In this report I examine the possibilities t offered by new technologies, such as the Internet, informatics devices and telecommunications, to improve legitimacy. I will be focusing specially in local institutions, like the city council of Illescas. Due this space allows implementing these tools faster with less cost and risk. From this point, I distinguish four fields in which new technologies may be used in order to reach a remarkable political participation: 1) elections, 2) referendums, 3) transparency, and 4) legislative initiative. However, before assessing the possibilities of new technologies in the field of local democracy; I determine the requirements to succeed in our idea.

1. In this report I examine the possibilities t offered by
new technologies, such as the Internet, informatics
devices and telecommunications, to improve
legitimacy. I will be focusing specially in local
institutions, like the city council of Illescas. Due this
space allows implementing these tools faster with
less cost and risk. From this point, I distinguish four
fields in which new technologies may be used in
order to reach a remarkable political participation:
1) elections, 2) referendums, 3) transparency, and 4)
legislative initiative. However, before assessing the
possibilities of new technologies in the field of local
democracy; I determine the requirements to succeed
in our idea.
Keywords: e-democracy, legitimation, political
participation, e-transparency, new technologies,
Illescas, new institutionalism, Spain, O-Government
Participative local
democracy:
Possibilities with
new technologies
Daniel de Gracia
Email: daniillescas9@hotmail.com
LinkedIn:
es.linkedin.com/in/danielgracia
Twitter: @Chaniwaldo
E-magazine: scoop.it/t/making-
democracy-more-participative
Report prepared for

2. Daniel de Gracia Palomera ID: 100275195
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid e-mail: 100275195@alumnos.uc3m.es
Comparative Politics 2012/2013 30/11/2012 Group 88
Lack of legitimacy
One of the effects of globalization is the spread of the democratic system all over the world. However,
since developing countries such as the East Asian ones are democratizing themselves, western developed
nations, where there are stables and effective democracies, are experimenting a lack of legitimation. We
define legitimacy as typical motivations for obedience to authority (Giner, Lamo and Torres, 2006). The
reasons of it are explained, for example, by Habermas or Castells:
According to Jürgen Habermas, current liberal democracies are absence of legitimation since their actions
and decisions are only focus on socialize production (through professional education, health systems and
social protection) for non-socialize profit (just for some elites). In other words, democracies nowadays are
based on elites’ values and interests while the rest of society is left apart and react with low political
participation (Habermas, 1973).
Sociologist Manuel Castells, say that the combination of financial crisis and low level of trust in politicians
and political parties, open a period of uncertainty in the lives of people that can´t be solved by the
democratic States. Furthermore, Castells add to his analysis a proposal to solve it: digital social networks
offer the possibility for largely and better deliberation and coordination of actions and decisions (Castells,
2012).
Proposal
In order to solve that lack of legitimacy of western democracies and so in Illescas, we follow Castells’
suggestion of using digital ways for deliberation and the sociological and normative institutionalism
approach. According to that, if political and social institutions implement the use of the Internet and other
new technologies in policy making process and decision, people may be more motivated to participate.
This increasing political participation, at the same time, could modify the values and role of political
institutions, from institutions serving elites to institutions serving everyone; from political institutions
where only a few representatives identify problems and make decisions, to political institutions where
everybody may do it.
Although this proposal could be applicable to all institutions in the future, it is desirable to focus only in
local political institutions for pragmatic and experimental reasons.
Now, we can assess the possibilities offered by those new technologies (such as the Internet, mobile
devices, telecommunications software, etc.) in the four main fields of a participative democracy: 1)
elections, 2) referendums, 3) transparency, and 4) legislative initiative.
Elections: as Abott Siéyes said in XVIII century, the complexity of politics and economy don’t allow the
existence of a pure democracy (like in Greece, Rome or Renaissance Italian Republics where every citizen
could decide). Instead of that, the specialization of economy only enables the option of a representative
democracy (Manin, 1995). Given the even more complexity of the system nowadays, it is also necessary
the existence of professional representatives. To choose those representatives is what elections do. But
recent polls show us that the participation in western democracies elections is decreasing (Castells, 2012)
The Internet and informatics devices could make local electoral participation to increase, making it easier.
For example it could help people to vote in rainy days without the necessity of going out; or it would allow
voting easier for people with disability or people who are not in town the Election Day. Critics say that this
option introduces a large bias because not everybody has access to the Internet and informatics devices and
that participation wouldn’t increase because precisely those who have that access are the ones who vote
almost always. And they are right.
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3. Daniel de Gracia Palomera ID: 100275195
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid e-mail: 100275195@alumnos.uc3m.es
Comparative Politics 2012/2013 30/11/2012 Group 88
Our proposal requires, in order solving those criticisms, the access to Internet become a constitutional right
and the infrastructure is given free to people by the State. Of course, it has to be secure. A cheap and good
option for Municipalities would be to copy The Selectio Helvetica (SH) project, a Swiss software/protocol
that allows identifying and voting in elections and referendums through the Internet in a safe (free of
falsification), private and easy way.
Referendums: referendum is defined as process in which people can decide about some issues and laws.
One particular type of referendum with good results is “participative budgets”, where people decide about
the destination of one part of the budget. Referendums are popular in some democracies, but are forgotten
in other ones. Some politicians argue that the participation is/would-be very low, so it has no sense. From
our point of view, referendums are not the problem. The obstacle to participation is the procedure of those
referendums. If local institutions would change its design and the referendums, by implementing new
technologies, people would change its political culture and would be more interesting in political
participation.
Like in elections, our proposal is to start doing those referendums in local institutions -as people can get
more motivated in local issues and the economic cost is lower- through the Internet and using SH. Again,
Internet access would have to be guaranteed by the local government. But that’s not enough. The people, in
order to participate, need to know all the options the question and their possible consequences. In short,
they need political transparency.
Transparency: as we have said, political info is necessary to get successful referendums. But there is more.
Transparency is also important due to it allows exercising accountability (a quality for good democracy).
Transparency is even more important in small municipalities, where media doesn’t interfere and people
sometimes don’t know anything about their city council and politicians.
Our proposal for transparency is based on the works of Veljković, Bogdanović-Dinić, and Stoimenov,
whose study suggests that most municipalities in European Union can get high democratic performance,
with low economic cost and infrastructure (a simple computer, a free software and a person), by showing
local data bases through the Internet about following issues: Finance and Economy (government budget,
annual budget plan, income, expenditures, donations, scholarship funds, taxes and revenue, poverty,
wealth, investments) Environment (meteorological data, pollution, emissions) Health (social care,
hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies) Energy (energy consumption, energy savings, monthly energy
prices) Education (schools, faculties, students, universities, private schools, exchange programs)
Employment (percentage of employed/unemployed citizens, tracks of open positions in enterprises and
firms) Transportation (roads, maps, streets, public transport advisories, schedules) Infrastructure (plans,
roads, maps, streets, building sights, permits) Population (births, deaths, marriages, divorces). This is the
most accessible proposal to the city of Illescas due to its low cost.
Legislative initiative and responsiveness: Some political institutions don’t have enough mechanisms to
know what the necessities and desires of the people are, so they don’t act in response. In other words,
political institutions don’t exercise responsiveness (another quality for good democracies). They don’t act
following the bottom-up model, but top-down one mostly.
From our point of view, the Internet opens a possibility for those institutions to give political and legal
response to the people. One good example that local institutions as Illescas could easily follow is IREKIA
(http://www.irekia.euskadi.net/es), an initiative of Basque’s government. In IREKIA people can make
proposals and ask, to a concrete politician, something they want to know. Although these kinds of
platforms are a step, nothing promises that politicians have in count people’s proposals.
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4. Daniel de Gracia Palomera ID: 100275195
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid e-mail: 100275195@alumnos.uc3m.es
Comparative Politics 2012/2013 30/11/2012 Group 88
To remedy this lack of responsiveness, Alina Ostling suggest the creation of portals where people can
make proposals of legislatives initiatives and -this is the key- to sign those proposals digitally with
electronic identifications. Once one proposal surpasses the required legal number of (digital or not) signs, it
would enter into political institutions for its debate or it would pass directly to constitute a political
referendum. According to her, some municipalities like Brighton (UK) and Malmö (Sweden) have tried
similar systems with high acceptance.
Conclusions
As we have showed, local democratic performance may improve in Illescas by adapting municipal
institutions and their procedures to the new technologies. The actuation in those four fields for a local
participative democracy would modify people’s political behavior and would increase participation. The
result would be the solution of the current lack of legitimacy and a better accountability, responsiveness
and equality in this city; qualities that most political scientists identify with a better democracy. However,
we have also shown that in most cases the use of those new tools may introduces bias. Barber identifies
three aspects of the Internet that may cause some troubles for our proposal: its limited access, its privacy
and its oligopoly control (Barber, 2006). To address those biases and validate our idea of making a
participative democracy by changing political institutions with those technologies, Barber recommends: 1)
to freely provide people of the necessary devices (computers, Internet connection, e-identifications and e-
identifications readers); and 2) to create safety protocols and software to assurance privacy-voting and free-
fixing results (like SH). As we think, once we overcome these obstacles and institutions adapt to new-tech,
people would be highly motivated to participate and get a well legitimated and participative local
democracy
The government of Illescas has always showed its interest in democratic performance. Furthermore, the
good economic situation of this city council makes possible to follow all recommendations Barber
suggests. However, if you the governors don’t want to make an extraordinary spend, some proposals, like
the ones referred to local transparency or participative budgets, may be adopted with almost no cost and
they could easily suppose better and larger citizen participation in your local community.
References
BARBER, Benjamin (2006): ¿Hasta qué punto son democráticas las nuevas tecnologías de telecomunicación? In:
Revista de Internet, Derecho y Política Nº 3. Barcelona, U. Oberta de Catalunya.
CASTELLS, Manuel (2012): Speech at the Holberg Prize award ceremony 2012. On-line:
www.holbergprisen.no/en/manuel-castells/manuel-castells-speech-holberg-prize-award-ceremony-2012.html
[consulted 28/11/2012]
GINER, LAMO ESPINOSA and TORRES (2006): Diccionario de Sociología. Madrid, Alianza.
HABERMAS, Jürgen (1973): Problemas de legitimación en el capitalismo tardío. Madrid, Cátedra.
MANIN, Bernard (1995): La democracia de los modernos. Los principios del gobierno representativo. Chicago,
Universidad de Chicago.
OSTLING, A. (2011): How democratic is e-participation? A comparison between e-Petition and e-Parliament cases
in four European countries In: Proceedings of the International Conference for E-Democracy and Open
Government. Krems an der Donau, Edition Donau-Universität Krems.
VELJKOVIĆ, N., BOGDANOVIĆ S. and STOIMENOV L. (2011): Municipal Open Data Catalogues. In:
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