Web-Based Participatory Democracy: Findings from Italy - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 79

by Italian public powers. Let us start with basic information: Over the last 20 years,
the economic crisis, the corruption scandals, and the government's inability to make
structural reforms have fuelled anger and public demands for a voice in all levels of
decision making. According to the Istituto Cattaneo , an Italian think-tank devoted
to political analysis, the number of political parties' official supporters has halved
in the last 50 years. In 1955, there were an estimated 4.2 million political support-
ers. In 2012, the number of supporters for the four major parties (PdL, PD, Sel,
and LegaNord) did not reach 2 million combined. Citizens' alienation from political
parties—a trend that increased strongly after the judiciary intervened against politi-
cal corruption during the mani pulite (clean hands) campaign in the 1990s—also
negatively affected participation in not-for-profit and social associations. As 14% of
the adult population (7 million people) are currently active in volunteering (50% of
them at least once a week), their number has registered a constant decline. Almost 1
of 2 (43%) Italians is not socially engaged in any way, whereas another 17% declare
no interest in the public sphere (ACLI-IRES, 2006). Even the number of subscribers
to consumerism association has decreased by 16% since 2010 (I-Com, 2014).
To counter such phenomena, political parties born in the aftermath of the 2008
economic crisis as well as public administrators have progressively turned commu-
nication from a centralized and top-down approach into a bottom-up, and inclu-
sive, approach. The former has relied heavily on “digital inclusiveness” as a means
of protest against traditional politics and its apparatus. Public administrations, in
turn, have invested in developing digital participation as a form of “social report-
ing” or as an attempt to empower people to debate policy proposals.
The examples are numerous. The 5 Stars Movement (M5S), a grassroots ini-
tiative led by comedian-turned-activist Beppe Grillo, has strongly promoted the
idea of a web democracy, in which every citizen gets the chance to play an active
part in public decision making. In July 2013, the M5S introduced the “electronic
Parliament” platform (named “Five Star Parliament”), which enables citizens to
vote, comment, and even write pieces of legislation. These initiatives, however,
remain primarily confrontational protest movements. Although they mobilize hun-
dreds of thousands of people for their purpose, in contrast with “public participa-
tion,” they explicitly distance themselves from the political domain.
The M5S electronic Parliament was launched just weeks after 15 members of
the Italian Parliament had unveiled their own interactive platform, Tu Parlamento .
Few months prior, the government, led by Mario Monti, had attempted to build
up a relationship with the public through deliberative strategies like public con-
sultations and the introduction of the “Dialogue with Citizens.” The latter was
an entirely web-based experiment of participatory democracy aimed at gathering
feedback about specific initiatives and designed to address citizens' questions and
requests (and feature their voices in decision-making processes). Further, Italian
public administrations have increasingly used public online polls to consult citizens
about issues of particular importance. More than 16 online consultations were held
between January 2012 and January 2014. In April 2014, the government announced