The digital democracy as a tool for monitoring political representation

Abstract

Technology has provided a re-reading of the exercise of political participation in a democratic state. With technological advances, citizenship and democracy can no longer be interpreted in a conceptually closed manner, limited to the classical understanding of the matter. In this scenario of dynamic and virtual social interactions, the concept of citizen, previously limited to the idea of a rights holder linked to nationality, has become insufficient, just as the perspective of democratic practice only linked to the existence of a government for the people and by the people does not provide an understanding that is fully adequate and adapted to the new times of civic interference in the directions of the State. Therefore, today, it is considered that citizenship and digital democracy are expressions whose observation is necessary to maintain the actuality of the means of political action, in which the citizen is able to play a more active role in society, approaching the political institutions, the public administrators, and the elected representatives, in order to obtain information and claim accountability for the control of political representation. In this sense, based on literature review, this article presented the conception of democracy through the reproduction of the traditional classification of political regime exercisable directly or indirectly. Moreover, the concepts of citizenship and digital democracy were analyzed as a product of the advance of information and communication technology, from which political participation in networks of interpersonal and virtual interaction was conceived as a technique of control and monitoring of public affairs and the performance of elected representatives.