The Ditchley Foundation has invited me to take part in one of their conferences under the general topic of Democracy and the Power of the Individual, taking place in Ditchley Part, 3-5 February 2011. The aim of the conference is that the participants debate around the impact of Information and Communication Technologies onto democracy and democratic forms of participation and engagement, including governance. There will be three main discussion lines:
- Democracy and social change, dealing about democratic systems and the ongoing social changes in the Information Society, engagement, how and why people participate, etc.
- The health of institutions, that is, whether institutions are of any value nowadays, how should they be changed or how should day accommodate to the pace of new forms of participation, what is the role of governments and political parties, etc.
- The international environment, to reflect on how globalization affects the exercise of democracy, how human rights and citizen liberties are transformed, what happens with political jurisdictions, etc.
Though participants are not required to prepare any kind of material, I have tried to sort some of my ideas on those topics — which, in many ways, are a follow up (or actually a “prequel”) of what I presented in my keynote at the 4th International Conference on eDemocracy 2010 (EDem10) in Krems last Spring.
So, what follows is my “position paper” for the conference and the aforementioned keynote speech for anyone to downdoad, read and, hopefully, commment.
Empowerment and Governance in the Information Society
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