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EDemocracy in Venezuela' Searching for ECitizenship

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Title: EDemocracy in Venezuela' Searching for ECitizenship


1
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

2
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

3
then, E-Democracy means
  • Engagement Voting

Information
Election
Referenda
Consultation
Active Participation
using Information and Communication Technologies
4
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.

5
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?

6
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?

7
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.

8
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.

9
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.

10
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.

11
  • 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.

12
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.

13
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)

14
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.

15
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?

16
  • 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.

17
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.

18
..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.
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