Symposium on E-democracy:new opportunities for enhancing civic participation

Strasbourg, 23-24 April 2007

Theme II: Beneath the hype: overcoming barriers and measuring impact

Measuring the quality of e-democracy: What criteria shall we use?

Ulrike Kozeluh, Vienna Science Center

Overview

I Orientation – clarification•Measurement trends

•Democracy - which concept?

•Quality of democracy

•Quality of e-democracy

II Empirical findings•Measuring online debates: Your Voice in Europe as an example

III Recommendations – What criteria shall we use?•General recommendations

• The framework on reporting e-democracy initiatives (CAHDE)

I Orientation

1. Measurement traditions• measurement of democracy draws on Aristoteles’ analyses of good and corrupt forms

of rule which lead to the categorisation to stable and unstable democracies.

• the development of a contestation indicator by Tatu Vanhanen. The contestation indicator is the smallest parties share of the vote, the participation indicator is the voter turnout.

• survey based indicators of mass public perception of democracy and the quality of democratic institutions (barometer surveys)

• image-indices which poll expert opinion on the quality of democracy at a given time and place

• established standards based scales of different dimensions of democracy. The mayor influence in this tradition came from Robert Dahl, who provided measures of “Polyarchy” or various scales of political and civil rights and liberites (e.g. by John Gastil, David Beetham or Freedom House)

2. Clarification

Democracy - which concept?

Dahl’s concept of Modern Polyarchies

•Overall ideas of freedom and equality

•Inclusive citizenship

•Contestation and alternation

•Effective participation

•Enlightened understanding

•Popular Control of policy making

….various extended versions (Beetham/Weir; Lipset; Coppedge/Reinicke etc…)

3. Quality of democracy - how to assess

Democratisation or Democratic Quality?

André Kaiser differs between

•Democratisation: transition from authoritarian regimes to democratic regimes (and back!) participation plus contestation/alternation

•Democratic Quality: a multi dimensional concept, characterised by trade-offs and optimisation problems

Criteria for the measurement of quality of democracy:

Accountability Accessability Alternation

4. E-democracy

In relation to Dahl’s concept of modern polyarchies

• Is based on overall ideas of freedom and equality

• Enables inclusive citizenship

• Makes contestation and change transparent: Fosters a rational critical debate, based on enlightened understanding

• Links participation to policy making: causes impact

• Popular control of policy making: allows feedback and reasoning, makes accountability visible

II Empirical findings

Gap between claim and practicability of democratic norms

What are the more concrete and testable questions, to measure

Accessability Accountability Alternation

Example: Measuring the quality of online debates

To which extent is the Your Voice in Europe-Platform (as part of the Commission’s IPM-initiative) an enabler of inclusive civic participation?

How do people use online debates and how do they assess the impact of their contributions ?

Methodology

Does the your Voice in Europe–Platform enable inclusive citizenship, does Your Voice enable deliberation?

•Quantitative content analysis

Interactivity and rationality as descriptic core variables, 600 random sample discussion postings composed by 225 persons.

•Polling expert opinion: qualitative interviews based on:

Macintosh’s and Whyte’s (2002) extended classification of participation levels

Level of participation process, Stage of decision making, actors, usage of technologies, rules of engagement, duration and sustainability, accessability, resources and promotion, usage of outcome, critical success factors;

Additionally: do people reflect on democracy itself; gender and diversity dimension

Results

Accessability

•expert audience dominated the discourse

•talkboard did not provide a space for inclusive interaction

•enabled the creation of a micro-public sphere based on enlightened understanding

Accountability

•Online interaction between representatives and citizens leads to increase of trust

•Well elaborated interaction patterns, 66% balanced arguments

•Links participation to policy making, but impact on policies remained unclear

Alternation

•Power relations did not change, no contestation of alternatives, technical design can simplify policy problems

III Recommendations – measuring e-democracy: what criteria shall we use?

Generally:

•Measurement starts from an agreed framework on basic principles of democracy

•Measurement is based on an agreed political motivation to use e-democracy tools and an a common interpretation of quality

•Criteria for measuring democratic quality:

Accountability Accessabilty and Alternation

Recommendations

For practical use:

The CAHDE working group‘s Framework for reporting e-democracy initiatives

Assessment, evaluation and comparison of the quality of e-democracy initiatives

Sections:

brief description of the e-democracy initiative, basis of initiative, management, focus (technically, geographically and content-related), constraints/lessons learnt, evaluation/reflection