Abstract
Democracy as we know it is currently in crisis and this has generated a critical reexamination of many of its characteristics. Although democracies are mainly representative democracies, lately there has been a tendency to propose more mechanism of direct democracy with the help of digital technology, known as Digital Direct Democracy (DDD). While DDD is one of many manifestations of the penetration of technology in democracy, which is described by the broader name of E-Democracy, it is an especially problematic one. Through this chapter I will: (i) explain the relevance of E-Democracy and the place that DDD has within it; (ii) make a critical assessment of the main philosophical arguments used by DDD promoters to justify its implementations, mainly the ancient Athenian model and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Finally, I will give a balanced assessment of the desirability of digital technological penetration in the different levels of citizen participation in democracy. For this, I will distinguish three levels of participation: (i) being informed; (ii) giving opinions and feedback to political representatives; (iii) voting and making political decisions. Considering that DDD is being proposed as applicable to all these levels, I will propose to abandon any attempts of DDD and instead use technology mainly in the first level, less in the second and in very limited situations of the third.
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Quer, M. (2023). The Problem of Digital Direct Democracy and its Philosophical Foundations. In: Fritzsche, A., Santa-MarÃa, A. (eds) Rethinking Technology and Engineering. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25233-4_12
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