The Ahistorical Fallacy Why Digital Democracy Ignores 2500 Years of Political Thought

Digital democracy movements promise to revolutionize political participation through
technological innovation. This paper presents a critical analysis of the intellectual
foundations underpinning major digital democracy initiatives, including vTaiwan,
Polis, and Quadratic V oting. By examining technical documentation and foundational
manifestos, we reveal a systematic neglect of 2500 years of political philosophy. We
document how Arrow's impossibility theorem is treated as a bug to be patched rather
than a fundamental constraint, how Habermasian deliberation is conflated with mere
preference aggregation, and how classical warnings about ochlocracy (mob rule) are
overlooked. We trace these patterns to 'Library Dependency Syndrome'
—a cognitive
disposition among technologists to treat complex political concepts as 'black boxed'
software modules that can be implemented without understanding their internal
normative logic. This paper argues not for the rejection of digital tools, but for an
intellectually grounded digital democracy that integrates, rather than ignores, the
history of political thought.