EDemocracy in Venezuela' Searching for ECitizenship

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E-Democracy in Venezuela.Searching for
E-Citizenship?

• Alejandro E. Ochoa Arias
• Centro de Investigaciones en Sistemología
  Interpretativa.ULA. Venezuela
• Visiting Researcher at Hull University

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A working notion of E-Democracy

• An e-Democracy policy should be viewed in a
  context of those political and constitutional
  reforms, which seek to devolve power, extend
  citizens rights and improve the transparency and
  accountability of government and politics
• In the service of democracy, Cabinet Office
  2002 UK

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then, E-Democracy means

• Engagement Voting

Information
Election
Referenda
Consultation
Active Participation
using Information and Communication Technologies
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E-Engagement

• Information a one-way relation in which
  government produces and delivers information for
  use by citizens. It covers both passive access
  to information upon demand by citizens and
  active measures by government to disseminate
  information to citizens.
• Consultation a two-way relation in which
  citizens provide feedback to government. It is
  based on the prior definition by government of
  the issue on which citizens views are being
  sought and requires the provision of information.
• Active participation a relation based on
  partnership with government, in which citizens
  actively engage in the policy-making process.

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Who is in charge of E-Democracy?

• Is it a Technological driven concept?
• Does it imply a challenge to the social and
  political order implied by a liberal
  representative State?
• Is Democracy the agent or object of a historical
  transformation driven by a technological device?

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Possible answers from a working notion of
E-democracy.

• What does to devolve the power means? To whom?
  Under which circumstances?
• What does Extend rights means? Include the
  excluded or to define new rights?
• Does to improve transparency and accountability
  challenge democracy as a whole?

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E-Democracy then..could

• Constitute an effort to preserve a social order
  that had been deteriorated in the aftermath of a
  death of political debate and a rethinking of a
  liberal welfare state.
• Promote a citizenship conceived from an
  individual will, aggregation of individual
  interests and exercise of control over public
  expenditure and performance.

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E-democracy could..

• Provide an opportunity for re-thinking the notion
  of democracy by critically considering
• The role of citizens in building up a more
  inclusive and direct mechanism of participation.
• A collective ground for the definition of common
  responsibilities instead of rights.

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How?

• By dropping a state-central perspective for the
  definition of e-democracy and promoting a new
  sense of belonging.
• Enhancing engagement of collective and diffuse
  interests a priori and independent from the
  state.
• Implying social responsibility to be not only a
  duty of the state, but also of collective groups
  and individual citizens.

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The current conditions of E-Democracy in Venezuela

• A widespread use of web-based information
  regarding local, and national public offices.
• A growing interest, although not standard, of
  becoming engaged in processes of consultation and
  information.
• A growing demand on on-line services and a lack
  of demand on participative processes.

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• Promotion and enhancement on the conditions to
  surpass the digital divide. Although there is
  still a serious gap between poor majority and
  rich minorities.
• A lack of a system of public information and
  communication capable of generating spaces for
  plurality and social building of consensus.

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E-voting in Venezuela

• The whole process of elections has been automated
  and computer-based and using high technology for
  processing, counting and validating.
• It includes referenda in terms of voting.
• The e-voting has been under closer scrutiny
  during the last ten years in Venezuela.

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E-Engagement in Venezuela

• Processes of information and consultation are
  becoming common, but there is still room for
  improvement.
• Participative processes are not particularly
  supported on ICT technologies, although some
  experiences had got mixed results (E-government
  law)

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E-Engagement Beyond the State

• What does E-engagement involve beyond the State?
• The channels and use of ICT for the constitution
  of collective will and building up of public
  opinion.
• The dominance of propaganda and biased positions
  threatens the constitution of public space.

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E-public space?

• The possibility of choosing spaces of debate and
  groundings for decision making and debate implies
  that public space is severed and built according
  the convenience of actors. It creates several
  fragmented public spaces without links among
  them. Is it possible on a democratic regime?

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• A danger of such multiplicity and unconnectedness
  is that government and public officials could
  choose which public space is more convenient.
  Therefore, processes of allowing a richer process
  of building common concerns requires an opening
  of all channels to all positions. Information
  becomes a public good.

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E-Citizenship

• Beyond the access and opening of citizens to
  technology and procedures of e-government and
  e-democracy, it is required a cultivated will for
  plurality and e-social inclusion, which implies
  that identity construction should reinforce the
  idea of acknowledging other perspective and the
  need of building common grounds for political
  action.

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..finally,

• E-democracy is not only about engagement and
  voting in the formal relationship with the State.
  It is also, and it is becoming more important, to
  care and cultivate the way in which citizens
  among them built up collective will and social
  reality. It implies contradictions, struggles
  regarding different accounts of reality. At the
  end, democracy is a better way to dissent than to
  build consensus.