Society, the economy and even the way politics are carried out have all changed a great deal
over the last 29 years. ICT is very much present in many spheres of life today, including politics
and the administration. Phenomena such as the proliferation of blogs, calls for mobilisation made
over the internet, and new forms of organisation and participation are among the issues studied by
researchers. Terms such as digital democracy, e-participation and e-governance are increasingly
being mentioned as potential ways for ICT to be used in politics. This technology is also leading
to the appearance of new forms of social mobilisation.
Politicians at the computer
Can citizens get in direct contact with their representatives, with no intermediaries? A few
years ago, what can easily be done now by sending an email directly to the inbox of an MP and
getting a reply meant fighting your way past all sorts of barriers: secretaries, schedules and
appointments. Indeed, as noted by Rosa Borge, lecturer in Law and Political Science Studies, "the
political world is very firmly established, and has a structure that works. ICT can be introduced
and bring about certain changes, but changes are not easy to bring about and politicians as a whole
have little incentive to change". Borge cites as an example the fact that politicians will abandon
the idea of providing communication and participation channels "if it leads to a flood of messages
they know they cannot answer, or if it leads to confrontations with the opposition, citizens and
local residents".
Albert Batlle, director of the UOC's official Master's degree in the Information and
Knowledge Society, points out that the most important effect so far of the coming of ICT to this
arena is "the increased amount of political information available to users of the technology". As
he sees it, the main motive prompting citizens to participate in politics "is looking after their
own interests […] The existence of an interest is a pre-requisite for people to start
searching for political products."
Likewise, ICT also offers users firsthand information on what their political representatives
are doing, providing news on legislation and parliamentary activities or quicker access to official
state gazettes. This also results in "greater control over representatives", Rosa Borge explains.
"A citizen can find out what is happening in Iraq through information channels working closer to
the ground –firsthand, uncensored information, far removed from the traditional channels of
the army or the New York Times." Another example is the way the American politician John Kerry was
forced to set the record straight: "it emerged through blogs that he was not the hero he was
supposed to have been in the Korean War." However, the use of ICT by political representatives can,
in the opinion of some experts, suffer from a lack of strategic planning or objectives. "Even if
deputies are given portable computers or PDAs, 70% of them will not use the email service for
responding to citizens", Borge states. She adds that when such technology is brought in, it is
often due only to the fact that "the political world is under great pressure" to project an image
of modernity, and under pressure too from companies trying to sell their ICT.
In that respect, Albert Batlle takes the view that "getting politicians to adopt the
technology is easy; the problems come when they do it not to meet needs but for other reasons, such
as imitation". This can be seen, for example, in comparison with the business world, or even
leisure, in which the ever-increasing use of ICT is much more obvious. "The e-business sector uses
technology to its advantage and to make a profit," Battle confirms. "ICT as applied to the
political world lacks far behind the use the market has found for it."
E-administration
Unlike the more visible, more institutional world of the people's representatives, the
e-administration of the public authorities has more in common with the business world and is
undergoing very significant changes. By using the internet and mobile phones, town councils are
able to offer services that are swifter, and indeed more cost-effective than having to set up
physical offices or desks. "They have more closely defined aims, involving the provision of a more
efficient service using ICT, thus handling formalities and procedures better", Albert Batlle
argues. According to the 2005 survey on the use of new technology in local government, carried out
by the Catalan government's Secretariat for Telecommunications and the Information Society and the
Localret association of town councils, nearly every council in Catalonia with over 1,000
inhabitants has its own website; of those, 19% were already offering some form of e-administration,
and 35% published their calls for tenders and awards on those websites. The commonest of these
citizen services concern paying taxes, finding work, getting building permits and registering with
the town council, alongside others such as signing up for courses and services or setting up and
registering new companies.
Even so, the penetration of ICT in public administration still comes up against some
barriers. "Cases of internal resistance and reluctance in applying the new technology intensively"
can be found in the sector, Albert Batlle points out, attributing such reluctance chiefly "to a
cultural factor". For this lecturer, "new technology provides a networked non-hierarchical
framework for the administration, entailing the sharing of files across departments in order to
improve the service offered to citizens". This comes up against "the notion that information is
power, a limitation that also surfaces when different branches of the administration have to
cooperate". Even so, Batlle is confident that "time will bring a solution", since "the more
intensive use of new technology in other fields will lead the citizens to demand this", as they
will expect these technologies to be applied in public administration as well.
New forms of politics
Can the coming of ICT lead to a breakdown of the political system as we know it today? Will
more direct forms of politics, involving just clicks of the mouse, become possible? The outlook on
that front is not very optimistic. Many experts agree in thinking that the technology will not so
much build new direct democracy patterns as tend to improve the mechanisms of the representative
system as we know it today. Criticisms relate in particular to today's digital divide, meaning that
any web-based initiative would lead to unequal democratic representation.
ICT is also being built into the citizen-participation processes in public decision-making
that are increasingly being launched by public administrations, particularly local councils. Clelia
Colombo, a researcher at the UOC's IN3 research institute, is of the opinion that
citizen-participation processes involving the use of ICT can, amongst other things, clear the way
for "greater information being available to citizens, more communication between those citizens and
their political representatives, and the participation of citizens who would not normally go to a
conventional meeting, such as young people, people with family responsibilities, or people working
away from their local district". Colombo was awarded the prize in the Young Sociologists
competition staged last April by the Catalan Studies Institute for her research project on the use
of the internet in citizen-participation processes launched by public authorities. As she says,
"the processes that have worked best are the ones that incorporate the potential of ICT in the
early stages of the development of the process concerned, while also maintaining the direct contact
side and thus getting around technological and infrastructure constraints and the issue of unequal
access to ICT that arise in exclusively virtual processes." After analysing the opportunities and
limitations of ICT in relation to citizen participation, Clelia Colombo concludes her research by
saying that "it is still too soon to launch exclusively virtual processes, though hybrid
experiences have proved to be very positive".
However, "representative democracy as it is currently organised is not endangered by the
coming of these new technologies," Albert Batlle explains. He takes the view that, in the short
term, "it is possible to improve representative democracy" through such means as "citizen control,
provided that the citizens are interested", and this is corroborated by Rosa Borge, who sees
envisioning a future based on electronic referendums as scarcely feasible and very dangerous. "The
objection is often raised that intensive use of ICT could lead to democracy by fits and starts, or
instantaneous democracy," explains Borge, that the system could turn into "a click democracy".
"Before launching an electronic referendum on the design of a square or how a particular public
space is to be used, there should be a deliberative stage, with forums and discussion groups
involving groups and individual citizens from different segments of the population, as well as
technical experts," says Borge by way of example. In this respect, many authors agree that the main
changes will tend more towards improving representative democracy than towards building direct
democracy.
Electronic movements
Communication, information and consultation channels are improving. Politicians can find out
who the citizens that might vote for them are, and the citizens can get to know who they are voting
for better as they have more firsthand information. Many experts assure us that traditional forms
of participation in politics are now in crisis, and new forms are appearing. For Albert Batlle,
participating in election campaigns and joining parties and trade unions "seem to be showing a
downward trend," while on the other hand "other forms of political participation outside the realm
of institutions are gaining ground," as can be seen with affinity groups, lobbies and NGOs, using
"very different channels".
"ICT serves to organise citizens better" and to form lobbies, explains Rosa Borge, who states
that "this has enabled people who felt isolated and not represented anywhere to be brought in, to
communicate and spread information". Such is the case with the new social movements that have been
appearing recently, formed by people from different backgrounds or even different affinities who
are nonetheless brought together by a specific cause or issue. Examples of these include platforms
such as
Aturem la Guerra ('Stop the War'), organised in response to the armed conflict in Iraq, orV de Vivienda ('H for Housing'), which calls for solutions to the housing issue. "You
might have a particular problem, but if you don't have any way of sharing it, you would have come
to the conclusion that you were the only one facing it. Now, through technology, this is changing,"
Albert Batlle comments. These new types of movement get organised, send out calls to join or get
mobilised mainly through new technology, using chat programs, emails or mobile phones. "These are
not solely instruments used by alternative left-leaning groups: they are also used frequently and
effectively by conservative or right-wing sectors, as has been seen recently in Spain," explains
Rosa Borge.