Writing about the future of democracy

Democracy in the digital age

Victor Angelo

 

The Association for the Promotion and Development of the Information Society (APDSI), a civic institution that has contributed over the years to the growth of cybernetics in Portugal, organizes today, at the Convento da Arrábida, a reflection on democracies in the digital age. In other words, a debate on the future of the exercise of political power in the face of extraordinarily rapid advances in the area of ​​information technologies, which will further deepen the era of the instantaneous, as I call the period we live in.

Immediate access to information without reference to context, the abundance of data available at any given time, the truth in competition with the false, advances in artificial intelligence, all this will end up jeopardizing political representation as we know it. It could also seriously undermine the credibility of institutions of governance, the administration of justice, representation and the media, and create new opportunities for manipulating citizen opinion.

As always, it will be the question of control of power that will be at stake. It is only the technologies and methods of achieving this end that change. About ninety years ago, extremists mobilized populations thanks to the adroit use of broadcasting. Now, it is about the ingenious use of digital platforms and the repetition ad infinitum of what is convenient for those who hold authority or want to come to power, regardless of the veracity of what is told. This creates a biased reality, which in politics serves two objectives: the destruction of the adversary's integrity and image; and the consolidation of power in the hands of those who appropriated it. This appropriation, in our western democracies, takes place first through elections and then through the manipulation of information and mirror games. Viktor Orbán is a concrete example, among many. He knows that being in power and losing the elections should only happen to the naive.

The accessibility of digital platforms makes them fertile ground for the propagation of populist ideas. These movements, built around a leader who combines charisma, enthusiasm and personality cult with simplistic slogans, have at their disposal, in this digital age, the means that allow them to massively explore three lines of political action. One, which involves the creation and amplification of collective fears that later use as banners of struggle. Another is the discrediting of institutions and opponents, who are demonized as “professional politicians”. And the third, which tries to subvert constitutional principles by resorting to popular referendums on fracturing issues, using reductive questions, drafted in a biased way.

All this calls into question representative democracy. Even more easily, when democratic practice came to depend on and be dominated by the leader of each major party and parliamentary representation lost its meaning, as it resulted only from personal loyalty and unreserved flattery. There is, therefore, no connection between the deputy and his constituency, at a time when social networks promote exactly the opposite and make everything more personal and direct. This results in a growing disconnect between the voter and the elected, which explains a good part of the apathy that many citizens feel towards electoral processes. Paradoxically, a higher level of information, made possible by digital networks, leads many to abstain, as they do not identify with the ready-to-vote menus of choices made by the parties.

Another phenomenon linked to the abundance of information has to do with political fragmentation. Through social networks, each person tends to identify with only a small circle that thinks the same way and ends up closing themselves in this round of contacts. This leads to the proliferation of opinion movements. In the future, governance will have to take this trend into account. In other words, it will no longer be possible to govern effectively with 50% of the electorate plus one. I am convinced that broader and relatively disparate coalitions will emerge, but necessary to guarantee the representation of various segments of society and governmental stability. The digital revolution will eventually shake up the conventional political scene.

(Automatic translation of the opinion piece I published in the Diário de Notícias, the old and prestigious Lisbon newspaper. Edition dated 6 May 2022)