Digital democracy research that we really need

Liberal democracy is on the retreat worldwide. Only one small country is putting up resistance, Switzerland. For how much longer? Digitalisation is promoting the rise of autocracies, but can it also help the guardians of democracy?

Recently, a former student, now responsible for digitalisation in her company, asked me the question: “Why do people accept autocratic behaviour?” She did not expect an answer, but simply expressed her incomprehension about the fact that arbitrary rule is accepted – everywhere in the world, including here. Even the Romans, who once feared nothing more than a king, eventually accepted an emperor.

Autocrats are on the rise again in many more or less liberal democracies. Many complain about it, but only a few deal with it openly and without prejudice. Only in recent years have German sociologists begun to take an interest in the motivation of those voters who are voting for the end of liberal democracy.

The diagnosis is now quite clear (to put it bluntly): For the first time in 400 years, people are not expecting a better future for society, but a worse one. Although there have always been phases in the last 400 years in which optimism about the future has collapsed – and the downfall of the West has been predicted, for example – never in such a form that combines prosperity, a good life and faith in one’s own future with pessimism for society and for one’s own children’s children. It is a mixed situation that leads to the conclusion that our culture is currently in decline, just as many other cultures have declined before ours.

Autocrats almost everywhere are currently promising a return to the past, to a golden age as described in the myths of antiquity. For them and their rapidly growing number of followers, the future lies in the values of yesterday – in a world without liberal democracy, without dialogue with those who think differently, without new insights and constantly changing rules of the game.

7 demons against liberal democracy

This fascination with absolute rule is dangerous. It should be resisted. But resistance is not enough and usually even strengthens the autocrats. Liberal democracy can only be preserved by facing up to people’s dissatisfaction and confronting the role of digitalisation in anti-liberal developments. Although the dissatisfaction would probably exist even without digitalisation, digitalisation promotes and reinforces it. Here is a list of phenomena that directly or indirectly feed dissatisfaction:

• DEMOCRATIC BLOCKADE: Politics is becoming increasingly incapable of making decisions, as the consideration of all vested interests prevents solutions to problems. The internet reinforces loud individual interests, digital analyses make contradictions visible and make consensus more difficult. Even democratically decided actions are slowed down by participation rights. Digital technologies enable individuals to make campaigns look like mass movements. This seems hopeless because all of this is almost unanimously praised as progress.
• WEAKENING OF ADMINISTRATION: Administration cannot keep up with digitalisation and growing complexity and is forced to behave contradictorily: Toughness against the brave, leniency against rule-breakers, closeness to business and bureaucracy at the same time. Concepts for digital transformation exist, but are not being pursued. Despite this, efficiency gains are being invested in the expansion of controls, while progress in building a digital infrastructure for the economy is slow. The digital state looks like the Tower of Babel, and the talk about it like a portent.
• IRRESPECT OF JOURNALISM: Many media see their task as weakening governments by promoting internal conflict and external criticism. The click logic in the battle for advertising revenue justifies this economically. At the same time, major challenges are ignored or covered up with fake news. This motivates resistance to political decisions, but demotivates constructive engagement. Politics, administration and the gatekeeper function of journalism suffer in equal measure.
• FILTER BUBBLES AND INFORMATION OVERKILL: Bubbles with conspiracy theories are booming online, often united in opposition to the democratic establishment. Digital services (profiling, microtargeting, deepfakes) promote emotionalisation, division and a refusal to engage in discourse. Lies spread directly through technology and indirectly through information overload. Fact-checks against fake news spread them further themselves; AI-supported “fact-checkers” are likely to exacerbate the problem.
• DIGITAL AGGRESSION: The extensive freedom on the internet encourages hatred, frustration, anger and aggression. Previously effective, regulatory restrictions are missing. Concepts for a solution do not yet exist.
• VALUES CHAOS: The illusion of shared values is disintegrating. Children are being moulded in completely different ways depending on their parental home, and cultural divides run through the countries. Although values are experiencing a hype, they are being combined in contradictory ways. Everyday working life and private life are characterised by conflicting goals, identities are either hyped or rejected. Political discussions are taking a back seat to dissenting values. And everyone finds confirmation of their own values online, which hardens the fronts.
• LOSS OF KNOWLEDGE: Specialists are facing fundamental debates about previously established principles. Border crossers encounter narrow professional world views without questioning, reinforced by differences in values and a lack of common ground. The multitude of specialised Master’s degree courses uproots specialist discourses and forces constant preliminary negotiations. All-available knowledge and ignorance on the internet increases disorientation. We used to stand “on the shoulders of giants”, today we are weighed down by “big beautiful fakes”.

All these phenomena rob people of the desire to solve problems together and provoke increasingly selfish behaviour. Analogue rescue campaigns and digital tools will change this if, and only if, they arouse interest in discussing with those who think differently and at least partially protect people from the seven demons described above.

Communication judo, invented in computer science

To successfully combat these demons, we should think like real computer scientists. Instead of training people in communication, they have invented agile processes and DevOps and thus learnt how to undermine dysfunctionalities. They have developed new terms for communicating with management – “technical debt”, “organisational IT maturity” – and adopted the P&L language. Multi-stakeholder management does not take place for them because it is not necessary in focussed projects with few stakeholders.

With such cleverness, we should also fight the 7 demons and develop digital tools that make it fun to solve social problems politically. I hate to repeat myself, but has anyone ever tried to realise Ingolfur Blühdorn’s “Simulative Democracy”? Has anyone tried to build software that constructively manipulates discourse in a transparent way and thus creates consensus? Or software that familiarises people with the arguments of political opponents? Or help them to deal with the chaos of values? I’m afraid not. As far as I know, even the creative attempts to import agility into policymaking with policy sprints are largely pre-digital.

Admittedly, concepts such as design and architecture patterns, agility or DevOps come from the best of the best. And there are exciting concepts that never became widespread because the best of the best had no interest in them. In terms of democracy, this is not good news – given the political opinions expressed by IT stars. But perhaps it works the other way round: careers can be made by those who invent and successfully build new concepts to strengthen liberal democracy. IT history at least shows that ingenious individual initiatives and democratic community thinking are not mutually exclusive.