Interview with Andy Williamson, from New Zealand
This is an enriching conversation that we recently had with Andy Williamson, a leading community researcher from Waitakere, New Zealand about his work and vision. Andy is exploring the factors affecting the uptake of electronic democratic processes in a regional community and the impact of using ICT to facilitate and influence those processes. Here it goes.
eGB: Information and Communication Technologies offer the potential for greater participation in political and democratic processes. Do you think small communities are more likely to adopt this type of involvement in comparison to bigger communities like huge cities or even entire nations?
AW: Not necessarily. But it is easier to see what’s happening in a smaller community and it can be easier to instigate change as there are less levels of bureaucracy and complexity.
The key issues that I see are around being motivated to become engaged in democratic life and then seeing that there is potential in ICT to assist with this. Only when the two come together do you get adoption. In my experience this isn’t size related. If anything, smaller communities often face access barriers, such as effective broadband, so that could be an impediment. The reality of the early stages of eDemocracy seems to be its adoption by the already motivated to enagage in new ways. Mass engagement seems to be largely issues based - something that directly affects us (or at least is perceived to): crime, environment, planning law etc. The challange is how we can use ICT to increase interest and awareness - through communication or even new ways to engage - ‘big brother’ SMS polling for example!
eGB: Do you think Information and Communication Technologies will ultimately drive us to a direct democracy model in which public authorities become only ‘regulators’ of a trully democratic society?
AW: No. The system has a vested interest in maintaining its position at the top. The technocratic shift in government (in the OECD at least) is now so complete that governments would require scientific and technical reports to validate participatory democracy - and no consultant is going to do themselves out of a job that easily! Also, this suggests some kind of technological determinism, whereas the real drive for adoption is social (I’m thinking broadly in terms of Feenberg’s critical theory of technology).
Whilst it is inevitable that governments will chose to adopt ICTs, this is often because of economic expediency as much as promoting strong democracy. Some new participation models no doubt will emerge but these won’t go to the heart of the democratic process, simply they will be new ways into the existing underlying process.
The challange, therefore, is for citizens and communities to develop their own models that work for them. At the end of the day the most vulnerable are politicians - they have to get re-elected. Examples such as “they work for you” in the UK are a brilliant example of holding our representatives to account, even though it doesn’t directly change anything, it makes a start on keeping the system accountable.
eGB: In your opinion, what do citizens expect from Information and Communication Technologies when talking about democracy and participation? Do they see them as a real tool for change, or just as one for having fun ?
AW: I don’t think citizens - in the widest sense - have any real awareness of what ICTs can do. It’s too soon. Even experts in eDemocracy confuse the subject and the topic is certainly still highly fluid and contestable.
For example, I read a paper today that was titled ‘eDemocracy’ but it was simply about party election websites. That might be a small subset of the topic - and it was an interesting paper - but it’s not evolutionary, just maintains the status quo albeit online. We need more focus on the transformative sites; things like third-party maintained sites that provide comparisons of candidates comments, previous speeches, show where people really stood on issues and helped the voter cut through the haze of promotional rubbish.
People are disengaged from democracy, simply transitioning the same thing online is not going arrest this decline; it needs something new. One of our challanges is going to be to demonstrate the value of eDemocracy to citizens who, in the west, largely don’t care. It’s naive to expect people to suddenly get excited but it’s perhaps reasonable to think that smaller, perhaps topical or local waves of adoption are achievable if their communities can be motivated and supported.
eGB: Have you already arrived to significant conclusions in your research, or is too early for that yet ?
AW: Yes. The answer above alludes to it, I think. It’s not quite wrapped up yet but where I’m heading is to focus on a basic social process of grounded leadership - that is people in both community and (in this case, local) government who can work together, motivate and inspire uptake of ICTs and engagement in democracy (adoption of both is required) and who can bridge the different stakeholder groups to overcome inherent power structures and silos. I’m currently developing this into a framework with three underlying models for how this can happen in reality… watch this space!
