Institutional competition in the age of direct digital democracy

Abstract

The emergence of direct forms of interaction between citizens and state institutions, which have become possible and widely generalized using digital means of communication, raises an interesting theoretical question. After two centuries, it seems that one can imagine the possibility of direct democracy, in which the electronic voting and referendum on the «civic initiative» (also known as «popular») will be the same, even if the representatives of the parliament retain their representative mandate. This paradox between «direct democracy» and the «representation» deserves to be considered. Is it about the technical development of the functioning of public institutions? Or about political transition to other ways of governance? This article proposes to study this new area using the following structure of the problem: from the historical shift in the development of democracy, we can conclude that the adoption of new principles will occur in the light of this «regional phenomenon». The supposed reverse transition from representative democracy to direct «digital» democracy will undoubtedly have its own regional specificity, due to differences in historical development, geographical location and level of digitalization.