
7. Conclusion
This research paper has argued that the crisis of liberal democracy cannot be blamed on the development and prevalence of digital technology, as is sometimes asserted or more often implied. Rather, the crisis has deeper causes about which there is little consensus, with views dependent on normative assumptions about democracy that are ultimately political. Nevertheless, it is clear that digital technology is transforming society, and in particular the public sphere, in ways that are not yet fully understood. The development of technology should not be seen as an irresistible force that cannot be shaped. At the same time, attempts to harness digital innovations in democracy will necessarily take place under conditions of uncertainty.
Digital technology is still relatively new, and European societies are only at the beginning of figuring out how to adapt to it. Moreover, adaptation to technological change is an ongoing process. As technology continues to evolve and its development perhaps accelerates in the coming decades, the way in which democracy functions will need to be updated accordingly. Above all, this will be a challenge for electoral and media regulators, who will need to maintain the state’s ability to hold fair and free elections and to guarantee the existence of meaningful political discourse. They will also need to be careful not to overreach – the expansion of the power of unelected institutions in recent decades may have contributed to the current crisis.
At present, there is much discussion about how to regulate political campaigning on digital platforms.158 But because little conclusive evidence exists about the impact of social media on democracy, there is also little agreement on how exactly digital campaigning can and should be regulated. In particular, attention currently focuses on how to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation through social media.159 But even to decide which content should be categorized as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ is a challenge. It is also far from clear that much apparently populist content can or should be reduced to factually incorrect information or lies. Another important issue that is attracting attention is how to balance freedom of expression with the need to protect individuals from hate speech.160
In response to public pressure, social media companies have begun to take various steps to regulate political content on their platforms. Twitter has banned political advertising altogether – though how exactly to define ‘political’ in this context, and whether removing such advertising is good or bad from a democratic standpoint, remains unclear. Google has restricted ‘micro-targeting’, which is the targeting of advertisements at users based on their political affiliation or interests. This step has been welcomed by the US Federal Election Commission but criticized by political campaigns, which say that the restriction does not deal with the real problem of disinformation (much of which does not use micro-targeting) and that it penalizes campaigns that use micro-targeting in a legitimate way.161
To some extent it is inevitable that regulation will always be playing catch-up as technology develops. But there is also a need for a regulatory framework designed to shape future innovation: to ‘regulate things and products that do not exist yet’, as the former European commissioner for research, science and innovation, Carlos Moedas, puts it.162 There is already much discussion of how to ensure that AI develops in a ‘human-centric’ or socially responsible way – often revolving around maintaining the ‘human-in-the-loop’ principle. The European Commission has published guidelines for ethical AI.163 However, it is not clear if these can be enforced, especially for AI development outside the EU. A specific concern is the possibility that bias on gender or racial lines could be embedded in future algorithms.
Exactly what form regulation should take, either for existing technology such as social media or in respect of future technologies, is beyond the scope of this research paper. But as important as the issue of regulation is, and however the difficult questions around it are ultimately resolved, it is clear that it will not be enough on its own to tackle the crisis of liberal democracy. Moreover, technology itself could be part of the solution – whether in helping to revitalize parties, as discussed in Chapter 5, or in developing the alternative forms of democracy discussed in Chapter 6. Yet as this research paper has emphasized throughout, there are no simple solutions.
Therefore, in the spirit of what has been called ‘democratic experimentalism’,164 Europeans should be open to trying different forms of democracy. In this sense, the wide variety of political institutions and processes that exist in Europe (as examined in Chapter 4) constitute an advantage for reform prospects rather than a disadvantage. Rather than seeking to make Europe more homogenous, policy ideas and innovation should concentrate on maintaining this diversity. There is a particular need for experimentation with direct and deliberative democracy, and for further evaluation of how these formats can be integrated into the existing institutions and processes of representative democracy at the local, regional, national and EU levels.
We should not think of democracy in a static way – that is, as a system that can be perfected once and for all and then simply maintained and defended against threats.
Experimentation should proceed carefully and cautiously. The political systems of European countries function holistically, and therefore an element of democracy such as a referendum or citizens’ assembly that works well in one system may be ineffective or even disastrous when introduced into another. It may be possible to identify aspects of best practice that are transferable. But it may also be that experimentation produces findings of use only for the specific context in which the experiment has taken place. In short, advocates of reform should be open-minded and prepared to change course where necessary. This may be a particular challenge for the EU, because European integration is conceived as a one-way process and therefore makes the EU more path-dependent than other polities.
Perhaps most importantly, we should not think of democracy in a static way – that is, as a system that can be perfected once and for all and then simply maintained and defended against threats. Democracy has continually evolved since its emergence in the 18th century, in particular with the gradual extension of the franchise to groups, including women, that had previously been excluded. One way to think about the current crisis is that another moment may have arrived that requires democracy to evolve. In particular, citizens may now be demanding a kind of democracy that is more responsive than the current representative model. The solution is thus not to limit democracy, for example in response to the threat from perceived populism, but to deepen it further in what Claus Offe has called the ‘democratization of democracy’.165