Deliberative democracy and the internet: Could online deliberative democracy replace classical democracy

pages: 168-186

Abstract

This text deals with one of the attempts to make the idea of deliberative democracy more acceptable by conducting it through the Internet. Citing the simplicity of access and use of the Internet, many authors believe that it is possible to join deliberative democracy with direct democracy, and thus reach the best possible system of political decision making. It will be shown, however, that although this idea has many advantages over classical theories of deliberative democracy, it raises more issues than it solves. Despite this, the idea of online deliberative democracy should not be neglected, but rather joined with existing procedures of political decision making, significantly improving these procedures. Keywords: online deliberative democracy, internet, decision making, e-democracy