
Helbing also sees more noise and especially more polarisation as a result of new technologies. He points out that web searches often give people exactly the results they want to read when they search for controversial topics like «health care», convincing them that their opinion is correct and making compromise and common ground more difficult to find.
However, he believes those differences could ultimately be harnessed to elevate governance to a better, healthier dialogue through technology, if the right platforms and systems are created for it.
Making the shoe fit
Kraft admits that direct democracy as it exists in Switzerland – allowing citizens to bring anything to a referendum and vote directly on local and national issues – probably isn’t the right model for the United States and wasn’t what the country’s founders intended. But he does believe that the system currently in place could be improved, and using technology to do it isn’t so different from what the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had in mind.
«They were taking advantage of the latest technology available to them to seek and bring citizen desires into the work of government,» Kraft explains. «They just had a printing press and horses; we have the internet and email.»
For Lewis, technology and the participatory power it brings the people is something to keep a wary eye on, because it isn’t going away any time soon.
«We’re going to be grappling with this for years and the challenge is going to be how to find the good and take advantage of the opportunities that technology brings us,» he says.
«It isn’t just the internet – politicians are influenced by a lot of technology that’s happened over the past 25 years, from talk radio to 24-hour news channels and Twitter. We’re going to have to grapple with how to use this and not let it destroy us.»