Exploring the Internet in favour of sustainable community development
The public sector is suffering far-reaching transformations due to programs of structural adjustment implemented in a lot of countries all over the world in the last decades. Whereas the consequences of these downsizing strategies had been disastrous for public service delivery in many countries like Brazil – at least in its early stage –, we can currently observe new initiatives aiming to revert this tendency. Influenced by the New Public Management Movement and by the growing popular demands for effective participation, governments are looking forward to create new partnerships with the private and the voluntary sector in order to find new ways in dealing with fiscal restrictions and guaranteeing a more efficient service delivery. In this presentation we like to reflect upon the possibilities of the new information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet, to become an important tool for the improvement of the relationship between public authorities and the local population and give support to new democratic governance arrangements, as well as to stimulate a more sustainable way of development in accordance with the necessities of local neighbourhoods. Taking as starting point the experience of the Brazilian city of Curitiba, we’ll try to show that an effective exploration of the Internet as a tool for the promotion of sustainable community development will not depend so much on the advancement of the technology itself. Decisive however will be its embeddedness in overarching strategies of administrative reform, political participation and urban development.
Urban management in a changing world
Cities all over the world are challenged by profound social, economic and political changes. Globalisation and its consequences like: (1) the policies of austerity implemented by the nation states, involving deregulation, privatisation strategies, and reduction of civil services, (2) the retraction of the state from the economic sphere, reducing possibilities of state intervention; and (3) an increasing of public sector’s dependency on decisions made by private economic agents affect urban governability, especially in the big cities of the developing world.
These recent transformations require new models of innovative management, as well as new instruments, procedures and forms of action, in order to enable public administrators to deal with the challenges of a globalised society. On the one hand, it is necessary to find quick answers and solutions to problems whose causes used to be out of the public manager’s sphere of influence. On the other hand, it is an essential task to explore and make available the chances and opportunities related to these transformations, for the benefit of both the public administrations and the population itself. In the past, urban management was basically dealing with the planning of the physical and territorial aspects of the city, the delivering of basic infrastructure and social services. The concentration on these activities has been considered indispensable for a good urban quality of life. However, and particularly in developing countries, the rural exodus and the immense population growth rates obstructed efforts to attend efficiently the demands of the growing number of urban poor. In Brazil for instance the recent social and economic transformations resulted in uncontrolled and disordered city development, deterioration of the urban environment, aggravation of social inequalities and increase of criminality and violence in the cities. The growing complexity of local decision making processes and the enhanced urban agenda – turning more relevant such policy issues as economic development, training and employment, crime prevention and public safety, transport congestion, pollution and other environmental problems – revealed the incapacity of local political and administrative institutions in dealing with the new policy challenges. It’s in this context of decreasing urban governabilty and strained budgets that local governments in the developing countries discovered, on the one hand, the discourses on "New Public Management" (NPM), "reinventing government" (OSBORNE/GAEBLER, 1998) and "good governance" (WORLD BANK, 1997, UNDP, 1997). On the other hand, ICT and the Internet are increasingly seen as fundamental allies in the search for that desired profound revolution of governance and public administration (THE ECONOMIST, 24/06/2000), that now finally seems possible with the help of these new revolutionary technologies. So what’s the right strategy seems evident, at least at first glance. As the general conditions of economic and technological development are changing dramatically, the cities need to – as far as political and social processes are concerned – implement innovative strategies in a more and more competitive climate between the cities. And indeed the public sector seems to change. New forms of interaction and co-operation are implemented on supranational and national level, but as well – and may be in an even more dynamic way – on regional and local level. And the new information and communication technology seems the right tool to ensure this new interconnectivity required by public management reform. It’s basically the increasing complexity of urban problems and less a growing consciousness concerning the democratic deficit that seems responsible for recent efforts to turn governing processes more interactive and co-operative: "Governing becomes an interactive process because no single actor has the knowledge and resource capacity to tackle problems unilaterally" (STOKER 2000: 93).
New conceptions of governance and public management
Although the theoretical conceptions of governance are manifold (HIRST 2000, and RHODES 2000) there is no doubt about a substantial shift – in urban politics as well as in urban theory – from the traditional conceptions that centred on state authority to governance approaches that highlight trends to cross-boundary management between the public sector and private or voluntary sectors. Networking and public-private partnerships are increasingly dominating political processes in the new fragmented urban world and are essential to the governance approach (STOKER 2000: 93). The governance debate is certainly related to the retraction of the state promoted by neoliberal strategies in the last two decades and the clear incapacity of the weakened public institutions in dealing efficiently with the growing urban problems, or, as Stoker put it: "Governance is ‘the acceptable face of spending cuts’" (cited in RHODES 2000: 55). This polemic affirmation reveals the ambiguity of the governance approach. On the one hand, it proposes to be a neutral approach describing the transformations that actually are going on in modern political systems, on the other hand, there are clear evidences of the ideological backgrounds of the different conceptions. Some versions of governance emphasise as main objectives the increase of efficiency and effectiveness in governmental issues, whereas others focus on the emancipatory potential inherent in new strategies of governance. The new management model of public service delivering suggested by the ‘new public management’ movement, which intend to transfer public services to agencies that are self-managing within overall policy guidelines and service targets, have as focal point the improvement of service quality, whereas the extension of participation plays only a subordinate or instrumental role (RHODES 2000: 56-7 and HIRST (2000: 18). It’s the network approach where the power dimension becomes more evident. As the co-ordination of networks depends on trust and co-operation it can be seen as an alternative mechanism for co-ordinating and allocating resources to markets, based on price competition, as well as to bureaucracies, based on administrative orders (RHODES 2000: 61). Networks depend on interdependence between agencies and actors, and the principle of self-organisation. However, there are differences concerning the assessment of state capacity of steering such networks and the degree of independence from the state that these social actors and organisations should have. From an emancipatory perspective the usage of governance "relates to the new practices of co-ordinating activities through networks, partnerships, and deliberative forums that have grown up on the ruins of the more centralised and hierarchical corporatist representation of the period up to the 1970s" (HIRST 2000: 18-9). This kind of "negotiated social governance" can be considered "a new style of governance and as a source of new experiments in democratic practice" (HIRST 2000: 19). In this perspective the governance approach can be seen as a possibility of restoring legitimacy of the political system by the creation of new channels of participation and partnerships between the public sector, and the private and voluntary sector contributing to new democratic forms of public-private interaction. In this emancipatory governance approach is given emphasise on social empowerment, the inclusion and strengthening of the powerless in the political decision making process whereas administrative efficiency is considered a subordinate objective. In general, Brazil is following the international trend that gives priority to the New Public Management approach and the idea of an entrepreneurial spirit transforming the public sector, to the detriment of the emancipatory approach of enhanced political participation. However, especially on the local government level we note in the last decade a growing number of municipalities experimenting with new forms of democratic deliberation, participative budgeting and planning, that might be the base of a possible counter-model, or at least a complementary approach, to the mainstream entrepreneurial strategy.
Strategies of electronic governance and democracy
In the last decade new challenges for public management and government related to the dissemination of ICT have emerged. In a recent special The Economist edition on e-governance the transformations caused by the dissemination of the Internet in the public sector are considered as the beginning of a profound revolution of governance and of public administration in general (THE ECONOMIST, 24/06/2000). According to the different governance and public administration conceptions mentioned before, we can distinguish as well two basic orientations of e-governance strategies, which can – or should – go hand in hand, but in practice not always do so. As ICT can improve the technical speed and efficiency of delivering many public services (DUTTON 1999: 189), the entrepreneurial approach emphasises the necessity to offer public services online on the Internet. It aims to put into practice the principle of "one-stop government". The main idea is turning available all or at least most public services from a single entry point, at any time of the day or night via PCs, public kiosks and eventually from people’s television sets. The main objective is the enhancing of administrative efficiency: "government becomes smaller, cheaper, quicker and easier to manage" (LAWSON 1998: 16). As this e-governance strategy aims at turning public administration more efficient and more responsive to citizens’ demands, ICT might contribute to augment popular legitimacy, giving support to what BELLAMY/TAYLER (1998) call "consumer democracy", where emphasis is given to "the need to empower users as direct stakeholders in the material outcomes of public administration" (91). The citizen’s or – more adequately – consumer’s preferences are collected through their participation in public forums or through the use of market research techniques. "The essence of this position is that citizenship in the information age consists of neither more nor less than the registering of consumer preferences in the information systems of government in the course of undertaking service transactions" (BELLAMY/TAYLOR 1988: 92). One of the most critical problems related to online services has to do with the so-called ‘digital divide’ and the fact that most of the people, especially in developing countries, are excluded from the use of ICT. As a consequence, only a small part of the population will benefit from online services, at least as long as governments do not provide public access points. As a consequence it is to be expected that this kind of consumer democracy tends to register first of all the demands and preferences of those connected to the Web, whereas the "information-poor" will not even be registered by public administrations. The already common practice of selective service delivery will be strengthened even more. Without an engagement of public agencies to ensure that the benefits achieved are available to all citizens, electronic service delivery run the risk of widening "the gap between the advantages that educated, technically proficient citizens have over those less so" (DUTTON 1999: 190). Most governments limit their initiatives to what Lawson calls the "weak vision" of e-governance; an essentially conservative approach that avoids deeper changes of the way government operates and works. The government is worried in not handing over power or influence to other social and political players. On the other hand, the more radical or "strong vision" of e-governance is seeking to reform the very basis of government: "Changing how government operates and what services it delivers goes hand in hand with transforming its culture, approach and structure" (LAWSON 1998: 16). From this point of view, ICT offers an unique opportunity to link strategies for online services with administrative reforms that are so urgently needed to prepare public administrations for dealing with the challenges of an always more complex, uncertain and changing environment. One of these challenges has to do with the legitimacy crisis that affected democracy and government in recent times and the search for new forms of co-operation between governments, the private sector and civil society. ICT can be a catalyst not only for changing the focus of public services to a more people-led, high quality, personalised, holistic, effective and creative way of service delivery (LAWSON 1998: 16); but they offer as well possibilities to sustain new modes of social and political networking and new forms of democratic participation. However, whereas an increasing number of governments is heavily investing in public service delivery online, more daring experiences of using the Internet in favour of deepening democratic practices are still rare, not only in Brazil, but as well in the technologically and democratically more developed countries (FREY, 2000; TSAGAROUSIANOU et al, 1988). However, enthusiasts of the new virtual world or "neofuturists" (WILHELM 2000: 14) like Nicholas NEGROPONTE (1995) are convinced that the global networks of communication infrastructure, explored by private actors, will be decisive instruments to promote development and solidarity and to solve the big social inequalities on the planet (See SFEZ 2000: 51). And indeed, whereas traditional territorial institutions used to be more hierarchic and rigid, the Internet tends to privilege transversal modes of relationship and more fluid structures that are more in line with the network structures that characterise social and political processes in modern democratic societies. So we have to expect not only significant effects on the world of big business, but as well on society, culture and political institutions (POSTER 1997: 215). There is no doubt that electronic networks transform the dimension of time and space. Information is transferred in real time and contact can be established immediately independent from spatial distance. But the specific democratic potential of the Internet lays in its non-hierarchic, cybernetic structure that, in principle, favours interactivity. And finally we should have in mind that "the actors’ entrances to the net do not depend upon a pre-established situation, but only upon their action in the present moment" (SFEZ 2000: 52). In traditional mass media information and opinions are only distributed in a unilateral way, based on one-way communication. Usually only opinion leaders are conducting public debate, without any active participation of ordinary citizens. On the Internet, however, we have new possibilities in creating an interactive virtual public sphere, a kind of "electronic agora", especially due to the advantage of dissolution of space as condition for communication (ROESLER 1997: 182). But on the other hand there shouldn’t be any doubt, that the utilisation of ICT in this emancipatory and democratic way will not happen automatically. It depends above all on political will. It’s not the Internet that will enhance political participation. The World Wide Web was not created in order to promote democratic citizenship, but is "mediated by social interests, governmental policies and business strategies" (CASTELLS: 1999a: 355). The development of this technology is following the same logic of commercial and economic exploitation that characterised the development of all previous technologies (GUGGENBERGER 1999), notwithstanding the decisive influence of the military complex, the scientific co-operations and the counterculture movements in its initial stage of development (CASTELLS 1999a: 375). It’s important to recognise "that the Internet has not been developed in a void and is subject to external pressures which will continue to shape its development, utilisation and ultimately its form" (BRYAN/TATAM 1999: 168). If we are moving in the direction of a "gigantic (hobbesian) network leviathan" (GUGGENBERGER 1999: 131) or an electronic agora, self-governed and democratic, cannot be deduced from the technical characteristics of the Web. It depends on our capacity to restrict abuses and to "find ways of stimulating the access to non-profit-purposeful information, information that fuels curiosity and self-education, and encourages animated and involved citizenship (including dissent)" (HAYWOOD 1998: 25). Certainly ICT cannot substitute traditional organisation of territory or traditional ways of politics and communication; it seems also not very helpful to duplicate conventional institutional forms in cyberspace; but certainly ICT offer opportunities to give support to the above presented emancipatory version of governance. What seems possible and – without any doubt – necessary is a fundamental questioning of the classical forms of governmental and administrative institutions and a substantial mitigation of the usual separation between governors and the governed. The main challenge is to value and share the intelligence distributed in all parts of the connected communities and exploring the synergetic effects that now can be attained in real time. Therefore, electronic governance seeks for new ways of articulating two qualitatively quite different spaces, the territory and the collective intelligence (LÉVY 1999: 188). This articulation is becoming increasingly difficult, since the practice of Internet interactivity tends to foster "a mode of social interaction in which the valence of social meaning is determined increasingly by the ‘screen culture’ of television and the World Wide Web" (WILHELM 2000: 139). The critics of cyberspace object exactly that the growing dependence of the individual on virtual spaces, on television or cyberspace, makes him less dependent on the public sphere which in practice is being displaced. As the screen culture becomes more and more "the familiar reference point of everyday life" and individuals immerse in the virtual world, the civic engagement tends to diminish as far as are concerned the problems of the physical environment that affect people in the real communities (WILHELM 2000: 139). I think that this pessimistic point of view is at least an important warning that should be taken seriously. The very different assessments concerning the effects of ICT for the political process and for the invigoration or not of civil society makes clear that, in the end, success will not depend on the technology itself, but primarily on political and economic decisions. It’s advisable taking a sceptical view with any statements defending technological determinism. The technology itself cannot be considered neutral, nor determinative, promoting the good or the evil. ICT can serve as an important tool in the process of democratisation and widening of political participation; it can be used in favour of the consolidation of economic liberalism and the total commercialisation of cyberspace; and, finally, it can contribute to the progressive concentration of power and the implementation of a kind of orwellian surveillance state based on permanent ‘teleocratic’ controle. The future of the Internet and of information society will depend, first of all, on the constellations of the political, economic and social forces and of their capacity to employ this technology in favour of their particular objectives. There are very clear indices of a quite unequal distribution of these capacities, above all in the context of the developing world. Concerning the use of the Internet for democratic purposes in Brazil, we suppose that, notwithstanding the very unfavourable conditions in this country, there are considerable possibilities of exploration of the democratic potential of these technologies and of the application of new modes of political participation and decision making. From an emancipatory perspective ICT might contribute to foster what Bellamy/Taylor call "strong democracy". Within this conception "politics is conceived as a process which demands that people look beyond their individual interests to see themselves as members of a political community, a process which involves a willingness to tolerate and reach accommodation with other interests and preferences" (BELLAMY/TAYLOR 1998: 93). There are basically three potential fields of action that are essential for implementing e-governance strategies in an emancipatory perspective:
Taking into account that progress concerning point 2 and 3 is a precondition for any democratic experimentation that aims to include wider societal sectors in decision making or deliberation processes, we concentrate in the following section on point 3, in particular on the conditions of viability for the creation of online forums in the context of developing countries with high social inequalities.
E-democracy in the developing world?
Is e-democracy possible, justifiable or desirable in the context of developing countries, characterised by high social inequalities, high illiteracy rates and extensive parts of the population living in conditions of poverty? Why not invest the scarce public resources in basic education, health care, sanitation, job creation and the more immediate struggle against poverty? These arguments that used to emerge in Brazil, and certainly in many other developing countries, seem very apt and sound at least at first glance. And in deed, doesn’t it sound very convincing Castells’ scenario of an "Athenian democracy" in the information age: that of a small, wealthy elite with high educational standard in some countries and cities, which alone has at its disposal access to the Internet, to this extraordinary instrument of information and political participation, extending its possibilities of exercising civil and political rights. On the other hand, the great masses devoid of education and knowledge, staying on the fringes of this new democratic order, like the slaves and barbarians in the ancient Greek democracy (CASTELLS 1999b: 410)? We think that these preoccupations and worries are very appropriate. The general trend in cyberspace goes exactly in direction of exclusion and increased power concentration, both in the economic and the political sphere (SASSEN, 1997; CASTELLS, 1996). First, ICT provokes tendencies of segmentation and exclusion within the cyberspace itself. The new emerging networks not only distribute power, but they make possible new and different forms of power. One important manifestation of these cyber-segmentations refers to the proliferation of private Intranets that appear as fortresses heavily guarded and cut off from the open Internet (SASSEN 1997: 228). In his theory of the "space of flows" Manuel Castells highlights not only the economic and political but as well the cultural dimension of these segmentation processes that are based on socio-tecnical structures. His interpretation of the social dynamics of network society reveals important insights about ICT-induced social transformations and, as a result of this, we might come to a better understanding of the potentialities of the use of the Internet in favour of sustainable community development. According to Castells the spatial articulation of the dominant functions in our network society is happening within the networks of interaction, which are made possible by ICT equipment. This technological infrastructure can be seen as the expression of this network of flows, whose architecture and content are determined by the existing forms of power (CASTELLS 1999a: 437). So the very basis of the space of flow is delivered by the deployment of telecommunication infrastructures that tend to exclude large segments of society from the benefits of informational society: "Under the new, dominant logic of the space of flows, areas that are non-valuable from the perspective of informational capitalism, and that do not have significant political interest for the powers that be, are bypassed by flows of wealth and information, and ultimately deprived of the basic technological infrastructure that allows us to communicate, innovate, produce, consume, and even live, in today’s world (Castells, quoted in: WILHELM 2000: 113). But in this space of flow the localities continue being important, especially the centres of communication, that exercise strategic functions within these networks and normally coincide territorially with the global cities, where the headquarters of the big industrial and financial corporations are located. "The dominant and main processes in our society are articulated in networks that connect different places. To each of them is assigned a role and importance in an hierarchy of wealth creation, data processing and power production, what in the end determines the fate of every locality" (CASTELLS 1994: 129). As far as spatial social organisation is concerned, Castells argues that informational society is organised in an asymmetric way around the dominant interests of the management elite exercising leadership functions. He understands the mechanisms of social domination as based on the articulation by leading elites that goes hand in hand with the segmentation and disorganisation of the masses: "A fundamental form of domination of our society is based on the organisational capacity of the dominant elite that is a concomitant of its capacity to disorganise the social groups. These, despite of being majority in numbers, see (if at all) their interests partially represented only within the structure of attendance of the dominant interests" (CASTELLS 1999a: 440). From this point of view the space of power and wealth accumulation is increasingly projected onto the whole world, whereas live itself and the experiences of the local people are rooted in their culture and history. This means that societal organisations are increasingly based on ahistorical flows. Global power follows more and more its peculiar logic, being always less exposed to critics by local or national societies. This global network of dominance tries to maintain its exclusiveness not by means of obstructing the access in a sort of conspiratorial manner, but by the development of specific rules and cultural codes whose possession opens up the access to these power structures. So on the one hand it’s necessary to maintain democratic institutions, in order to keep up the democratic appearances, on the other hand, cultural barriers are set up to avoid the entrance of political representatives into the inner power circles of strategic decision making. The main decisions are taken within personal micro-networks, in symbolically isolated communities that represent a subculture of interconnected persons, tied to common localities. These private communities represent the nodal points in this space of flows, where private worries and interests are discussed in closed circles and subsequently projected onto the functional macro-networks sustained by telecommunication technologies. A second element mentioned by Castells that contributes to the cultural distinction of elites in information society relates to the creation of a peculiar lifestyle that gives homogeneity to this information elite and transcends the traditional cultural frontiers of national societies. In addition, spatial forms are projected in order to unify the symbolic environment of the elite all over the world and, consequently, substituting the historically conditioned particularities of each locality. Castells’ interpretation of the information society and the mechanisms and strategies employed by the entrepreneurial elite of the informational economy seems to us very revealing, especially if contrasted with the fragmentation and segmentation processes that we can observe in civil society and more strongly on the community and neighbourhood level. "There follows a structural schizophrenia within two different spatial logics that threaten to cut off society’s communication channels. The prevailing tendency is that of a horizon of networks based on an ahistorical space of flows, aiming at pushing through its logic in more and more segmented and scattered localities, less interconnected, and less able to share cultural codes" (CASTELLS 1999a: 451-2). But it’s not only a matter of (re)constructing the cultural and physical bridges between these two forms of space, as Castells suggests, but as well a matter of creating similar networks on community or neighbourhood level in order to promote identity, solidarity and new forms of co-operation and interaction that are in accord with the particularities of information society. Given that today the most important decisions that affect local communities are taken in private spaces or global networks, by an entrepreneurial elite and without political involvement of the local population, communities all over the world are increasingly exposed to general uncertainty. This increasing uncertainty has to do not only with the "system of organised irresponsibility" that, according to Ulrich BECK (1988: 104), characterises contemporary "risk society" and leads to "industrial fatalism" and a generalised acceptance and conformism concerning industrial risks. In addition, it seems that in order to maintain the existing form of social domination a system of organised social uncertainty has been established, based on "deregulation and privatisation of insecurity, uncertainty and absence of guarantees" (BAUMAN 2000: 14). This conscious strategy of uncertainty creation results in fear and affliction that fosters individualistic attitudes and survival strategies, undermines attempts of collective action and weakens the social bonds that used to hold communities together. The consequence of both tendencies is generalised political apathy and conformism, instead of mobilisation of communities aiming to reduce uncertainty. For both authors, "invention of politics" (BECK 1993) or "search for politics" (BAUMAN 2000) are the only possible ways to overcome prevailing cynicism and conformism that used to cut off the last channels of communication between the private and the public sphere. Whereas the informational elite – according to Castell’s interpretation – used to discuss its interests and worries in its exclusive private circles of negotiation and has at its disposal means to put in practice its resolutions, the general mass lacks such private/public spaces where its particular problems could be discussed and turned public. According to Bauman, "a chance to change this depends on agora – this space neither private nor public, however more precisely public and private at the same time. Space where the particular problems collide in a significant way – that is, not only to extract narcissistic pleasures or to seek some therapy through public exhibition, but to search in a collective way for controlled and sufficiently powerful mechanisms to get the individuals out of their particularly suffering misery; space where ideas can flourish and take shape as ‘public good’, ‘just society’ or ‘common values’" (BAUMAN, 2000: 11). So will the Internet constitute such an agora, an alternative public space where these fundamental questions of human existence can be discussed? Where common people can manifest their worries and opinions? Where citizens might rediscover the love for liberty and civic engagement as fundamental ingredients of a vital democracy (Tocqueville)? And where solutions can be discussed and designed in a collective manner and for the sake of a better environment, better quality of life, and for a more sustainable way of development? Starting from the specific conditions and necessities that characterise developing countries where large segments of society are excluded from decision making processes, we try in the following section to look at the democratic potentialities of Brazilian society and think about possible strategies for e-governance and e-democracy that might give support to – partially – already ongoing processes of more sustainable community development.
E-government strategies in favour of sustainable community development
Today we can already point out very important forms of appropriation of the Internet by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and diverse social groups and initiatives aiming at the development of symbolic politics and the promotion of new forms of political mobilisation. For Castells this tendency represents a fundamental element in the process of reconstruction of democracy in our network society: "Humanitarian causes, such as that defended by Amnesty International, Médecins sans frontières, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Food First and thousands and thousands of local and global activist groups and non-governmental organisations all over the world constitute the most powerful and pro-active factor of mobilisation in informational politics" (CASTELLS 1999b: 411). This means that all these organisations and activist groups discovered the Internet as a valuable tool of communication and information delivery and even to organise their way of acting, co-operating and mobilising popular support. In comparison with networks of the entrepreneurial or informational elite, there are several similarities and differences to consider. First of all, the worries and interests are discussed by these activists on conferences, meetings, manifestations and other events and the Internet serves as well a very important tool to organise and structure the global NGO networks. The Global Social Summit in Porto Alegre that was idealised as an explicit counter-event to the World Economic Forum in Davos may be seen as the event that best represents this approximation and adaptation of the global social and environmental movement to the mechanisms and strategies employed by big business networks. This not only because the use of the Internet was decisive both for the preparation of the event and the mobilisation of the global community as well as for the dissemination and circulation of the conferences’ discussions and results. In addition, the forum showed the growing capacity of the ‘global civil society’ to create public forums and to extend its influence in shaping the international agenda. On the other side this also shows some fundamental differences between both approaches: the explicit search for publicity by social and environmental movements and the efforts to create a kind of global public sphere that aims to influence public opinion-forming and subsequently public decision making processes. Certainly, NGOs like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and others learned also very well the job of direct lobbying and have extended their influence in many private and political organisations and formal institutions. But despite the employment of theses business-strategies the search for publicity continues the most important resource of legitimacy for social movements. All in all there should be no doubt that the global social and environmental movement showed a impressive adaptability concerning the new conditions of information society. This picture contrasts with the fragmentation and incapacity of most local groups and associations in exploring the new technologies for the sake of defence of their interests in political, social and economic processes, above all in developing countries. First of all, this has to do with the already mentioned difficulties in putting in practice strategies of collective action due to the climate of uncertainty produced by recent social and economic processes, privileging individualistic survival strategies. Second, the disintegration between the virtual world, which increasingly determines the development of social life, and the experience of historical development makes people dive completely in the first or remain captivated by the second, hindering mutual approximation. "The capital circulates, the power reigns and the electronic communication swirls between distant and selected places through the flows of interchanges, whereas the fragmented experience remains captivated by the localities" (CASTELLS 1999c: 426). Third, prevailing poverty, enhanced illiteracy rates on the neighbourhood level, and the tendency of the public telecommunication policy to bypass poor, not lucrative regions exclude, as a matter of fact, huge parts of the society from the possibility to have access to these technologies. Fourth, we have to consider the particularities of Brazilian democracy, denominated by analysts as "neopatrimonialism" (SCHWARTZMANN 1988), "delegative democracy" (O’DONNELL 1991) or "populist democracy" (SAES 1994). Regardless of the differences of these interpretations they have some elements in common that are important for our considerations about local democracy. They all agree that in Brazil the masses do not participate actively in the central political decision making processes. Even institutions and associations are integrated in a very limited way in these processes. The fundamental decisions are taken in "private spaces" by the dominant elite, whereas the importance of the formal institutional frameworks and procedures is very limited, restricted basically to the function of homologation of decisions already taken. The involvement of the masses is limited to the periodical elections. This structure of political decision making processes shows quite evident similarities to the mechanisms and strategies employed by the entrepreneurial elite of the informational economy, according to Castells’ interpretation of information society. So the probability seems very high that Brazilian democracy evolves, in the context of information society, to the consolidation of "populist democracy", in accordance with BELLAMY/TAYLOR (1998) one of the "three main archetypes of information age democracy" (95). From this information age perspective, populist democracy corresponds to a verticalised ‘top-down’ model of democracy based on ‘teleocratic’ control, where information and communication resources and media are controlled by the dominant elite, privileging "a highly insulated and conservative style of governance": "In sum, populist democracy is built on the assumption that the availability of fast-growing, flexible information resources holds out the promise of managing democracy more effectively, but also that political elites will seek more and more to shape and control the informational and communications capabilities associated with new technologies" (BELLAMY/TAYLOR 1998: 97). As this type of democracy is "associated with high levels of popular detachment and cynicism" the preconditions for implementing a vital e-democracy based on intensive civic engagement are very unfavourable in Brazil. However, our more optimistic view concerning the possibilities of the use of the Internet for sustainable community development has to do with recent tendencies of democracy revitalisation that can be observed not only in Brazil but in many parts of the world. According to Castells "the most powerful tendencies of legitimisation of democracy in the nineties are occurring all over the world on the local level" (CASTELLS 1999b: 409). More and more local governments are engaged in decentralisation strategies and in the enlargement of political participation. As the local political decisions normally have direct impact on people’s daily live the chances of stimulating civic engagement are certainly more favourable on the local level. However, it seems decisive for us that we should not consider and conceive e-democracy exclusively, at least in the context of developing countries, as the creation of an autonomous public sphere; as a medium used by the citizens in order to come to mutual understanding and consensus, where simply the best argument prevails, and all this undisturbed by the political sovereign, as suggested by Jürgen Habermas in his theory of communicative action (MARESCH 1997: 203). The potentialities of Internet and e-democracy lie, as we believe, much more in its employment as a tool of community empowerment within governmental strategies concerning the formulation and implementation of public policies. If we do not succeed in building bridges that connect the virtual public sphere to the traditional arenas of political decision making, it is to be expected that these initial efforts will exhaust very soon, remaining without strong and lasting impacts on political life. Such empowerment strategies however require political will and determination to change what, as we think and hope, is growing in contemporary Brazil, particularly on the municipal level.
Information Society: The Brazilian Conception
In this section we present and discuss the most important characteristics of the Brazilian government approach of the Information Society. This analysis is based on the Green Book of the Information Society in Brazil (TAKAHASHI 2000), published in September 2000 by the Ministry of Science and Technology, in charge of the formulation and implementation of the Information Society Program. The context of the introduction and development of the Internet in Brazil during the 1990s was marked by economic factors that supported the rapidly growing use of the Internet. During the first half of the decade the Internet was used almost exclusively by the scientific community and in a still very limited way by the private sector. Only after 1995 the Internet has been used in a more intensive manner for commercial purposes. During this period the Brazilian telecommunication system was privatised, what contributed to the flourishing of the telecommunication sector, especially due to foreign investments. Beside this, Brazil has at its disposal – compared with the other Latin American countries – a solid technological basis. Both a relatively high capacity to improve the telecommunication infrastructure and a high quality of available technologies are seen by the Federal government and the group of people in charge of the implementation of the Information Society Program as the most positive aspects for the advancement of the information society. The central concern of the program is to enhance profit-prospects for the growing new economy. Although the Green Book includes a specific chapter on the issue of "universalisation of services for citizenship", very little has been done to support the idea of enlargement of the exercise of citizenship. The focus of attention in this chapter is on how to guarantee ICT access for low-income groups and on how people can be prepared for the Internet-use through literacy campaigns. As a matter of course, this effort is extremely important in countries like Brazil, where the social inequalities are tremendous. Nevertheless, this approach is clearly limited in the sense that it does not include suggestions and strategies to enable citizens to participate in political decision-making processes, what we consider, as we pointed out previously, a decisive element for the effective use of the Internet in favour of sustainable community development. Potentially, the Internet can also contribute to the improvement of political participation, as stated above. For that purpose, initiatives are necessary to promote a more co-operative culture between public administration and population itself, as well as measures to foster mutual understanding and to enhance confidence on both sides. It seems extremely important for public administrators and politicians to become more sensitive to growing citizens’ claims for effective channels of political participation. In Brazil we have already several interesting initiatives of democratic experimentation, like the already internationally discussed and appreciated participatory budgeting, that first was introduced in Porto Alegre in 1989 and reproduced in more than one hundred Brazilian municipalities, and that enables people to participate actively in the agenda-setting process. On the other hand, we have the problem of how to enhance confidence on the part of the population in order to turn participation processes more effective. Of course, such a bond of trust depends on the real possibilities of participation and the willingness of public administrators and politicians to expose themselves to public contestation and dispute. So it’s necessary to make sure that participation will also be effective, in the sense that the social demands and opinions can be introduced in the political agenda, even if those demands do not correspond to the plans and expectations of public authorities. In addition, it’s to be expected that the increase of possibilities of active involvement will enhance social demands and, subsequently, the pressure upon public service delivery. Unfortunately, the Green Book doesn’t address this fundamental questions of e-governance. So we can conclude that the Brazilian federal government is heavily engaged in creating the necessary telecommunication infrastructure for the proliferation of Internet use, is increasingly aware of the necessity to create more favourable conditions for low-income groups to place Internet access at disposal of its population, but doesn’t dispose of effective proposals concerning the introduction of ICT in the public administration and how to enhance political participation and to create new forms of exercise of citizenship that are in line with the new conditions of information society.
4- The Experience of Brazilian Municipalities and the case of Curitiba
The general conditions of Brazil, marked by strong social inequalities, represent already a very critical factor for sustainable community development. So if we are not willing to desist from the idea that the benefits of the new information and communication technologies should be extended to all citizens, it should be clear that main responsibility has to be overtaken by public agencies, especially by local governments as these are closer to the citizens and usually better prepared for such work on grassroots level. As recent developments in Brazil show, the benefits for common people will be very limited, if the Internet is explored exclusively by private initiatives. Accepting increasingly such public responsibility, in recent years some Brazilian municipalities began to make concrete efforts to turn the new information and communication technologies more accessible and useful for citizens. Some of these cities began to install public Internet access points, generally at low costs or even free of charge. At the same time most municipal administration of the twenty seven Brazilian State capitals and some of the medium-seized municipalities (with more than 400.000 inhabitants) maintain an official Internet site containing basic on-line services, general information about the city, the administrative structure of the municipality, the social programs, etc. All in all the main focus is on information broadcasting, or one-way information delivery, with very little possibilities of interactive communication between citizen and public agencies. Only recently some major municipalities are beginning to provide free public access to the Internet, like for example the municipality of Belo Horizonte (www.belohorizonte.mg.gov.br), which placed Internet access at disposal of its population in now 3 access points and free of charge. But the most successful and pioneer initiative concerning free access to the Internet is located in Curitiba (www.curitiba.org.br), the capital of the Paraná State. With 1,5 million inhabitants, Curitiba is known for its well functioning public transport system and won several awards, national and international as well, for its projects in environmental issues. Decentralised provision of public services, a spatial planning that guarantees basic services, business and leisure on neighbourhood level, as well as measures that increase community identity and foster local social networks have contributed to the reduction of mobility demands and a more sustainable way of development. In their recent book about "natural capitalism" HAWKEN/LOVINS/LOVINS (1999) dedicate a whole chapter to the case of Curitiba as a successful example of "human capitalism" as shows the following euphoric statement: "It [Curitiba] has succeeded not by central planning but by combining farsighted and pragmatic leadership with an integrated design process, strong public and business participation, and a widely shared public vision that transcends partisanship. The lessons of Curitiba’s transformation hold promise and hope for all cities and all peoples throughout the world" (HAWKEN/LOVINS/LOVINS 1999: 270-271). These authors give emphasis on the high political leadership capacity that exists in Curitiba, the practice to involvement and mobilisation of the local social forces, and finally their particular skills concerning the implementation of integrated low-cost projects: "Those six mayors’ twenty-eight years (and counting) of good management have generated a flow of interconnected, interactive, evolving solutions – mostly devised and implemented by partnerships among private firms, non-governmental organizations, municipal agencies, utilities, community groups, neighborhood associations, and individual citizens" (HAWKEN/LOVINS/LOVINS 1999: 270-271). Recently the municipality discovered the potential of the Internet for the improvement of urban management, particularly in favour of the approximation between citizen and public authorities. Connected to and in line with this successful urban planning experience, the municipality installed in Mai 2000 in 26 of its 50 public community libraries and in some other public spaces free Internet connections, as part of a project called Digitalising the Future (Digitando o Futuro), which aims to prepare Curitiba’s population for the information age. The 50 public libraries, the so-called "lighthouses of knowledge" (faróis do saber) are part of Curitiba’s community development strategies and are located in all parts of the city, especially in poor areas and close to public schools. Each of these places is equipped with 9 personal computers connected to the Internet and count with the assistance of young students, that preferably come from the neighbourhood close to each library. According to the information of the municipality, today these public access points guarantee free internet access to 50 thousand citizens. Every citizen has the right to maintain a free e-mail account on the municipality’s homepage. According to the governmental plans until the end of the year 2001 all 50 libraries should be connected to the Internet. As the demand for this free service grew enormously since it was implemented in May last year, the user has to reserve a time in advance. Each person has the right to use the Internet once a day for one hour; this reservation can be made also on-line. In the public libraries, the service is available during the week from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.. In addition, the municipality installed one access point in the "twenty-four hours street" where people have access to the Internet night and day. This street is a special block-long covered arcade of shops open 24 hours a day to keep the down-town lively throughout the night. In order to maintain this project the municipality established partnerships with different kinds of institutions and companies, each one responsible for part of the project. This approach is part of a strategy to create policy-implementation networks, where private companies, government institutions and NGOs co-operate in favour of a common goal. This free Internet access is seen as prerequisite for the subsequent projects that aim to create virtual political communities and strengthen real social communities. Until now the site maintained by the project Digitalising the Future (www.curitiba.org.br or: www.digitandoofuturo.org.br) – which is not the same as the official site of the municipality (www.curitiba.pr.gov.br) –, is still limited to the delivery of information and some basic services. As it doesn’t offer further possibilities of more interactive communication with the local government, Curitiba doesn’t differ very much from most public sites maintained by local governments in Brazil. Right now we are working together with the co-ordinators of the Digitalising the Future Project to conceive and develop more interactive applications aiming to create favourable condition for civic engagement that might give support to the already existing policy of sustainable community development. Whereas normally the Internet tends to weaken the citizens ties with local community, it can also be employed, as we are sure, as an important tool to increase income and job opportunities, to strengthen solidarity within communities, to reduce mobility demands, and to foster an ecological sound way of development, as well as creating conditions for a better and effective political participation. The first interactive applications aim to establish forums of political deliberation with the particularity that this forums will not be limited to the cyberspace itself. The intention is to connect the virtual political communities closely to the traditional political arena and, consequently, to the political decision making and urban planning processes. In this sense, the communication technologies are seen as an important and relevant tool that can be explored to support traditional political arena and democratic local decision making processes. So it is expected that these forums only have a chance to work well and be dynamic and stimulating if they are linked to the daily business of the municipal council and the local government. In this first stage of this new phase of the Digitalising the Future project we have already undertaken a great effort to bring together representatives of the most important departments of the municipal administration in order to guarantee the effective inclusion of the relevant authorities into really interactive deliberation processes. We are convinced that these experimentation with new democratic practices only will have success if the whole government is taking part in this process. If this new governance approach is seen as part of an overall strategy of administration reform, it is necessary not only a new way of dealing with the public, but as well the rearranging and reorganising of internal administrative procedures and practices of co-operation. So the new technology can be seen as a unique chance to implement strategies of "reinventing government", which seek both enhanced administrative efficiency and the strengthening of local democracy. We believe that the mere creation of a virtual political arena will not promote political participation automatically. So we defend a more pro-active role of the local government in this process. Concerning this we are in opposition to many other e-democracy projects that used to defend total independence from state power. In these conceptions administrative power is seen as in fundamental opposition to society’s interests (See e.g. DAHLBERG 2001: 2). We believe however that the fact public authorities assuming responsibility concerning the stimulation, organisation and mediation of such forums must not be an obstacle for effective e-democracy, on condition however that the social control by the local community is guaranteed. On the contrary, we think that only in the case of an explicit government’s commitment these forums might evolve into something more than a stimulating pastime. Only in the case of engaged governmental involvement it can be expected that the contributions of the local population can influence the political decision making process as a matter of fact and have concrete impacts on development and planning processes. So the task of local government’s representatives is to provide the virtual political community with information and dates about local projects and developments, to intervene in the discussions with suggestions, additional background information, contestation etc.. On the other hand, there are plans to create the role of a neutral mediator whose main function will be to settle and intervene in cases of extreme conflicts and disputes, to safeguard the compliance of the "netiquette", that every participant will have to assign, and to promote the interactivity of the deliberation process. As experiences with open, not conducted discussion groups demonstrate the discussions of such groups tend to exhaust or metamorphose into arenas of self-projection or mere chat-room conversation, loosing their original function of forums engaged in problem-solving activities. Especially in developing countries with high social inequalities and with large sectors of the society traditionally excluded from decision making processes an active role of the governmental sector seems indispensable for e-governance strategies that aim to contribute to the emancipation of the citizens and the strengthening of democratic practices. This means that the advancement of e-democracy and its exploration in favour of the promotion of sustainable community development will depend on local government’s ability and willingness to see this new technological resource as a fundamental element within their strategies of administrative reform, political participation and urban development.
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Authors: Dr. Klaus
Frey Dr. Hermílio
Santos
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