Learning from e-Democracy Failures in Sweden

Krems.
The second presentation in this session at CeDEM 2011 is by Elin Wihlborg, whose focus is on a specific case study of e-democracy practices in a Swedish municipality – focussing in this case on reasons for failure, which are just as important to investigate as obvious successes. We need to start, though, by considering the concept of ‘democracy’ in the first place, which is often glossed over – it’s about forming a demos through finding a common ethos and participating in an inclusive fashion, and about kratia: thinking through the exercising of power.

What happens when we add ‘e-’ to this concept, then? Again, we need to consider how ‘e-’ anything affects both the ‘demos’ and the ‘kratia’ element of the term ‘democracy’. This is about politics from the institutional all the way through the everyday level, then, and democracy from the national to the local level. Similarly, we need to challenge the idea of empowerment, of course – what constitutes empowerment, who is empowered, who extends an invitation to participate and ‘be empowered’ in the first place?

Elin presents a case study of the Swedish municipality of Botkyrka, in the south of the Stockholm region, a highly multicultural, largely immigrant community of some 80,000 inhabitants; the area is something of a transit area where many new migrants first settle, before moving on to other localities. The municipality has long been seen as a forerunner for innovation in administrative services, not least through its establishment of a one-stop shop approach to government (both online and offline).

Some more advanced e-democracy initiatives in Botkyrka did not work all that well, however, and it is important to understand why. There are four threats which have been identified here: the limits of technology (understood as a way of doing things), the lack of issues, the lack of real influence for e-democracy projects, and a weak sense of community in Botkyrka.

Technological limits were evident from the local government Website, which provided few opportunities for dialogue and required users to register first; there were issues with Internet and Web literacies amongst participants, as well as language hurdles (even where autotranslate functions were used). This was evident especially with key terms (municipality does not equate to community, for example).

The lack of issues became obvious through problems with agenda setting – relating to the mismatch between everyday politics and broader visions and missions for capital-P politics. Additionally, e-participation was seen simply as consultation, and not as about decision-making – citizen contributions were taken up only as comments, but did not necessarily lead to any significant political action. How decisionmakers responded to citizen contributions needs to be thought through – simple responses, broader debates, evidence of results, or other forms of outcomes?

Finally, there is a weak sense of community in the area anyway, and no strong link between online and offline communities. Who constitutes the demos being addressed here? Only some specific groups in the area acted as strong communities.

Is this a problem of e-democracy, or of democracy in general, then? Perhaps we need to change the interpretation of democracy overall, to generate new ideas and outcomes.