The Future of Democracy in Europe
By: Vladan Lausevic
Tags: European Union, Populism, Politics, Democracy, Europe

Technology, social media and digitalisation

The question of the role of technology in the crisis adds yet another layer of complexity. The paper states that much of what is written about the role of technology in the crisis of liberal democracy is flawed because it does not make explicit its assumptions about the nature of the crisis, or about how liberal democracy ought to function.

In 2010, there was much discussion of what Larry Diamond, the editor of the Journal of Democracy, called “liberation technology” where new digital tools, he wrote, would empower citizens to “report news, expose wrongdoing, express opinions, mobilize protest, monitor elections, scrutinize government, deepen participation, and expand the horizons of freedom”. In short, digital technology was seen as being on the side of democracy, which would help consolidate and deepen.

For example, the role of social media in the Arab Spring a year later seemed to confirm this view of digital technology as a liberating force. Still, in recent years, however, this optimism has given way to pessimism as utopian thinking about digital technology has been replaced by dystopian thinking.

In particular, since the decision by the British people to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016, technology has become widely seen as a threat to democracy. Social media became often described as a vehicle for disinformation rather than as a way to democratize information and expose the truth. It is also often seen as a factor in the rise of populism and as a cause of democratic deconsolidation. In short, digital technology is now widely seen as a driver of the crisis of liberal democracy.

Although the idea of ‘liberation technology’ was based mainly on the effect that social media seemed to be having in authoritarian states, it was also hoped that social media would act as a positive force in consolidated democracies by informing and engaging citizens. In particular, it was hoped that social media would ‘enable greater access to information, facilitate collective organizing, and empower civil society’. Social media has indeed enabled much greater participation in politics, particularly by young people.

The paper also states that in particular, it is widely believed that social media has contributed to the emergence of a “post-truth” politics and is argued that social media “increases volume and speed of information flow and the relative volume of opinion over fact” and thus leads to what has been called “truth decay”. Meaning that social media ‘makes it possible for disinformation and misleading information to spread quickly and widely — and thus feeds Truth Decay by enabling the blurring of the line between information and fact and magnifying the relative volume and effect of opinions and beliefs over objective facts”.

Also, it frequently claimed that social media is creating polarization resulting in the formation of ‘tribes’ who share a sense of struggle and grievance and leaders who are unable to reach the kind of compromises necessary to the functioning of liberal democracy. However, though these arguments about social media polarization have become widely accepted, they are based on limited evidence. Moreover, they are based on the assumption that polarization in politics is itself a problem.

As stated, a more persuasive argument is that the effect of social media is to empower all kinds of outsiders rather than populists as such. Mounk argues that social media closes the technological gap between insiders and outsiders and thus reduces the advantage that elites previously had in shaping political discourse. Thus social media favours change over the status quo and the forces of instability over the forces of order. “In empowering outsiders, digital technology destabilizes governing elites all over the world and speeds up the pace of change,” Mounk writes.

Another critique of social media is that it is contributing to democratic deconsolidation. According to this view, people may be becoming impatient with democracy because it is too “analogue”. But if technology has in this sense contributed to this crisis of liberal democracy, it may also have a role in enabling its reconsolidation. For example, there has been much discussion of the potential of digital technology to facilitate democratic participation.

However, even if there is little conclusive evidence that digital technology has contributed to the current crisis of liberal democracy, this does not mean that it could not threaten democracy in the future. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) based on big data and machine learning could take such manipulation even further. For example, some governments have already begun to ‘nudge’ citizens towards healthier or more environmentally friendly behaviour.

Some thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari go even further and speculate that the development of AI could ultimately lead to the end of the human agency upon which democracy depends. “Under such conditions, liberal democracy and free-market economics might become obsolete” Harari writes. In particular, he argues, AI could lead to a shift in the relative efficiency of democracies and dictatorships.

A final, more indirect way in which technology could challenge democracy in future is through the effect of automation on work and thus on income inequality. Automation promises to increase productivity and efficiency and to create new jobs. Still, it also threatens huge disruption that could displace workers and lead to changes in the occupational, sectoral and skills-based composition of employment, as well as in the level and distribution of wages.

The next wave of automation is relevant to the future of democracy in Europe because of its potential to widen inequality. At the same time, a certain degree of economic equality is commonly seen as a precondition of democracy — which is why levels of inequality in many European countries are such a problem. This connection between equality and democracy goes according to the paper to the Greek concept of isonomia — “equality of political rights”. The degree and kind of equality needed for a functioning democracy are debatable where different countries within Europe may have different levels of tolerance of inequality.