Additional arguments specific to the electronic medium include issues of security and privacy. The articles in this special section present a more inclusive view of e-democracy. The argument is that the role of the electronic medium in the democratic system extends far beyond electronic town hall meetings and polling. The use of ICT permeates most activities related to societal planning, governance, and political organization, including organization in the civil society, which means using ICT also has implications for working democracy in representative systems. Therefore, to understand the role of ICT in the working process of the democratic system, e-democracy research should be framed in a context encompassing all aspects of the system.
Democracy needs good citizens and good institutions.
From this perspective, democracy can be illustrated as a large business occupying thousands of professionals of different specialties working in different fields of numerous processes concerned with passing proposals from the stage of ideas to the stage of operation. This includes activities of research, planning, implementation, administration, evaluation, decision making, propaganda, communication, and many other issues of which public debate is only a small part. We can see democracy as a connected set of activities making up a whole, much like we do in the business area. Electronic government is then parallel to business administration with the important difference of having a democratic key signature. Though the Internet is still not the predominant medium for politics, its importance increases by the day.