Tech Leapfrogs Citizen Engagement - but Weakens Democracy?
A couple weeks ago I accompanied our Governance Director, Scott Hubli, to the International Council for Information Technology in Government Administration (ICA) conference. Scott was facilitating a conversation with government IT leaders from around the world on the role of citizens in governance in a rapidly changing technology environment where social media, mobile and similar technologies play an increasing role. There were six or eight of us hashing out some of this stuff and an interesting framework emerged that I found worth sharing – and that provides an opportunity to pitch some of our thinking about the potential of technology in emerging democracies going forward.
The broad theory that emerged could be summarized as follows: the rise of social media and citizen tools are creating new ways for citizens to engage with policy makers and leaders that bypass and therefore weaken traditional structures of representative government. However, the policymakers have not effectively learned how to deal with the public input coming in these new channels and transform these interests into effective policy – making policy less representative while potentially frustrating citizens who don't see an impact of their engagement leading to disillusionment with the process and possibly with democracy itself.
End runs around traditional institutions heretofore essential to representative democracy - political parties, legislatures, traditional media, interest and advocacy groups - that are positioned to aggregate citizen interests are making these groups less effective and relevant. These institutions haven't adapted well to this new environment, and neither have policymakers who need citizen input. This leaves policymakers with no effective vehicles for comprehending citizen views and ideas that they can use to inform their work – potentially weakening representative government in established democracies like those in the United States and many others.
Jake Brewer wrote a good piece on how this plays out in US politics in the Huffington Post – and concludes that the only institutions left with power to influence are the K Street lobby firms.
This sounds like a lose-lose-lose situation in established democracies, I hope this theory is wrong or the institutions and policymakers adapt. However, this may provide an important opportunity for young or emerging democracies.
For NDI’s programs and partners around the world working to establish democratic traditions and institutions we’ve developed an approach to address this challenge to democracy that resembles a democratic institutional equivalent of “leapfrogging.” In new democracies where these traditional institutions are in their infancy or aren’t fully established in the pre-technology environment, opportunities need to be created that embrace these new technologies as the institutions and traditions are created and establish themselves in emerging democratic states – the goal being to help create effective democratic institutions that have developed with these citizen technologies fully integrated into their representative functions.
Two current examples of putting this theory into practice:
In an NDI pilot program in Uganda where we’re working with Members of Parliament to help them establish traditions and processes to start to better engage their constituents. NDI and a technology company called Gov2U have teamed up to help citizens communicate their interests and concerns to parliament through mobile phones (voice and SMS), and for MPs to use this communication channel as a primary way they begin to engage and represent the citizens in their districts.
The second example is a current program in Haiti where NDI is providing technical assistance to civic groups who are organizing at a local level through Initiative Committees to organize citizens in their community to work on local civic projects. These groups are pilot testing FrontlineSMS in four communities to organize and engage local elected officials to dedicate resources to community priorities.