LiquidFriesland was an online platform of the LandkreisFriesland, through which a new form of Citizen participation was to be realized. What was new about LiquidFriesland was in particular the linking of forms of online democracy with the Kommunalverfassung prescribed by Landesrecht.[1] The citizen participation platform launched on November 9, 2012.
With the help of the LiquidFeedback program, the aim was to support the process of democratic will formation and decision-making. Citizens of the Friesland district were able to gain personal access to the program from the age of 16 and participate in Discourse on projects for which the district is responsible as a territorial authority, as well as in voting on these projects.
LiquidFriesland was established by the district council of the county on the initiative of Landrat Sven Ambrosy (SPD) unanimously decided. The district council resorted to a model of democracy originating in the United States, which was first discussed in Germany by parts of the Pirate Party of Germany.[2] In 2009, this discussion was the reason for the party-independent development of the software LiquidFeedback by the Public Software Group e. V.[3]
On September 3, 2015, Stephan Eisel, a staff member of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, stated that since April 10, 2015, the citizen participation platform LiquidFriesland had not registered any activities.[4] At the end of April 2016, the barely used platform was shut down.[5] On December 1, 2016, the relaunch took place. Since then, LiquidFriesland has served as the online platform of the district of Friesland, where citizens can express their suggestions, ideas and criticism.[6]
Procedure
The procedure of participation follows the rules of Liquid Democracy: Citizens can either cast their vote in votes themselves or delegate it to a person they trust in terms of Delegated Voting. This person can increase their voting weight in this way.
In the "Project Description" (see Web links), the procedure is illustrated by a concrete example:
28 citizens have registered as members of the topic 'Traffic' (and thus basically signaled interest in individual topics from this area). 15 non-members of traffic are additionally interested in the specific topic. The basic population is then 43. 5supporters/potential supporters for one of the initiatives are required to bring the entire topic (and thus all initiatives) into the discussion. In the case of the initiative quorum ('2nd quorum'), 5supporters are required in this example (provided that the population has not changed in the discussion process) in order for the respective initiative to be voted on
The original use of the software, however, was modified for LiquidFriesland: it was initially intended for the formation of wills within parties and other organizations, but not for use in municipalities. LiquidFriesland is the world's first example of such use of a Liquid Democracy tool. Second, LiquidFeedback was originally intended to enable only bottom-up will formation, as is also possible with LiquidFriesland in the form of citizen procedures. In addition, in the LiquidFriesland version of LiquidFeedback, the possibility was realized to ask citizens about projects of the administration in a top-down procedure (administrative procedure).
Legal classification
Due to the requirements of the Lower SaxonyGemeindeordnung, LiquidFriesland cannot be an instrument of a Direct democracy, i.e. it cannot replace a citizens' petition and a citizens' referendum. Only these instruments can lead to directly legally effective results, which can also override a vote of the county council. Voting results by LiquidFriesland have legally the character of a suggestion in the sense of §34 of the Lower Saxony Municipal Constitution Act in the case of citizen procedures; in the case of administrative procedures, §35 of the Act is applied analogously by obtaining opinions. However, the members of the Friesland district council assured that they would take the citizens' votes into account in their votes.
The reaction of German pirates to the LiquidFriesland project causes irritation. Janto Just ("pirate", which moved on the list "citizens for citizens" into the district council of the district Friesland) criticized at first, LiquidFriesland has nothing to do with the direct democracy striven for by it, criticized after the beginning of the project, there "romp the usual suspects"[7] and finally, at the turn of the year 2012–2013, he passed off the success of the project as the success of the Pirate Party.[8] Just's initial assessment is contradicted by large parts of his own party, calling for support for local pilot projects on digital participation modeled on LiquidFriesland.[9] For example, Christopher Lauer, parliamentary group leader of the Pirate Party in the House of Representatives of Berlin, stated as early as August 15, 2012:
The district of Friesland, for example, is just making a revolution. That's where the action is. They've launched Liquid Friesland. It's a concept that allows the citizens of this district to get totally involved online. I'm envious to say that they are the vanguard of liquid democracy in Germany. The Pirates are still lagging behind.
LiquidFriesland launched on November 9,2012.[11] In the fall of 2013, the test phase expired. By May 16,2013, 706access codes to LiquidFriesland had been sent out by the district administration. Of these, 473 were converted into active accesses. The number of users participating in the final votes was up to 50users. For citizen initiatives, the average voting participation was 22.07users, and for administrative initiatives, 27.86users. A representative of the district CDU announced at a district council meeting that it would only agree to continue the project if at least an average of 100 to 200 users regularly participated in the voting by the end of the test phase.
In May 2014, Stephan Eisel published his analysis "Liquid Friesland - a failed experiment", referring to the extremely low citizen participation in the platform and triggering heated discussions. In 2015, Eisel even assessed LiquidFriesland as an "Internet corpse."
In response to the September 2014 evaluation report, Sönke Klug, press spokesman for the district of Friesland, stated that success could not be measured by user numbers: "Around 550 people who are interested in district politics, who receive information via newsletter, are considerably more than before who actively exercise their civil rights. From our point of view, this is a great success." Apart from that, District Administrator Ambrosy had already argued in September 2013 at a meeting of the Friesland District Council that rights should not be cancelled if they were not (sufficiently) exercised. Because a democracy lives from the possibility. Its essence is that it grants rights - which one exercises or does not exercise.[12] In October 2015, the SPD/Green group in the Friesland County Council, together with County Administrator Ambrosy, announced that the LiquidFriesland platform was to be "reanimated".
Günter Hoffmann of the Wiener Zeitung pointed out in February 2015 that digital top-down procedures had proven to be a successful model (not only in the district of Friesland). This did not surprise him, he said, because participation platforms originally came from industry. There, they are used in particular by IT companies in product development to bundle the idle and partially decoupled knowledge of employees working separately and to let it flow into product development. In other companies, the software is used for greater customer integration. In this way, trends can be identified at an early stage and innovation cycles can be greatly shortened through continuous feedback, and potential errors can often be detected and corrected more quickly. This development is now also reaching those responsible in the municipalities. Every fourth authority wants to involve its citizens more in administrative decisions and is therefore investing in dialog. According to Hoffmann, small municipalities in particular want to use electronic participation platforms to improve citizen involvement in political and administrative decisions.
Participedia recommends, "To have a future and be a model for other projects of a similar nature, Friesland probably needs to look for ways to make participation attractive to other user groups and over a longer period of time." To increase the attractiveness of LiquidFriesland, all documents submitted to county council members for deliberations in public meetings will be made digitally accessible to all accredited participants starting in 2015.
The Landkreis Görlitz emphasizes in the open-ended investigation of the question of whether LiquidFriesland is a model worth imitating for it that "the analysis of already existing participation formats with regard to their degree of effectiveness as well as the involvement and qualification of the population already during the introduction of such an instrument [...] are conditions for the sustainable success of such a format".
Imitators
In February 2015, the Landkreis Rotenburg (Wümme) launched the citizens' platform ROW, modeled on LiquidFriesland; in March 2017, it was decided to abolish it and replace it with an online form in the Suggestions and Criticism section on the homepage of the district administration. At the same time, the cities of Seelze and Wunstorf activated comparable platforms.
Participatory democracy, participant democracy or participative democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected representatives. Elements of direct and representative democracy are combined in this model.
E-democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, uses information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is credited to digital activist Steven Clift. By using 21st-century ICT, e-democracy seeks to enhance democracy, including aspects like civic technology and E-government. Proponents argue that by promoting transparency in decision-making processes, e-democracy can empower all citizens to observe and understand the proceedings. Also, if they possess overlooked data, perspectives, or opinions, they can contribute meaningfully. This contribution extends beyond mere informal disconnected debate; it facilitates citizen engagement in the proposal, development, and actual creation of a country's laws. In this way, e-democracy has the potential to incorporate crowdsourced analysis more directly into the policy-making process.
Civic engagement or civic participation is any individual or group activity addressing issues of public concern. Civic engagement includes communities working together or individuals working alone in both political and non-political actions to protect public values or make a change in a community. The goal of civic engagement is to address public concerns and promote the quality of the community.
Parliamentary informatics is the application of information technology to the documentation of legislative activity. The principal areas of concern are the provision, in a form conveniently readable to humans or machines, of information and statistics about:
Voting in Switzerland is the process by which Swiss citizens make decisions about governance and elect officials. The history of voting rights in Switzerland mirrors the complexity of the nation itself. The polling stations are opened on Saturdays and Sunday mornings but most people vote by post in advance. At noon on Sunday, voting ends and the results are usually known during the afternoon.
Electronic participation (e-participation) refers to the use of ICT in facilitating citizen participation in government-related processes, encompassing areas such as administration, service delivery, decision-making, and policy-making. As such, e-participation shares close ties with e-government and e-governance participation. The term's emergence aligns with the digitization of citizen interests and interactions with political service providers, primarily due to the proliferation of e-government.
The Net Party was a political party headquartered in Argentina. The company proposes an online form of liquid democracy that it calls "net democracy" based on the Internet. Their goal is to elect representatives who will reliably vote according to what the citizenry decide online.
Liquid democracy is a form of delegative democracy, whereby an electorate engages in collective decision-making through direct participation and dynamic representation. This democratic system utilizes elements of both direct and representative democracy. Voters in a liquid democracy have the right to vote directly on all policy issues à la direct democracy; voters also have the option to delegate their votes to someone who will vote on their behalf à la representative democracy. Any individual may be delegated votes and these proxies may in turn delegate their vote as well as any votes they have been delegated by others resulting in "metadelegation".
Collaborative e-democracy refers to a hybrid democratic model combining elements of direct democracy, representative democracy, and e-democracy. This concept, first introduced at international academic conferences in 2009, offers a pathway for citizens to directly or indirectly engage in policymaking. Steven Brams and Peter Fishburn describe it as an "innovative way to engage citizens in the democratic process," that potentially makes government "more transparent, accountable, and responsive to the needs of the people."
LiquidFeedback is free software for political opinion formation and decision making, combining aspects of representative and direct democracy. Its most important feature is the implementation of a delegated voting system which is to establish a new form of political representation and participation that takes into account the knowledge disparity of its participants.
Government crowdsourcing is a form of crowdsourcing employed by governments to better leverage their constituents' collective knowledge and experience. It has tended to take the form of public feedback, project development, or petitions in the past, but has grown to include public drafting of bills and constitutions, among other things. This form of public involvement in the governing process differs from older systems of popular action, from town halls to referendums, in that it is primarily conducted online or through a similar IT medium.
The Pirate Party Berlin is the state chapter of the Pirate Party Germany in the city-state of Berlin and was the first chapter of the Pirates to enter a Landtag, getting elected to the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin in 2011. The party divides itself into so-called Crews at the local level. Work groups on specific themes are called Squads. Since 2010, the national association has used the software LiquidFeedback for intra-party decision-making.
Loomio is decision-making software and web service designed to assist groups with collaborative, consensus-focused decision-making processes. It is a free software web application, where users can initiate discussions and put up proposals. As the discussions progress to initiating a proposal, the group receives feedback through an updatable pie chart or other data visualizations. Loomio is basically a web based forum with tools to facilitate conversations and decision making processes from starting and holding conversations to reaching outcome.
Civic technology, or civic tech, enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process. It includes information and communications technology supporting government with software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits, consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working within government.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to democracy.
Online deliberation is a broad term used to describe many forms of non-institutional, institutional and experimental online discussions. The term also describes the emerging field of practice and research related to the design, implementation and study of deliberative processes that rely on the use of electronic information and communications technologies (ICT).
Pia Mancini is an activist and technical project leader from Argentina. She is co-founder of Democracy Earth and Open Collective. The latter is a project that facilitates open source code contributors to receive donations.
The World Forum for Democracy is a gathering each November in Strasbourg, France to debate the complex challenges facing democracies today and foster democratic innovation. The Forum is hosted by the Council of Europe and brings together members of civil society, political leaders and representatives of business, academia, media and professional groups. Past editions have revolved around themes such as "Bridging the gap: democracy between old models and new realities", "Re-wiring Democracy: connecting institutions and citizens in the digital age" and "From participation to influence: can youth revitalise democracy?".
Politics and technology encompasses concepts, mechanisms, personalities, efforts, and social movements that include, but are not necessarily limited to, the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs). Scholars have begun to explore how internet technologies influence political communication and participation, especially in terms of what is known as the public sphere.
As of 2015, over 1,500 instances of participatory budgeting (PB) have been implemented across the five continents. While the democratic spirit of PB remains the same throughout the world, institutional variations abound.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
