research paper / thesis / dissertation

Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement

Curated on March 2, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman and Geoff Mulgan: “… shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond.

Key findings

Digital democracy is a broad concept and not easy to define. The paper provides a granular approach to help encompass its various activities and methods (our ‘typology of digital democracy’).
Many initiatives exist simply as an app, or web page, driven by what the technology can do, rather than by what the need is.
Lessons from global case studies describe how digital tools are being used to engage communities in more meaningful political participation, and how they are improving the quality and legitimacy of decision-making.
Digital democracy is still young. Projects must embed better methods for evaluation of their goals if the field is to grow.

Thanks to digital technologies, today we can bank, read the news, study for a degree, and chat with friends across the world – all without leaving the comfort of our homes. But one area that seems to have remained impervious to these benefits is our model of democratic governance, which has remained largely unchanged since it was invented in the 20th century.

New experiments are showing how digital technologies can play a critical role in engaging new groups of people, empowering citizens and forging a new relationship between cities and local residents, and parliamentarians and citizens.

At the parliamentary level, including in Brazil and France, experiments with new tools are enabling citizens to contribute to draft legislation. Political parties such as Podemos in Spain and the Icelandic Pirate Party are using tools such as Loomio, Reddit and Discourse to enable party members and the general public to deliberate and feed into policy proposals. Local governments have set up platforms to enable citizens to submit ideas and information, rank priorities and allocate public resources…..

Lessons from the innovators

Develop a clear plan and process: Pioneers in the field engage people meaningfully by giving them a clear stake; they conduct stakeholder analysis; operate with full transparency; and access harder-to-reach groups with offline methods.
Get the necessary support in place: The most successful initiatives have clear-backing from lawmakers; they also secure the necessary resources to promote to the process properly (PR and advertising), as well as the internal systems to manage and evaluate large numbers of ideas.
Choose the right tools: The right digital tools help to improve the user-experience and understanding of the issue, and can help remove some of the negative impacts of those who might try to damage or ‘game’ the process….(More)”

The Techno-Politics of Data and Smart Devolution in City-Regions: Comparing Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona, and Bilbao

Curated on March 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Igor Calzada: “This paper explores the substantial effect that the critical understanding and techno-political consideration of data are having in some smart city strategies. Particularly, the paper presents some results of a comparative study of four cases of smart city transitions: Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona, and Bilbao. Likewise, considering how relevant the city-regional path-dependency is in each territorial context, the paper will elucidate the notion of smart devolution as a key governance component that is enabling some cities to formulate their own smart city-regional governance policies and implement them by considering the role of the smart citizens as decision makers rather than mere data providers. The paper concludes by identifying an implicit smart city-regional governance strategy for each case based on the techno-politics of data and smart devolution….(More)”

Thesis, antithesis and synthesis: A constructive direction for politics and policy after Brexit and Trump

Curated on March 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Geoff Mulgan at Nesta: “In the heady days of 1989, with communism collapsing and the Cold War seemingly over, the political theorist Francis Fukuyama declared that we were witnessing the “end of history” which had culminated in the triumph of liberal democracy and the free market.

Fukuyama was drawing on the ideas of German philosopher Georg Hegel, but of course, history didn’t come to an end, and, as recent events have shown, the Cold War was just sleeping, not dead.

Now, following the political convulsions of 2016, we’re at a very different turning point, which many are trying to make sense of. I want to suggest that we can again usefully turn to Hegel, but this time to his idea that history evolves in dialectical ways, with successive phases of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

This framework fits well with where we stand today. The ‘thesis’ that has dominated mainstream politics for the last generation – and continues to be articulated shrilly by many proponents – is the claim that the combination of globalisation, technological progress and liberalisation empowers the great majority.

The antithesis, which, in part, fuelled the votes for Brexit and Trump, as well as the rise of populist parties and populist authoritarian leaders in Europe and beyond, is the argument that this technocratic combination merely empowers a minority and disempowers the majority of citizens.

A more progressive synthesis – which I will outline – then has to address the flaws of the thesis and the grievances of the antithesis, in fields ranging from education and health to democracy and migration, dealing head on with questions of power and its distribution: questions about who has power, and who feels powerful….(More)”

Nuts and Bolts of Encryption: A Primer for Policymakers

Curated on February 25, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Edward W. Felten: “This paper offers a straight for ward introduction to encryption, as it is implemented in modern systems, at a level of detail suitable for policy discussions. No prior background on encryption or data security is assumed.

Encryption is used in two main scenarios. Encrypted storage allows information to be stored on a device, with encryption protecting the data should a malicious party get access to the device. Encrypted communication allows information to be transmitted from one party to another party, often across a network, with encryption protecting the data should a malicious party get access to the data while it is in transit. Encryption is used somewhat differently in these two scenarios, so it makes sense to present them separately. We’ll discuss encrypted storage first, because it is simpler.

We emphasize that the approaches described here are not detailed description s of any particular existing system, but rather generic descriptions of how state-of-the-art systems typically operate. Specific products and standards fill in the details differently, but they are roughly similar at the level of detail given here….(More)”

Human Decisions and Machine Predictions

Curated on February 20, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

NBER Working Paper by Jon Kleinberg, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Jure Leskovec, Jens Ludwig, and Sendhil Mullainatha: “We examine how machine learning can be used to improve and understand human decision-making. In particular, we focus on a decision that has important policy consequences. Millions of times each year, judges must decide where defendants will await trial—at home or in jail. By law, this decision hinges on the judge’s prediction of what the defendant would do if released. This is a promising machine learning application because it is a concrete prediction task for which there is a large volume of data available. Yet comparing the algorithm to the judge proves complicated. First, the data are themselves generated by prior judge decisions. We only observe crime outcomes for released defendants, not for those judges detained. This makes it hard to evaluate counterfactual decision rules based on algorithmic predictions. Second, judges may have a broader set of preferences than the single variable that the algorithm focuses on; for instance, judges may care about racial inequities or about specific crimes (such as violent crimes) rather than just overall crime risk. We deal with these problems using different econometric strategies, such as quasi-random assignment of cases to judges. Even accounting for these concerns, our results suggest potentially large welfare gains: a policy simulation shows crime can be reduced by up to 24.8% with no change in jailing rates, or jail populations can be reduced by 42.0% with no increase in crime rates. Moreover, we see reductions in all categories of crime, including violent ones. Importantly, such gains can be had while also significantly reducing the percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in jail. We find similar results in a national dataset as well. In addition, by focusing the algorithm on predicting judges’ decisions, rather than defendant behavior, we gain some insight into decision-making: a key problem appears to be that judges to respond to ‘noise’ as if it were signal. These results suggest that while machine learning can be valuable, realizing this value requires integrating these tools into an economic framework: being clear about the link between predictions and decisions; specifying the scope of payoff functions; and constructing unbiased decision counterfactuals….(More)”

Crowdsourced Science: Sociotechnical Epistemology in the e-Research Paradigm

Curated on February 13, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by David Watson and Luciano Floridi: “Recent years have seen a surge in online collaboration between experts and amateurs on scientific research. In this article, we analyse the epistemological implications of these crowdsourced projects, with a focus on Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science web portal. We use quantitative methods to evaluate the platform’s success in producing large volumes of observation statements and high impact scientific discoveries relative to more conventional means of data processing. Through empirical evidence, Bayesian reasoning, and conceptual analysis, we show how information and communication technologies enhance the reliability, scalability, and connectivity of crowdsourced e-research, giving online citizen science projects powerful epistemic advantages over more traditional modes of scientific investigation. These results highlight the essential role played by technologically mediated social interaction in contemporary knowledge production. We conclude by calling for an explicitly sociotechnical turn in the philosophy of science that combines insights from statistics and logic to analyse the latest developments in scientific research….(More)”

The dark side of e-petitions? Exploring anonymous signatures

Curated on February 7, 2017October 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Janne Berg at First Monday: “This paper analyzes anonymous political participation in the form of e-petition signing. The purpose of this study is to increase knowledge about patterns behind anonymous e-petition signing. Since online political participation evokes an important discussion about the balance between the need for transparency on the one hand, and the right for anonymity on the other hand, it is crucial to increase our knowledge of the factors affecting citizens’ choices to remain anonymous. Using quantitative content analysis of 220 informal e-petitions on the site adressit.com in Finland, this study seeks to find possible determinants for the share of anonymous signatures. Findings indicate that the type of demand presented in the e-petition is a key factor predicting the share of anonymous signatures…(More)”

Social Media and the Internet of Things towards Data-Driven Policymaking in the Arab World: Potential, Limits and Concerns

Curated on February 5, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Fadi Salem: “The influence of social media has continued to grow globally over the past decade. During 2016 social media played a highly influential role in what has been described as a “post truth” era in policymaking, diplomacy and political communication. For example, social media “bots” arguably played a key role in influencing public opinion globally, whether on the political or public policy levels. Such practices rely heavily on big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, not just in gathering and crunching public views and sentiments, but more so in pro-actively influencing public opinions, decisions and behaviors. Some of these government practices undermined traditional information mediums, triggered foreign policy crises, impacted political communication and disrupted established policy formulation cycles.

On the other hand, the digital revolution has expanded the horizon of possibilities for development, governance and policymaking. A new disruptive transformation is characterized by a fusion of inter-connected technologies where the digital, physical and biological worlds converge. This inter-connectivity is generating — and consuming — an enormous amount of data that is changing the ways policies are conducted, decisions are taken and day-to-day operations are carried out. Within this context, ‘big data’ applications are increasingly becoming critical elements of policymaking. Coupled with the rise of a critical mass of social media users globally, this ubiquitous connectivity and data revolution is promising major transformations in modes of governance, policymaking and citizen-government interaction.

In the Arab region, observations from public sector and decision-making organization suggest that there is limited understanding of the real potential, the limitations, and the public concerns surrounding these big data sources in the Arab region. This report contextualizes the findings in light of the socio-technical transformations taking place in the Arab region, by exploring the growth of social media and building on past editions in the series. The objective is to explore and assess multiple aspects of the ongoing digital transformation in the Arab world and highlight some of the policy implications on a regional level. More specifically, the report aims to better inform our understanding of the convergence of social media and IoT data as sources of big data and their potential impact on policymaking and governance in the region. Ultimately, in light of the availability of massive amount of data from physical objects and people, the questions tackled in the research are: What is the potential for data-driven policymaking and governance in the region? What are the limitations? And most importantly, what are the public concerns that need to be addressed by policymakers while they embark on next phase of the digital governance transformation in the region?

In the Arab region, there are already numerous experiments and applications where data from social media and the “Internet of Things” (IoT) are informing and influencing government practices as sources of big data, effectively changing how societies and governments interact. The report has two main parts. In the first part, we explore the questions discussed in the previous paragraphs through a regional survey spanning the 22 Arab countries. In the second part, it explores growth and usage trends of influential social media platforms across the region, including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and, for the first time, Instagram. The findings highlight important changes — and some stagnation — in the ways social media is infiltrating demographic layers in Arab societies, be it gender, age and language. Together, the findings provide important insights for guiding policymakers, business leaders and development efforts. More specifically, these findings can contribute to shaping directions and informing decisions on the future of governance and development in the Arab region….(More)”

Participatory budgeting in Indonesia: past, present and future

Curated on February 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

IDS Practice Paper by Francesca Feruglio and Ahmad Rifai: “In 2015, Yayasan Kota Kita (Our City Foundation), an Indonesian civil society organisation, applied to Making All Voices Count for a practitioner research and learning grant.

Kota Kita is an organisation of governance practitioners who focus on urban planning and citizen participation in the design and development of cities. Following several years of experience with participatory budgeting in Solo city, their research set out to examine participatory budgeting processes in six Indonesian cities, to inform their work – and the work of others – strengthening citizen participation in urban governance.

Their research looked at:

the current status of participatory budgeting in six Indonesian cities
the barriers and enablers to implementing participatory budgeting
how government and CSOs can help make participatory budgeting more transparent, inclusive and impactful.This practice paper describes Kota Kita and its work in more detail, and reflects on the history and evolution of participatory budgeting in Indonesia. In doing so, it contextualises some of the findings of the research, and discusses their implications.
Key Themes in this Paper

What are the risks and opportunities of institutionalising participation?
How do access to information and use of new technologies have an impact onparticipation in budget planning processes?
What does it take for participatory budgeting to be an empowering process for citizens?
How can participatory budgeting include hard-to-reach citizens and accommodate different citizens’ needs? …(More)”.