Tech4Democracy

Jeremy Cliffe

The early years of the internet were marked by a profound optimism about the liberating and democratizing potential of new digital technologies as tools for greater human connection and civic interaction. Yet over the subsequent decades that optimism has curdled into a skepticism – often well-founded – about their impact as the scourges of disinformation, polarization and fragmentation have taken hold on political systems around the world. This chapter highlights what makes democracy-enhancing technologies essential: new applications of cutting-edge digital developments that once more harness these to the cause of open and pluralistic political systems.

Darío García de Viedma and Alex Roche

Democracy-affirming technologies hold immense potential for bolstering democratic values and processes, but these technologies may not prioritize democratic values by design. This chapter addresses the misalignment between the democratic use cases of Tech4Democracy startups and the actual design of their technologies and explores the implications for democratic values and participation. Drawing on a methodology that combines a Tech Radar approach and NLP analysis of a worldwide patents database, this analysis investigates the current landscape of democracy-affirming technologies based on a Global Entrepreneurship Challenge organized by IE University.

Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook

With technology becoming the frontline of geopolitical competition and control, this chapter explores the emerging discussion on the shape of technological governance in the context of an accelerating rivalry between democracies and autocracies. This chapter briefly surveys the existing landscape and examines the possibility and pitfalls of creating a wider, democracy-led T-12/T-14 alliance structure as a coordination and governance model of the near-term future in technology policy terms. It concludes that instead of a linear march toward a wider governance structure, a patchwork of deepening and coordinating nodes on tech governance by and for democracies is more likely in the short-term, to facilitate practical alignment.

José Ignacio Torreblanca

This chapter examines how the digitization of information and the emergence of social networks have resulted in the weakening of liberal democracies and, in parallel, the strengthening of authoritarian regimes. To counteract the ability of foreign actors to disseminate narratives that delegitimize democracy, it proposes that the European Union should lead a grand multilateral agreement that, in the manner of Bretton Woods, establishes the framework for a democratic governance of technology.

Tyson Barker

The U.S. – and to a lesser extent, the EU – have undertaken two strategic shifts in their approach to democratic tech governance. The first is the shift away from classical treaty-based, trade-centered agreements to more flexible arrangements like the U.S-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC), and the second is the shift in understanding of strategic technology access and control of the innovation industrial base as a source for geopolitical power. Taken together, they provide a broad diplomatic trajectory in digital technology. This chapter attempts to address how the U.S.-EU partnership is responding to these shifts and what it means for their joint efforts to support norms, technical standards, protocols, means of communications, international institutions, and ultimately international digital order.

María Paz Canales

The policies involved in the development and deployment of technologies and the norms that guide them demonstrate the influence of geopolitical tensions on the lens of what constitutes roles in production, control, and benefit between the Global South and Global North stakeholders. This chapter calls attention to a few areas in technology policy that could benefit from new ways of engagement to re-balance the relationship between north and south and ensure the protection of digital rights across the globe. “Global South” here refers to any stakeholder coming from less developed countries, in majority, but not exclusively, located in the southern hemisphere.

Trisha Ray

A pain point preventing some Asian countries from participating actively in discussions shaping digital democracy is the Eurocentric, Americentric perspective on what the “correct” practice of democracy should be. This chapter conducts a review of literature on digital democracy from Asia, covering how digital technologies have improved government service delivery, enhanced transparency, enabled wider political participation, and provided spaces for underrepresented voices. It also finds nuance in how different Asian publics – including within the same country – are engaging with politics online, with its practice varying based on history, cultures, political systems, and communities. For instance, even with the focus on developing e-government infrastructure across Asia, not all communities experience these services in the same way, resulting in a ‘democratic divide’.

Daniel Innerarity

The relationship between technology and democracy is examined here from a fundamentally theoretical perspective in relation to the conceptual framework in which we should think about it. We cannot ask whether a technology is suitable for democracy if we do not address the kind of conditioning that technology exerts on humans, whether it is determinant, whether it is neutral, or whether it all depends on the use that is made of it. This chapter looks specifically at the case of algorithmic governance and asks about the desirability and feasibility of politicizing algorithmic decisions.

D.J. Flynn

Democracy requires citizens who are able and willing to update their preferences in response to relevant information. In recent years, changes in the information environment brought on by new technologies have raised concerns about the quality of political information available to citizens. This chapter reviews recent research into three such changes — media fragmentation, social media, and fake news — and potentially negative consequences. While these developments certainly pose new challenges for democracy, the research reviewed here shows that conventional wisdom overstates and misunderstands their potential consequences.  The chapter concludes with a discussion of policy responses by governments, social media platforms, and other actors.

Marcin Kilanowski

The notions of truth, information, and privacy have been strongly challenged by the intensive development of new technologies. The information and data obtained by tech companies, political parties, and governments have become means for the development of disinformation and “fake news” in aid of the economic or political interests of these entities on the national or international ground. This essay addresses whether it is still possible to defend the idea of reaching for the truth and gaining information and knowledge while respecting the right to privacy and right to freedom in democratic societies. The positive answer includes a set of recommendations.

Peter Loewen

In this chapter, Loewen does three things. First, he provides context for some of the on-the-ground facts which outline the gap between what we want our politicians to know and what they can know. He then briefly reviews the kinds of data that could improve representation. He next discusses two broad areas of political representation and public policy making that could be materially improved by a greater engagement of data by politicians and public servants. He concludes by considering how various democratic values and practices not only make it possible for public servants and politicians to engage in more systematic learning, but also confer an advantage to democracies.

Elisabeth Braw

In this concluding chapter, Elisabeth Braw explains how he arrival of mobile phones, the internet and social media has, over the past three and half decades, established an entirely new way for citizens to interact with one another and society as a whole, and this digital revolution will further accelerate as artificial intelligence and the internet of things take on a larger role in daily life. Her analysis lays out the need for a new social contract suited to the digital age, and provides recommendations on how to create it.