3.4 The concept of "electronic democracy"

Theoretical basis of the concept of “e-democracy” have been developed by a number of famous scientists (Grossman, 1995; Abramson, Arterton, Orren, 1988; Adonis, Mulgan, 1994; Rheingold, 1992; Masuda, 1980).

One of the best known is Yoneji Masuda (1980), who formulated the idea of the “participatory democracy” formation, based on information technology and ethics of information-sharing (Masuda, 1980). And even more optimistic was his position about the role of information technology in politics. According to Masuda, mass production of information and knowledge strengthens the role of the regulatory activity of human beings, in which appropriate social ties are set and monitored, that bind together the people, things, and symbolic objects (Masuda, 1980). This increases the value of a communication activity and social management as well. If the most progressive form of government in the industrial society was a “representative democracy”, in the informational society – it is “participatory democracy” (Masuda, 1980).

According to Masuda, "It is the policy of citizens participation; policy, which will be managed by the citizens” (Masuda, 1980; p. 10). He identified six basic principles of participatory democracy in the information society:

1. All the citizens, or at least as much as possible must participate in decision-making processes.

2. Synergy (voluntary participation in solving common problems) and mutual support (willingness to sacrifice his own interests) are basis of policymaking.

3. Access of masses to all necessary information to make informed policy decisions.

4. The resulting profits and revenues should be distributed among all citizens.

5. Political issues should be sought through persuasion and reaching general agreement.

6. The decision must be implemented by the joint action, the cooperation of all citizens (Masuda, 1980).

Thus civil society will form a new type of society, where the human right of “privacy” will be radically transformed. According to Masuda, in the near future it will be normal situation when "personal data files will be opened to the possible greatest extent; this will allow all people to share personal files with each other" (Masuda, 1980; p. 95). It must be noted, that the right of free access of citizens to public information in the modern developed democracies is widespread, and is ensured by legislation.

Modern concepts of “e-democracy” can be divided into two large areas - direct democracy and communitarian democracy (Vershinin, 2001). Representatives of the first direction generally follow the course outlined by Masuda (1980), developing the idea of ​​“direct democracy”. For example, according to Grossman (1995), introduction of new information technologies can lead to the formation of the third, after the ancient and representative, the great era of democracy (Grossman, 1995). “The greatest losses in today's process of restructuring and revival of social influence are traditional institutions, which served as the main intermediaries between the state and its citizens – namely the political parties, trade unions, civic associations, and even traditional media” (Grossman, 1995; p. 16). Thus, according to Grossman (1995) there is a high probability of losing an ideal of the ancient democracy where all citizens are involved in politics (Grossman, 1995).

According to Benjamin R. Barber (1984), “participatory” democracy comes with the new information technologies to replace the “representative” democracy, cancel the representation of political professionals as well as governing of experts and bureaucrats. The innovatory work of Anthony Corrado and Charles M. Firestone (Corrado, Firestone, 1996) deals with the problems of using computer networks as interface for elections and referendums. According to these authors, the Internet is able to provide direct communication between citizens and the state, although it is fraught with some technical and safety problems (Corrado, Firestone, 1996).

Among the representatives of the communitarian approach to the concept of “e-democracy” we should mention the names of Amitai Etzioni (1993) and Howard Rheingold (2002). According to representatives of this approach, the Internet has become a convenient meeting place for various interest groups, professional associations, consumer associations, etc. (Etzioni,1993; Rheingold, 2002). Online communities emerge around specific electronic resources and exploit the natural tendency of people to communicate with like-minded people (Etzioni,1993).

Distinctive features of online communities are:

1. Regular attendance of sufficiently stable audiences of a network resource around which the community was created;

2. The presence of feedback through interactive features resource;

3. The creation of their own subculture, with all the required attributes: hierarchy, ethical and behavioral norms, role-playing games, joint participation in the online / offline events (Vershinin, 2001).

Etzioni (1993) developed the concept of TV democracy, under which the future of modern democracy is based on the development of the remote tools of mass communication (Etzioni,1993). However, he insisted that the foundation of the future democratic system should not be in the hands of professional politicians, but in the hands of communities. Network society, in contrast to traditional hierarchical power relationships are built on different principles of political governance. They are characterized by:

1. The independence of the network members;

2. The multiplicity of leaders;

3. Voluntary relationships;

4. The unifying goals;

5. The multiplicity of interaction levels (Etzioni,1993).

Howard Rheingold (2002), a leading promoter of the other theories of the Internet and politics, called network - a "great equalizer" that can "level the balance of power between citizens and political barons" (Rheingold, 2002; p.30). In the most extreme form, supporters of the concept of "electronic democracy" paint a picture of citizens` self-government through electronic government public opinion polls, without the participation of professional political communicators, representatives, brokers, etc. At the same time “e-democracy” supporters agree that the Internet provides life-giving influence on the development of the public sphere, making information accessible to all political citizens (Thornton, 2002).

The arguments of supporters of “e-democracy” are fairly obvious. However, they cannot withstand any criticism. The hypothesis that the Internet itself can cause the democratization of authoritarian regimes has not been confirmed in practice. Indeed, as German researchers Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (Keohane, Nye, 2001) say, "authoritarian states are faced with great difficulties trying to control the access of its citizens to the global network" (Keohane, Nye, 2001; p. 34). However, for example, China is successfully enough to cope with the democratizing influence of the Internet with the help of administrative and technical tools (Chase, Mulvenon, 2002).

Moreover, the concept of “e-democracy” was not confirmed in the practice of democratic regimes. And, above all, in democratic states there is a broad network of community brokers who are not interested in reducing their influence. They are political parties, civic organizations, media and other civil society organizations. All of them, as experience shows, do not lose their value in the new environment, but - on the contrary - they use the Internet not only during elections, as the most intense periods of political communication, but also in their daily activities (Conover at al., 2011). Thus, the thesis of “e-democracy” advocates to reduce the role of socio-political organizations of civil society has not been confirmed in practice.

According to Richard Davis (1999), it is likely that the "traditional interest groups will remain major players in the political life as well in the era of the Internet" (Davis, 1999; p. 138). Instead of withering away of the political intermediaries as projected by radical supporters of the concept of “e-democracy”, interest groups have attached his followers to electronic communications very quickly (Davis, 1999). The value of political intermediaries during the enormous growth of political information cannot be reduced because they are authoritative experts and wide circles of society rely on their opinion.

The idea of "electronic democracy" as a form of direct democracy on the basis of new information technologies has undergone a sufficiently reasoned criticism from the position of “institutionalism”. Thus, according to the American Professor Richard Sclove (1995), as any technologies have the same social structures, as well as social institutions, its necessary to consider their influence on a democratic form the political system (Sclove, 1995). The bases of democracy are the “local communities” where the discussions on socially significant issues take place. Sklove (1995) believes that "virtual reality cannot substitute the local community as the foundation of democracy (Sclove, 1995). The Internet likely contributes to global civil society organizations.

Continuing the idea of Sklove, the most serious challenge to the creation of electronic democracy is the tendency to limit the sovereignty of national states under the influence of global communication (Negroponte, 1995). If the national state is destroyed, gradually transferring their powers to subnational structures, it becomes quite incomprehensible how one can speak about “e-democracy” as the government institutions? In this issue there are two opposing tendencies: "On the one hand, the interlacing of modern societies due to globalization undermines the mechanisms of democratic control of the nation state. On the other hand, the new electronic communication technologies offer individuals and groups such broad access to information that the existence of authoritarian political regimes makes it more and more complicated” (Vershinin, 2001; p. 82). An adequate way out of this situation could be the global co-operation of national states on a democratic basis.

Thus, the "new state of the information age is a new type of network state, based on a network of political institutions and decision-making processes at national, regional, and local levels, which transforms the inevitable interaction of decision-making in the endless negotiations between them" (Vershinin, 2001; p. 82).

Furthermore, democracy requires the active political positions of the vast majority of people that actually contradicts to the main trend of our time - namely, the fall of the political activity of citizens. Simplicity of obtaining political information and express their views with the new information technologies, paradoxically, does not encourage citizens to active political life, but rather the opposite - discourage them (Janda, Berry, Goldman, 1989). Political science and political community of democratic countries have noted this trend long ago, leading to a blurring of the formal legitimacy of democratic regimes. For example, how we can assume the political system of the United States to be democratic, if for the past several decades less than half of their people were involved in the election process (Janda, Berry, Goldman, 1989)?

This paradox - increase of information and communication capabilities of society and the decline of interest in politics - became the starting point for American political scientist Russell Neuman (1986). "On the one hand, the modern mass media provide citizens with unparalleled opportunities for political information. On the other hand, in the period from 1959 to 1979 Americans distrust in politics has increased from 20% to 70%. At the same time, the level of citizen participation in Elections for the post-war period had fallen to 38% in 1986" (Neuman, 1986; p. 144).

Thus, if we assume the percentage of voters on elections as criteria of the political system democracy, then the modern American political system can hardly be considered democratic (Neuman, 1986). According to Neumann (1986) conclusions, improving of citizens informatization does not automatically increase political participation, and the main cause of falling interest in politics and the general negative perception of it is in the style of modern journalism, which primarily reveals the negative pages of policy and politics (Neuman, 1986).

Thus, the concept of “electronic democracy” contains significant contradictions and is subject to reasonable criticism. For this reason, social, political and scientific literature in recent years dominated by the concept of "electronic government", which became the basis for the reforms in public administration through electronic communications.