Here is some research that has struck our fancy as of late
Participation in the democratic process has declined substantially since the 1960s. Mirroring
this decline is a trend towards technocracy in government. As debate gives way to rationalist government based on scientific and managerial decision-making, citizens are increasingly excluded from involvement in deciding their own futures. Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) offer a relatively low-cost way for citizens to express their own views and sustain democratic discourses. However, ICT access is not ubiquitous and many still lack the skills to be effective users. This article presents a five-stage model for increasing community engagement through the effective use of ICT, and in particular the Internet, with implications for both policy makers and practitioners. Underpinning this model is the assumption that ICT has significant potential to be harnessed by communities and citizens in order to counter prevailing hegemonic discourses of technocracy, returning citizens to the centre of democratic debate.
Transparency, Publicity, Accountability – The missing links
In the terminology of principal-agent theory transparency is a means by which the ‘principal’ controls that its ‘agent’ does not engage in ‘agency-shirking’ (i.e. pursues policies which promote its own interests rather than the interests of the principal). This article argues that the growing social science research on transparency and agency behavior should avoid assuming an automatic link in this respect. Just adopting the common sense notion that ‘if people can see what is going on, elite actors will have to shape up their acts’ may be misleading. Rather the causal link is subject to two conditions: First, in order for transparency to alleviate agency shirking the information made available must also reach and be taken in by the principal—what I will call publicity. Secondly, in order to affect agency behavior the principal must also have some kind of sanctioning mechanism in its hands—i.e. a possibility of accountability. In order to be able to account for these conditions researchers must distinguish between the concepts of transparency, publicity and accountability. Below I will show how not making these distinctions have lead scholars to draw misleading conclusions about the significance of transparency in two high profile policy issues— the fight against corruption and the question of central bank accountability.
Online Behavioral Advertising and Deceptive Campaign Tactics: Policy Issues by
Nichole Rustin-Paschal
This Essay examines a set of emerging problems in election law—the increased use of online behavioral advertising to target voters, the failure of the law to address deceptive campaign tactics, and the convergence of these two issues in an Internetbased society.
Internet voting, security and privacy by Jeremy Epstein
Internet voting is an appealing concept to most voters, primarily for reasons of
convenience (“why can’t I vote in my pajamas at a convenient time”), while appealing
because of the attractiveness of technology. However, Internet voting is fundamentally
different from other types of online transactions such as banking or shopping. In this
Article, I describe different types of Internet voting, the advantages and disadvantages
from a security and privacy perspective, and provide perspective on the history and
evolution of the field.
