E-Democracy: Issues and Countermeasures

With the rapid development of information and network technology, e-democracy came into being. As a new means and channel of democratic participation, there are two essential perspectives of e-democracy. On the one hand, it plays a kind of positive role; on the other hand, there are some limitations and problems. In this paper, first of all, the author affirmed the positive role of e-democracy, then analyzed its limitations and problems, and proposed the methods and countermeasures to overcome these limitations. The author believed that the main problems in e-democracy lie as follows: e-democracy can only be a kind of means, but not the end; e-democracy over-publicized the instrumental rationality, which would lead to the decline of the value of rationality; e-democracy is also facing the problems of fairness, and furthermore, there is the plight of ethical anomie in e-democracy. Among the above problems, the author believed that we could start from the following aspects: strengthening the construction of infrastructure; distributing the resources equitably; developing and improving education, so as to make all classes of people have access to electronic information and communication technology; strengthening the legal system and creating a favorable legal environment; strengthening the construction of ethical system to form a good environment of public opinion; and enhancing the technical control.