Challenges to the Inclusion of Citizens in Digital and Direct Democracy

Abstract

Digital democracy, online voting, e-participation and civic tech emerged as concepts promising to overcome existing shortcomings in governance and citizen engagement. Yet there are inherent tensions in the capacity of tech-mediated innovations to enhance inclusions and accessibility: on the one hand, digital environments homogenise the experience of users, regardless of traditional markers of inequality such as race, gender, or age; on the other hand, access and empowered ability to use those technologies is bound to the digital divide and real-world material inequalities. This panel explores theoretical and empirically-informed approaches to the challenges of inclusion in both digital and direct democracies. The papers address questions of how digital platforms can (or cannot) equalize voice and minimize power abuse, whether and how voice and vote can better be accounted for in benefit of historically vulnerable and marginalized groups, and to what extent political inequality can also be addressed beyond concrete policy and voting outcomes.

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