Abstract
Is a Cyber Democracy the future of a democratic society? Always new scandals from the virtual world, also known as Cyber Crimes, or occurrences registered in the context of the supervision and spying of the population make out of the Cyber Democracy a very questionable democratic project for the future. With the perspective of today it seems almost impossible to ensure the needed security levels, which a Cyber Democracy would require for the participation, the competition, the freedom and the equality in the virtual world of the Internet. Following this a Cyber Democracy appears at this point in time not to be the future of democracies. However, the Cyber Democracy can be a very useful additional tool to share political information and knowledge with the population. This knowledge and information system in the form of a Cyber Democracy should according to our opinion not serve as the basis for the selection of political parties or the conducting of public opinion polls, but as a valuable tool for the civic education. In the digital era facing increasing information overload this will help the people to find orientation in the political environment, to support the formation of opinions and to allow and support the political education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Democracy Ranking is an annual study of democracy (see, Campbell et al. 2012), which is undertaking a global investigation of democracies: In this study states are investigated, who have a population of at least 1,000,000 inhabitants and are classified by Freedom House as “free” or “partly free”. Although the Russian Federation, Yemen, China, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria were classified by Freedom House as “not free” they were integrated from the year 2012 as exceptions in the new ranking of 2012 (The goal is, to identify, where these states are classified in respect of democracy and the quality of democracy). The ranking is defined by the fundamental theory of democracy by Guillermo O’Donnell and regards democracy as a total product of “human rights” (as freedom) and “human development” (see O’Donnell 2004; Campbell and Barth 2009). The investigations in this annual study of democracy analyse the political system´s quality and degree of democracy, the economy, the health system, the education system and the protection of environment. The ranking is a civil society project and is created by the Vienna Democracy Ranking Association: The aim of the Association is to measure countries in a neutral and empirical way. Initiator of this project is Sàndor Hasenöhrl, an entrepreneur from the computer and software industry (read more on: www.democracyranking.org).
References
Barth TD (2011) The idea of a green new deal in a Quintuple Helix Model of knowledge, know-how and innovation. Int J Soc Ecol Sustain Dev 2(1) (http://www.igi-global.com/article/idea-green-new-deal-quintuple/51633)
Barth TD (2013) Freedom, equality and the quality of democracy: democratic life in the United States, Australia, Sweden and Germany. Int J Soc Ecol Sustain Dev 4(1) (http://www.igi-global.com/article/freedom-equality-quality-democracy/77345)
Campbell DFJ, Barth TD (2009) Wie können Demokratie und Demokratiequalität gemessen werden? Modelle, Demokratie-Indices und Länderbeispiele im globalen Vergleich. SWS-Rundschau 49(2):208–233 (http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/wiho/downloads/campbell_u._barth-demokratiemessung-sws_rundschau-heft_2009_02-FINAL.pdf)
Campbell DFJ, Pölzlbauer P, Barth TD, Pölzlbauer G (2012) Democracy ranking 2012: the quality of democracy in the World: method and ranking outcome. Comprehensive scores and scores for the dimensions. Democracy ranking, Vienna. (http://democracyranking.org/wordpress/?page_id=392)
Carayannis EG, Barth TD, Campbell DFJ (2012) The Quintuple Helix Innovation Model: global warming as a challenge and driver for innovation. J Energ Innovat Enterpren 1(1):1–12 (http://www.innovation-entrepreneurship.com/content/pdf/2192-5372-1-2.pdf)
Diamond L, Morlino L (2005) Introduction, ix–xliii. In: Diamond L, Morlino L (eds) Assessing the quality of democracy. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD
Peter F (2003) Chapter 21—cyber-democracy. In: Axtmann R (ed) Understanding democratic politics: an introduction. SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA, Pub. date: 2003, Online Pub. Date: May 31, 2012. doi:10.4135/9781446220962. Print ISBN: 9780761971832. Online ISBN: 9781446220962
Klein A, Vöhringer B, Krcmar H (1999) Cyberdemocracy—eine politische chance (http://www.winfobase.de/lehrstuhl/publikat.nsf/intern01/076790EF7CDE06A84125686C002CCFCD/$FILE/99-19.pdf)
Lincoln A, Chittenden LE (2009) Abraham Lincoln’s speeches. General Books (http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Abraham-Lincolns-Speeches/Abraham-Lincoln/9781175395603)
O’Donnell G (2004) Human development, human rights, and democracy, 9–92. In: O’Donnell G, Cullell JV, Iazzetta OM (eds) The quality of democracy. Theory and applications. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barth, T.D., Schlegelmilch, W. (2014). Cyber Democracy: The Future of Democracy?. In: Carayannis, E., Campbell, D., Efthymiopoulos, M. (eds) Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy and Cyber-Defense. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1028-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1028-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-1027-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-1028-1
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)