Electronic Democracy: Rhetoric and Reality

This article constitutes an attempt to assess the correspondence between rhetoric and reality in the democratic promises embedded in diverse projects of electronic democracy. It is argued that although electronic democracy projects claim to enhance information provision, deliberation and participation in decision-making opportunities for citizens, the sombre reality is that little has been done to overcome a number of structural and cultural obstacles to the realization of their democratic promises. The paper concludes that a lot needs to be done in order to broaden access to electronic democracy networks and therefore to extend democratic practices and lead to a broadened public sphere. Access to hardware and software, policies to overcome socially and culturally-conditioned technophobia for specific population groups, the creation of living public spaces, in short, finding ways in which electronic democracy can be articulated to the political sphere and everyday life and integrated to existing social and political practices of the societies which it seeks to serve are necessary conditions for socializing such projects.