E-DEMOCRACY: FUNDAMENTALS AND APPLICATIONS

Abstract

As developed democracies continue to digitize basic civic functions, such as voting, and as they increasingly explore and implement other “e-democratic” initiatives, fundamental and applied questions about these policies—and their relationship to central theoretical tenets of democracy—have gone largely unaddressed. This thesis pursues these questions in three parts. In the first chapter, I explicate fundamental worries about equality accounts of democracy in e-democratic contexts, proceeding to refute the most promising equality account of democracy, Thomas Christiano’s theory of democracy as the Equal Consideration of Interests, in theoretical terms. In Chapter 2, I derive the foundations of a tenable liberty account of democracy, drawing on insights from Chapter 1, as well as Carol Gould’s account of democracy as Equal Positive Freedom. I subsequently demonstrate the advantages of a liberty account in e-democratic contexts, and explore my account’s implications for judicial review. In the final chapter, I draw on recent literature in the philosophy of trust—a relation, between citizen and state, often thought necessary for e-democratic functions—and argue that situations in which citizens are required to trust the state in order to perform core democratic functions invert the dependency relation essential to democracy, wherein the state depends upon the people, as is required of a liberty account of democracy. To restore the proper democratic dependency relation under these conditions, I propose an expanded justification for civil disobedience in e-democratic societies.