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View from the grassroot3. October 2008 – 14:22 by Civil College |
Since Hungarian language is a bit different from latin languages, the term, e-democracy and e-participation sounds really childish and does not give back the meaning behind. However, for us, community developers the terms like e-democracy and e-participation might have a different meaning as well – it might be some good and usable things here for our communities.
The language barrier, the lack of common meaning is not the only problem if we are looking for initiatives, projects that are labelled as e-participation in Hungary. There are two other significant factors, that are helping e-participation to stay hidden for the investigating eyes.
The uncertainity of the w.r.s
- If an organization uses eparticipation tools (which are normally not called in the technological jargon e-participatory tools) it is likely to happen, that will not think about these tools, services as e-participation, so it will be “tagged” differently and stay hidden.
- There is no such initiative to make the meaning common and widespread. There are suppliers around the organizations with technological background, and there are advisors and officials, who has never heard about such things like that. Thus, the level of public trust towards politicians are extremely low every year- according to the annual study, which is carried out during the Citizen Participation Week, in late September each year. So we can not really trust in their initiative power – as citizens.
The situation might be similar in many countries. But what seems to be a bigger problem, that e-participation and e-democracy is an unknown among the most journalists and scientists as well. Maybe this is not surprising, since democracy is a really new thing in Hungary, where people get used to follow dictation for decades, and the roots of fear from power and hopelessness to change the political elit has become one of our nations characteristics. But it is not only about the political elit’s behaviour – it is also about the general attitude towards learning, and citizenship culture.
It seems like that the only rich soil for e-participation are in the grassroots – in Hungary, among those, who understand technology, ready to apply their knowledge on a civil base. These things mostly happen by interest groups, as a reflection to unequal, or semi-democratic institutional behavior.
Positioning
From the community organizers/developers view, stakeholders of eparticipation has the same position just like in the traditional participation. But there is one significant difference, which makes our story a little bit more spicy: it is our responsibiliy, to establish, strengthen the mental, physical and language connections between participation and e-participation.
The challenging thing is to show, that technology is not more a mystical thing to admire . It is a tool like a rope and a knife. It is a process like cooking. It can have an effect as a good meal in a community. Everybody can learn how to assist the cook, or try to cook her/himself. That is where grassroot initiatives lie. And how rich could be the effect, if we find those, who knows what is participation and community development about?
For us community developers, managers, from here, Central and Eastern Europe, the question is how the leaders of Europe is planning to notice, interpret and improve the cultural change by different activities?
On what levels will these activities emerge? (PEP-NET could be a good exapmle) It is obvious, that Europe has to deal with the issue of democratic/participatory culture. (You might have heard about the ECI – European Citizen Initiative project )
The question is how and what kind of policy could integrate and create synergy among the “cultural” stakeholders of democracy and participation? How should PEP-NET turn towards the traditionally offline entities?
For us recognizing important networks from various stakeholders is also a challenge. The structured membership could be a good solution (We are waiting to see the suggestions) to integrate and develop common activities, and to have a ground open for a wide cultural diversity in the field of participation.
We think, that for example, the Combine Bureau for Social Development , could be a good partner in finding out, how could we connect eparticipation to participation/community development focused organizations. Engagement with communities is also a challenge for PEP-NET, as it is one of the key factors of e-participatory projects.
MCS
