INSTITUTIONAL INNOVATION

Is internet freedom a tool for democracy or authoritarianism?

Curated on July 20, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Elizabeth Stoycheff and Erik C. Nisbet in the Conversation: “The irony of internet freedom was on full display shortly after midnight July 16 in Turkey when President Erdogan used FaceTime and independent TV news to call for public resistance against the military coup that aimed to depose him.

In response, thousands of citizens took to the streets and aided the government in beating back the coup. The military plotters had taken over state TV. In this digital age they apparently didn’t realize television was no longer sufficient to ensure control over the message.

This story may appear like a triumphant example of the internet promoting democracy over authoritarianism.

Not so fast….This duality of the internet, as a tool to promote democracy or authoritarianism, or simultaneously both, is a complex puzzle.

The U.S. has made increasing internet access around the world a foreign policy priority. This policy was supported by both Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

The U.S. State Department has allocated tens of millions of dollars to promote internet freedom, primarily in the area of censorship circumvention. And just this month, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution declaring internet freedom a fundamental human right. The resolution condemns internet shutdowns by national governments, an act that has become increasingly common in variety of countries across the globe, including Turkey, Brazil, India and Uganda.

On the surface, this policy makes sense. The internet is an intuitive boon for democracy. It provides citizens around the world with greater freedom of expression, opportunities for civil society, education and political participation. And previous research, including our own, has been optimistic about the internet’s democratic potential.

However, this optimism is based on the assumption that citizens who gain internet access use it to expose themselves to new information, engage in political discussions, join social media groups that advocate for worthy causes and read news stories that change their outlook on the world.

And some do.

But others watch Netflix. They use the internet to post selfies to an intimate group of friends. They gain access to an infinite stream of music, movies and television shows. They spend hours playing video games.

However, our recent research shows that tuning out from politics and immersing oneself in online spectacle has political consequences for the health of democracy….Political use of the internet ranks very low globally, compared to other uses. Research has found that just 9 percent of internet users posted links to political news and only 10 percent posted their own thoughts about political or social issues. In contrast, almost three-quarters (72 percent) say they post about movies and music, and over half (54 percent) also say they post about sports online.

This inspired our study, which sought to show how the internet does not necessarily serve as democracy’s magical solution. Instead, its democratic potential is highly dependent on how citizens choose to use it….

Ensuring citizens have access to the internet is not sufficient to ensure democracy and human rights. In fact, internet access may negatively impact democracy if exploited for authoritarian gain.

The U.S. government, NGOs and other democracy advocates have invested a great deal of time and resources toward promoting internet access, fighting overt online censorship and creating circumvention technologies. Yet their success, at best, has been limited.

The reason is twofold. First, authoritarian governments have adapted their own strategies in response. Second, the “if we build it, they will come” philosophy underlying a great deal of internet freedom promotion doesn’t take into account basic human psychology in which entertainment choices are preferred over news and attitudes toward the internet determine its use, not the technology itself.

Allies in the internet freedom fight should realize that the locus of the fight has shifted. Greater efforts must be put toward tearing down “psychological firewalls,” building demand for internet freedom and influencing citizens to employ the internet’s democratic potential.

Doing so ensures that the democratic online toolkit is a match for the authoritarian one….(More)”

Inside Government: The role of policy actors in shaping e-democracy in the UK

Curated on July 19, 2016October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Thesis by Mary Houston: “The thesis focuses on the emergence of e-democracy in the UK between 1999 and 2013. It examines the part that policy actors have played in shaping the agenda. Emphasis is placed on how e-democracy is understood by those charged with developing initiatives and implementing government policy on e-democracy. Previous research on e-democracy has focused largely on the impact of Web technologies on political systems and/or on how, why and to what degree, citizens participate. Less attention is paid to what happens inside government, in how policy actors’ conceive public engagement in the policy process. Their perceptions and shared understandings are crucial to the commissioning, implementation, or deflection of participatory opportunities. This thesis is concerned with exploring how policy actors experience, interpret and negotiate e-democracy policy and practices and their perceptions of citizen involvement in the policy process. Competing discourses shape institutional expectations of e-democracy in the UK. The research examines how policy actors draw upon wider discourses such as the modernisation of government and the emphasis on transparency. It analyses understandings of technologies in government and the effects of relational interactions and linkages in policy and practice….(More)”

Participatory Budgeting — Not A One-Size-Fits All Approach

Curated on July 15, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Alexandra Flynn at Osgood Digital Commons: “Municipal staff and politicians are moving aside to let someone else make budget decisions – community residents. This practice, known as participatory budgeting or PB, is a completely different way of managing public money. It allows the public to both identify projects and programs that they want to see in their neighbourhoods, and to vote on which ones to fund. The process was developed twenty-five years ago and there are now over 1,500 participatory budgets around the world …

There is no one-size-fits all model for participatory budgeting. The UN-Habitat suggests that the following are essential pieces for the introduction of a participatory budgeting process: the will of the mayor, public interest, clarity on administration and the decisionmaking process, education tools on the budgeting process, widely distributed information on the participatory budgeting process through all possible means, and information on infrastructure and public service shortfalls. The UN-Habitat recommends that participatory budgeting should not be used if honesty and transparency are lacking in local administration. Municipal governments should be clear that the final decision rests with the elected representatives of the local authority and that the process does not replace representative democracy with direct referendums.

Municipalities may want to consider the following issues when implementing participatory budgeting in their communities….(More)”

Building a Civic Tech Sector to Last: Design Principles to Generate a Civic Tech Movement

Curated on July 14, 2016August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan G. Verhulst at Positive Returns (Medium): “Over the last few years we have seen growing recognition of the potential of “civic tech,” or the use of technology that “empowers citizens to make government more accessible, efficient and effective (definition provided in “Engines of Change”)”. One commentator recently described “civic tech as the next big thing.” At the same time, we are yet to witness a true tech-enabled transformation of how government works and how citizens engage with institutions and with each other to solve societal problems. In many ways, civic tech still operates under the radar screen and often lacks broad acceptance. So how do we accelerate and expand the civic tech sector? How can we build a civic tech field that can last and stand the test of time?

The “Engines of Change” report written for Omidyar Network by Purpose seeks to provide an answer to these questions in the context of the United States….

Given the new insights gained from the report, how to move forward? How to translate its findings into a strategy that seeks to improve people’s lives and addresses societal problems by leveraging technology? What emerges from reading the report, and reflecting on how fields and movements have been built in other areas (e.g., the digital learning movement by theMacArthur Foundation or the Hewlett Foundation’s efforts to build a conflict resolution field), are a set of design principles that, when applied consistently, may generate a true lasting civic tech movement. These principles include:

Define a common problem that matters enough to work on collectively and identify a unique opportunity to solve it. Most successful movements seek to solve hard problems. So what is the problem that civic tech seeks to address? …
Encourage experimentation. As it stands, there is no shortage of experimentation with new platforms and tools in the civic tech space.What is missing, however, is the type of assessment that uncovers whether or not such efforts are actually working, and why or why not. Rather than viewing experimentation as simply “trying new things,” the field could embrace “fast-cycle action research” to understand both more quickly, and more precisely, when an innovation works, for whom, and under what conditions.
Establish an evidence base and a common set of metrics. While there is good reason to believe that breakthrough solutions may come from using technology, there are still too little studies measuring exactly how impactful civic tech is. Without a deeper understanding of whether, when, why and to what extent an intervention has made an impact, the civic tech movement will lack credibility. To accelerate the rate of experimentation and create more agile institutions capable of piloting civic tech solutions, we need research that will enable the sector to move away from “faith-based” initiatives toward “evidence-based” ones. The TicTec conference, the Opening Governance Research Network and the recently launched Open Governance Research Exchange are some initiatives that seek to address this shortcoming. Yet more analysis and translation of current findings into clear baselines of impact against common metrics is needed to make the sector more reliable.
Develop a Network Infrastructure…
Identify the signal…

As every engineer knows, building engines requires a set of basic design principles. Similarly, transforming the civic tech sector into a sustainable engine of change may require the implementation of the principles outlined above. Let’s build a civic tech sector to last….(More)”

Democracy Does Not Cause Growth: The Importance of Endogeneity Arguments

Curated on July 13, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

IADB Working Paper by JEL Codes:”This article challenges recent findings that democracy has sizable effects on economic growth. As extensive political science research indicates that economic turmoil is responsible for causing or facilitating many democratic transitions, the paper focuses on this endogeneity concern. Using a worldwide survey of 165 country-specific democracy experts conducted for this study, the paper separates democratic transitions into those occurring for reasons related to economic turmoil, here called endogenous, and those grounded in reasons more exogenous to economic growth. The behavior of economic growth following these more exogenous democratizations strongly indicates that democracy does not cause growth. Consequently, the common positive association between democracy and economic growth is driven by endogenous democratization episodes (i.e., due to faulty identification)….(More)”

Building a Democracy Machine: Toward an Integrated and Empowered Form of Civic Engagement

Curated on July 6, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by John Gastil: “Dozens—and possibly hundreds—of online platforms have been built in the past decade to facilitate specific forms of civic engagement. Unconnected to each other, let alone an integrated system easy for citizens to use, these platforms cannot begin to realize their full potential. The author proposes a massive collaborative project to build an integrated platform called, tongue squarely in cheek, “The Democracy Machine.” The Machine draws on public energy and ideas, mixing those into concrete policy advice, influencing government decision making, and creating a feedback loop that helps officials and citizens track progress together as they continuously turn the policymaking crank. This online system could help to harmonize civic leaders, vocal and marginalized citizens, and government. Democracy’s need for ongoing public consultation would fuel the Machine, which would, in turn, generate the empowered deliberation and public legitimacy that government needs to make tough policy decisions….(More)”

Why we no longer trust the experts

Curated on July 4, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Gillian Tett in the Financial Times: “Last week, I decided to take a gaggle of kids for an end-of-school-year lunch in a New York neighbourhood that I did not know well. I duly began looking for a suitable restaurant. A decade ago, I would have done that by turning to a restaurant guide. In the world I grew up in, it was normal to seek advice from the “experts”.

But in Manhattan last week, it did not occur to me to consult Fodor’s. Instead, I typed what I needed into my cellphone, scrolled through a long list of online restaurant recommendations, including comments from people who had eaten in them — and picked one.

Yes, it was a leap of faith; those restaurant reviews might have been fake. But there were enough voices for me to feel able to trust the wisdom of the cyber crowds — and, as it happened, our lunch choice was very good.

This is a trivial example of a much bigger change that is under way, and one that has some thought-provoking implications in the wake of the Brexit vote. Before the referendum, British citizens were subjected to a blitz of advice about the potential costs of Brexit from “experts”: economists, central bankers, the International Monetary Fund and world leaders, among others. Indeed, the central strategy of the government (and other “Remainers”) appeared to revolve around wheeling out these experts, with their solemn speeches and statistics….

I suspect that it indicates something else: that citizens of the cyber world no longer have much faith in anything that experts say, not just in the political sphere but in numerous others too. At a time when we increasingly rely on crowd-sourced advice rather than official experts to choose a restaurant, healthcare and holidays, it seems strange to expect voters to listen to official experts when it comes to politics.

In our everyday lives, we are moving from a system based around vertical axes of trust, where we trust people who seem to have more authority than we do, to one predicated on horizontal axes of trust: we take advice from our peer group.

You can see this clearly if you look at the surveys conducted by groups such as the Pew Research Center. These show that faith in institutions such as the government, big business and the media has crumbled in recent years; indeed, almost the only institution in the US that has bucked the trend is the military.

What is even more interesting to look at, however, are the areas where trust remains high. In an annual survey conducted by the Edelman public relations firm, people in 20 countries are asked who they trust. They show rising confidence in the “a person like me” category, and surprisingly high trust in digital technology. We live in a world where we increasingly trust our Facebook friends and the Twitter crowd more than we do the IMF or the prime minister.

In some senses, this is good news. Relying on horizontal axes of trust should mean more democracy and empowerment for ordinary citizens. But the problem of this new world is that people can fall prey to social fads and tribalism — or groupthink…..

Either way, nobody is going to put this genie back into the bottle. So we all need to think about what creates the bonds of “trust” in today’s world. And recognise that the 20th-century model of politics, with its reverence for experts and fixed parties, may eventually seem as outdated as restaurant guides. We live in volatile time…(More)”

How A Videogame Can Be A Source For Innovation

Curated on June 27, 2016October 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jiwon Kim at PSFK: “The nonprofit Games For Change has a mission to utilize games to change the world. More specifically, it’s to facilitate “the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts.”….PSFK decided to explore the three finalists up to win the award for the most innovative game of 2016:

1. Life is Strange: This game is comprised of five episodes that allow the gamer to turn back the time and change a chain of events. The gamers follow the protagonist, Maxine, as she uses her power to rewind time to save her friends and her town. This game is innovative in the sense that gamers intimately interact with this intricate plot while exploring important issues such as suicide, substance issues and relationships. The game is like a beautiful animated movie with great music, except the gamer decides the ending.

2. That Dragon, Cancer: The game’s creator, Ryan Green, is a programmer who wanted to share his experience of raising a young son struggling with cancer. The narrative video game retells how Ryan’s son and the rest of his family went on an emotional roller coaster ride that lasted years. Unfortunately, his son passed away but the Green family hopes that this game provides a deep insight into this difficult journey and dealing with feelings of hope and loss. The game brings in a new perspective and a new medium for intimate stories to be shared.

3. Lumino City: This game is entirely handcrafted with paper, miniature lights and motors. Lumino City is a beautiful 10-foot high city that serves as the setting of an exciting adventure. Gamers get to be Lumi, the protagonist, as she goes off on a journey to find her grandfather. Everything about this game is innovative in the sense that the creators fuse the digital world and traditional arts and crafts together….(More).

The Behavioral Economics Guide 2016

Curated on June 23, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Guide edited by Alain Samson: “Since the publication of last year’s edition of the Behavioral Economics (BE) Guide, behavioral science has continued to exert its influence in various domains of scholarship and practical applications. The Guide’s host, behavioraleconomics.com, has grown to become a popular online hub for behavioral science ideas and resources. Our domain’s new blog publishes articles from academics and practitioners alike, reflecting the wide range of areas in which BE ideas are generated and used. …

Past editions of the BE Guide focused on BE theory (2014) and behavioral science practice (2015). The aim of this year’s issue is to provide different perspectives on the field and novel applications. This editorial1 offers a selection of recent (often critical) thinking around behavioral economics research and applications. It is followed by Q&As with Richard Thaler and Varun Gauri. The subsequent section provides a range of absorbing contributions from authors who work in applied behavioral science. The final section includes a further expanded encyclopedia of BE (and related) concepts, a new listing of behavioral science events, more graduate programs, and a larger selection of journals, reflecting the growth of the field and our continued efforts to compile relevant information….(More)”