With the irruption of ICTs and the crisis of political representation, many online platforms have been developed with the aim of improving participatory democratic processes. However, regarding platforms for online petitioning, previous research has not found examples of how to effectively introduce discussions, a crucial feature to promote deliberation. In this study we focus on the case of De...

Against recent criticism, this article demonstrates that the effective democracy index (EDI) has scale properties that are fully consistent with the normative premises of the index’s construction logic. Empirically, it is shown that the EDI deviates from all other indices of democracy in a perfectly intended way that incorporates substantiating qualities of democracy which the other indices neg...

It is almost generally acknowledged that the application of ICTs may represent a strong vehicle for social innovation and progress in the hands of governments, of political representatives and of citizens. So, when the focus is on e-Democracy, which nowadays represents one major strategic approach of ICT applications, it must be interpreted and explored in connection with the more general, trad...

In his famous book " Democracy and its Critics " (1989), Robert A. Dahl argues that, historically speaking, there have been two transformations of democracy. These transformations have brought about different models of democratic governance and different interpretations of the concept of democracy. By the fi rst transformation Dahl refers to the the emergence of the classical model of democracy...

We compare direct democracy, in which members of a population cast votes for alternatives as choice problems arrive, and representative democracy, in which a population elects a candidate whose ordering of alternatives serves as a binding, contingent plan of action for future choice problems. While direct democracy is normatively appealing, representative democracy has practical advantages and ...

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in democratic processes, often summarized by the term e-democracy, has seldom been analysed from a global perspective. Although the UN eParticipation index provides one of the few examples of an international measurement of e-democracy, it has been thoroughly criticized. At the same time, however, a number of studies have added knowle...

How should open agent societies be organized? Should they be democracies, and, if so, what types of democracy? We present three normative models of democracy from political philosophy and consider their relevance for the engineering of open multi-agent systems: democracy as wise rule by an elite; democracy as the exercise of rational consumer choices by voters; and democracy as deliberative dec...

i The idea that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the capacity to greatly enhance democracy is hardly new. As long ago as the 1970s, there was interest in the potential of cable networks to facilitate democratic engagement (see, for example, Laudon, 1977), while experiments with different forms of electronic voting, online discussions and so on began in the 1980s. Yet it is...