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Friends, Colleagues,
A potted (very brief) critical history of democracy; direct versus indirect
("representative") democracy; observations of how citizens mix up in
politics, within and outside of Internet; projects to enhance
participation; remarks about gender, access, and motivation; suggestions
about how citizens, with help of Internet, may organise change; warnings.
The paper outlined below may be found in the World Wide Web at the URL
http://www.snafu.de/~mjm/CP/cp.html
________________________________
TITLE: Citizen participation in politics and the new systems of communication.
AUTHOR: Michael Macpherson, medical doctor.
FRAMEWORK
1 Introduction
1.1 pre-amble
1.2 personal interest - a remark about assumptions
1.3 a methodological note
1.4 citizen participation and ICT in the context of debate about democratic
systems
1.4.1 debate about the form of delegation (representation), the
constitution of state, parliament and government and the electoral system.
1.4.2 intra-governmental and parliamentary reform, and relations between
legislative and executive, "informatisation" of government and
administration and its implications for the citizen.
1.4.3 elements of direct democracy
1.5 pre-conceptions about collective decision making in democracies
2 the communication and information offers of ICT: Potential aids to
citizen participation.
(This is a layperson's guide to the citizen participation-potential of ICT,
written by an ICT layperson.)
2.1 electronic mail
2. 2 newsgroup discussions
2.3 list-servers, bulletin boards and similar systems
2.4 WWW and similar "publication", interaction with other ICT systems
2.5 IRC (chatting), conferencing and related systems, interviews (e.g.
citizens interview politician or official)
2.6 Mass meetings, electronic town halls, opinion gathering.
3 Some projects and proposals which may improve citizen participation
3.1 The California Online Voter Guide
3.2 British on-line democracy project
3.3 Choosing Our Future (COF)
3.4 A political party closely guided by citizens' opinions? (Reform Party
of Canada)
3.5 Legislator/parliamentarian consults all constitutents (Reform Party of
Canada)
3.6 Decision-Maker/Teledemocracy: an ambitious model from The Netherlands
3.7 The Citizens Jury Process, Jefferson Centre Minneapolis.
3.8 Grass-roots and citizens' lobby groups.
3.9. Electronic community neworks, digital cities.
TABLE: Functions of projects to improve citizen participation in democratic
systems.
TABLE: Information and links provided, or potentially provided, by
cyber-participation projects
4. participation and citizen power
TABLE: Forms of societal decision making
4.1 antidote to discontent, psychic factors, problem solving
4.2 some objections and barriers to improved citizen participation and
direct democracy.
4.3 can citizens take over more responsibility?
TABLE: criteria for projects which claim to improve citizens' participation
in public decision-making.
4.4 town meetings, old and new
4.5 role of governments, industry, commerce and providers of information
technology: facing the demands of citizens
4.6 citizens organise in (and out of) cyberspace? Some examples in real-life.
4.7 discussion and critique of projects and programmes in and out of cyberspace.
5 remarks
5.1 gender and access issues
5.2 learning
5.3 motivation, interest, skills, time
5.4 freedom of information - the struggle
5.5 self-organisation for rights to participate and direct democracy
6. Conclusions
6.1 Concluding remarks
6.2 Concluding points
Glossary
References.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Michael Macpherson,
Integral Studies,
Derfflingerstrase 17,
10785 Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany.
tel.: +49 30 262 3768
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
World Wide Web address (URL):
INTEGRAL STUDIES: proposals, opportunities to co-operate:
http://www.snafu.de/~mjm/
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