Photo: Nick Youngson. All rights reserved. CC BY-SA 3.0
Digital society has had an impact on all political processes. So, it should come as no surprise to discover that new applications and methodologies aiming at improving the democratic system from different perspectives are currently available. The time is right for them. Stemming from a representation and legitimacy crisis affecting institutions and parties, citizen demands have led governments to try and open new paths through which to channel these demands. They have also driven citizens to design and build their own tools to improve governance. This process is known as citizen empowerment from digitization.
Two elements contribute to this empowerment. First, the political crisis, which is due to a combination of factors: the collateral damages of the global economic crisis, the increase in inequality as a consequence of globalization, and the structural wear of western democracies which, in many cases, have been incapable of updating themselves to respond to the new social and technological reality, nor of designing control tools to deal with corruption cases or political cooptation by the traditional parties.
