Post-conflict in Colombia (5). ICTs and citizen participation

In
the first agreements reached in Havana, the Colombian government and the FARC
have openly expressed their intention to promote citizen participation in the process
of peace building. The issues on which agreement was reached – comprehensive
rural reform, political participation, illegal drug trafficking, and the
victims – highlighted the importance of citizen involvement. The agreements
recognized that the “construction of peace is a matter for society as a whole
that requires the participation of all, without distinction, including other
guerrilla forces which we are inviting to join in” (General
Agreement, 2012, page 1).

The agreements consider the contribution
of communities in issues ranging from the drawing of local plans and programs –
like the Development Plans with a Territorial Focus – as well as the
surveillance, monitoring and control of their execution. They regard citizen
participation as a complementary control mechanism of public administration and
the system of political representation. Consequently, the peace process gives the
strengthening of democracy a chance through the direct involvement of citizens.

It will not be
possible to take advantage of this opportunity and stick to the intentions
expressed in the agreements, however, if we fail to recognise the challenges
that this citizen involvement in public affairs raises in today’s world and do
not define the public sphere accordingly. This implies, among other things,
taking into account the contribution of recent democratic innovations,
especially those which exploit the potential of ICTs, in order to close the gap
between citizens and the state.

The challenges of citizen
participation in representative democracies

Our contemporary
world has been described as an arena of fragmented relationships, empty public
spaces, flexible social ties, and individuals who treasure their own time and pace.
An arena where, according to Ken Newton (2012), more direct and individualized forms
of participation prevail, quite different from the formal and traditional
structures, and where citizens are less willing to invest huge amounts of time
discussing public issues, and to commit themselves to changing them under current
formats.

The dissonance between this kind of participation and the rigid
structures of democratic political systems is instrumental in what many experts
have diagnosed as a crisis of representative democracy. The high levels of
abstention at elections, the low level of confidence in public institutions,
the decrease in the membership of organizations, and the apathy regarding
public affairs, all help to confirm and spread the idea of a weakened democracy
where the gap between government and citizens is wider than ever.

In the case of Colombia, the data published by the Latin
American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and the Social Capital Barometer (Barcas)
support these claims. According to LAPOP, in 2014, only 9.6% of the population attended
one local government meeting in the previous 12 months, and the average level
of trust in local government scored between 40.1 and 45 on a scale of 0 to 100.

Regarding civic engagement, Barcas reveals a decrease
in the percentage of citizens involved in voluntary activities between 2005 and
2011, and a decrease in the membership of secular, particularly agrarian and
rural organizations. Similarly, political participation is diminishing due to
lower citizen involvement in bodies such as the rural development councils, the
citizen oversight boards, town hall open meetings, and the territorial planning
councils.

Responding to this
situation, state modernization and transformation projects undertaken by some
Western countries have focused on the promotion and strengthening of direct
citizen involvement in public affairs. But the assumption of this challenge and
the vindication of the place of democratic practices in everyday life requires,
in the first place, the overcoming of the notion of citizen participation as a face-to-face,
binding, deliberative, highly informed and complex affair, capable of engaging allegedly
motivated citizens. In this sense, it is important to imagine other ways to
involve citizens – more practical, less costly and complex, more connected to
the challenges facing public institutions, clearer and more transparent in
their purposes and scope.

How have ICTs changed the ways in which the state and citizens
relate to each other?

ICTs have changed the dynamics through which
individuals relate to each other on a daily basis. It is thus not surprising
that they be thought of as a means to alter the relationship between citizens
and their governments and institutions. Experts like Archon Fung have found
that as new channels of communication are being opened, their use in this field
can change the way in which citizens influence the public sphere, and the way in
which they interact with one another, with the organizations that represent
them, their government and public institutions.

Despite the fact that very little evaluation has carried
out on the effects of these tools in promoting citizen involvement, it is clear
that they have the potential to modify the relationship dynamics between the state
and the citizens. They affect the balance of power between them insofar as they
make citizens less dependent on institutional channels to make their voices
heard. They also give them the chance to have a more active and direct role in
public affairs.

What ICTs do is open up new communication channels and
pathways to access information: they reduce the spatial and temporal
limitations of face-to-face interaction; they modify the social capital requirements;
they ease contact between strangers; and they allow new and diverse ways in
which people can express their opinion and preferences.

Here are some
examples of the use of ICTs in the kind of context we are dealing with here: the
digital participatory city-council budgeting in Belo Horizonte and Rio Grande
do Sul, in Brazil; the World Bank monitoring and tracking system through Ontrack text messages in Bolivia,
Uganda, Tanzania and Nepal; the online deliberative processes promoted by local
governments in Germany and Italy; 3D role-playing games used for planning
development and urban renewal exercises in the US; and the Peer-to-Patent Project and other governmental crowd-funding
initiatives.

Citizen participation, ICTs and peace building

Overcoming more than
fifty years of armed conflict, reaching national reconciliation, and preventing
the reproduction of new cycles of violence requires the recognition of the
effects that these phenomena have had on our culture, and tackling them. It requires
making the decision to start a process of deep transformation of the ways in
which we relate to each other.

Digital platforms,
mobile apps, and multiple communication channels which make access to
information and two-way interaction possible, allow citizens to come to know,
dialogue and interact with other world visions. Since the Colombian conflict
affected the possibility of dialogue between the different sides, a part of the
challenge of peace building and participation has to do with opening spaces that can
contribute to the recognition of differences, and with identifying
converging and diverging points within the framework of collective building
processes.

The launching of
digital platforms can be an interesting way to promote the initial encounter between
groups, people, or actors who, because of their conflict history and the mutual
depictions that derive from it, may be reluctant to engage in face-to-face interaction.
Role-playing games like Participatory
Chinatown show the way in which technology contributes to the strengthening
of empathic reasoning, and to changing initial preferences for the sake of collective
well-being.

The challenges

While the role of digital tools in designing
strategies and spaces to promote citizen involvement cannot be denied, it is
obvious that the task cannot be carried out on the basis of false precepts and
naïve perceptions.

Three key
elements are relevant in the case of Colombia:

Institutional changes

One of the
main reasons for dissatisfaction with the participation spaces is the low level
of interaction between citizens and the state, which is something that depends far
less on digital tools and technological innovation, and much more on the design
of public management systems capable of offering quality answers to citizen
demands. In order to launch effective processes of participation, both in
face-to-face or virtual scenarios, governments must be clear about the ways in
which the benefits derived from these processes will contribute to
decision-making.

It is also
necessary to make progress in incorporating citizen participation as a basic
element in the modus operandi of
governmental agencies, and in spreading the notion that participation is both practical
and useful, and an effective and legitimate means to work on building the
public sphere.

Inclusiveness

One of the very
few studies available about the impact of ICTs on the development of
participatory processes, by Tiago Peixoto, concludes that these tools do not
necessarily promote the inclusion of the vulnerable or traditionally excluded
populations. On the contrary, ICTs seem to be more effective in including traditionally
non-participatory segments within the “privileged” groups – better educated and
better positioned in society.

This is
important, for we must think about ICTs from a perspective that includes a
whole range of media, from TV and radio to more sophisticated mobile devices
such as smart phones. Unless we do it, the use of ICTs to promote citizen
involvement dynamics will end up contributing to the reproduction of the same inequalities
that must be altered.

From the
perspective of the Colombian juncture, it is also essential to defend that
peace building is not only the responsibility of the vulnerable populations.
ICTs are an option to attract segments of the population which, even if not highly
affected by the conflict, have a lot to say in the collective challenge of
overcoming half a century of armed conflict. We need to think about mobilising
them for the endorsement of the agreements, which will require massive support
from all Colombian citizens, not only those living in war zones.

Reconciliation

The use of
ICTs has the potential to both claim and neutralise identities, and it can also
contribute to either collective construction or polarization, depending on the
devices used and their reach. Therefore, reconciliation must be present as a
criterion for the design of both face-to-face and virtual spaces and interaction
tools.

Choosing the most suitable approach across the spectrum of possible
choices depends on the specific context, the topics to be dealt with, and the
actors who are going to express their opinions. The options range from the
opening of spaces for face-to-face interaction between the actors, to the
promotion of platforms for virtual interaction with limited access and
anonymous participation.

For instance, in places where some social actors are still at high risk,
especially regarding issues of land restitution and victims’ reparation, platforms
in which identity protection is guaranteed can be useful in the diagnosis and
prioritisation stages. Useful, that is, to the extent that digital tools can be
used for the free expression of positions and views which would be difficult to
voice in face-to-face spaces.

Finally, it is important to note that the opening of channels of
interaction between citizens and the state, and even between communities,
implies overcoming above all the fear of social conflict, and rethinking the
role of citizens in its resolution. It is necessary, therefore, to decentralise
the debate about citizen participation, and to start a proactive dialogue at
the local level on how to make digital tools play a positive role in the
relations between communities and local governments – since these are the agents
that will undoubtedly have to assume multiple responsibilities in implementing the
peace agreements.

This text
summarizes the main approaches developed in “Connected for Peace”, a document published
by Fundación Ideas para la Paz in November 2015. The document in Spanish can be
found at http://www.ideaspaz.org/publications/posts/1256.

Translated by Katie Oliver, member of
DemocraciaAbierta’s Volunteer Program