Abstract
The deepening of democracy and enlargement of citizens’ participation in the decision-making process theoretically is, and always has been, on the agenda of all individual countries and associations of nations such as the European Union and the United Nations organizations. The emergence of the information society and its very rapid globalization potentially affects all forms of human activity. The debate on the possible threat posed by the global information society to human rights, and the potential advent of hyperpowerful governments, is counterbalanced by proposals for genuine use of the technology to bring decision-makers and citizens closer, and to allow the latter to influence decisions. This paper discusses concepts of direct versus indirect democracy, without entering into a formal comparison, and some potential advantages of more direct democracy at a local level. It proposes the exploitation of commonly available tools of the global information society to introduce new forms of democratic consultation with a view to facilitating the evaluation, by citizens themselves, of the options presented and allowing them to influence decision-making. The DEMOS model proposed, is based on exploitation of information highways, particularly the Internet, for obtaining direct participation in debates of citizens and their representative groups. It is inspired by the momentum of the European Scenario Workshops Initiative (EC DG XIII-Innovation programme) and proposes a two-way channel using the information highways and covering all the stages of decision-making: from concepts, to action plans and reform proposals’ approvals by the citizens, up to formal voting. Emphasis is given to the implementation at local/community level as an emanation of the ancient Greek demos (the assembly of the citizens). The proposed environment is presently under experimentation, in synergy with other pilot implementations for digital cities, at a European level.
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Laopodis, V. (1997). DEMOS: Democratic evaluation of multiple options in society. In: Berleur, J., Whitehouse, D. (eds) An Ethical Global Information Society. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35327-2_28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35327-2_28
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