D3.1 – White Paper: The Futures of Digital Democracy

This deliverable outlines four potential futures or scenarios of digital democracy. These scenarios illustrate how digitalisation could impact society and democratic governance. The method is storytelling, namely the construction of four realist science fiction scenarios that aim at providing food for thought about what a future digital society could look like and what digital futures are desirable and undesirable. Methodologically, this white paper combines the Scenario Development Technique from the UN Strategic Foresight Guide with STEEP Analysis (Socio-Cultural, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political). The Scenario Development Technique, on the one hand, involves identifying drivers of change and placing them in a two-by-two matrix. STEEP, on the other hand, is a systemic, macro-level approach that goes beyond the analysis of individuals (micro-level) and organisations (meso-level) by focusing on major societal dimensions. The macro-environmental dimensions it focuses on are as follows: (1) sociocultural factors (S), (2) technological factors (T), (3) economic factors (E), (4) ecological factors (E), and (5) political and legal factors (P).

This combination enabled the development of four scenarios examining the impact of digital technologies across these dimensions. The scenarios diverge along two axes. The vertical axis represents the mode of societal organisation and political power (authoritarianism versus democracy). The horizontal axis represents the mode of governance and citizen engagement (representation versus participation). The four scenarios are as follows:

Scenario 1: Representative Digital Authoritarianism 

Scenario 2: Participatory Digital Authoritarianism 

Scenario 3: Representative Digital Democracy

Scenario 4: Participatory Digital Democracy