Raphaël Kies

Promises and Limits of Web-deliberation

Does the increasing usage of online political forums lead to a more deliberative democracy? This book answers to this question by presenting the evolution of the public spaces in a historical perspective, by defining and operationalizing the deliberative criteria of democracy, and by measuring and evaluating the impact of virtualization of the political debates under threes perspectives. It looks at the extent to which different categories of the population debate online, it looks at the categories of actors hosting online political forum, and it assesses the quality of the online political debates in different contexts. The final aim of this work is to provide a more balanced evaluation of the impact of virtualization of the political debates and to enrich the evolving deliberative theory with new findings.

Remote Voting via the Internet

This chapter focuses on the pilot-project of introducing e-voting in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. The case study provides for some illuminating insights that may be applicable to other political contexts. It addresses the wider policy context, the legal framework and the most salient technical issues, as well as some of the major socio-political issues that have been raised during this key implementation phase.