Crowdlaw Experiences in South America

By Dr. Mayra Feddersen, Law School Professor, Adolfo Ibañez University

In the 21st century, digital technologies are creating opportunities for reshaping traditional forms of public deliberation. On April 18, 2018, the Chilean House of Representatives, together with Adolfo Ibañez University’s GobLab and School of Journalism, organized a conference on crowdlaw: citizenship participation in the legislative process. The keynote speakers were Dr. Cristiano Ferri Soeres and Paulo Enrique Araujo.

Veronica Seguel, head of the Access of Information Unit inside the Chilean House, initiated the conference in front of a heterogeneous audience composed of Chilean deputies, public officials, politicians, academics, students and other civil servants. She opened the discussion by citing book three of Aristotle’s Politics. She quoted, “… being many, each one contributes a part of virtue and prudence and, when coming together, the mass becomes a single man of many feet, of many hands and with many senses; and the same goes for characters and intelligence.” Maria Paz Hermosilla, Director of GobLab UAI, complemented this inspiring introduction with a few observations from her insightful experience on crowdlaw.

The main speaker continued. Dr. Ferri spoke about his experience inside the Brazilian House of Representatives. In 2013, Dr. Ferri created a laboratory called Lab Hacker whose objective was to develop digital applications to foster a culture of transparency and social participation in the legislative discussion within the Brazilian lower house. Among his activities, he highlighted the legislative marathons to generate digital applications of social participation for parliaments and the implementation of e-democracy, a platform that promotes citizenship participation through chats, forums, wikis and other digital applications.

The results are promising. However, Dr. Ferri tells us, “digital tools do not replace legislative deliberation. They complement it.” With these applications, we seek to improve the production of laws. We try to include instances of direct citizenship participation in the legislative process. His aim is to benefit the legislative process with the collective intelligence that emerges from these collective forms of participation.

A Q&A followed Dr. Ferri, and Paulo Henrique Arrau answered questions from the public. The majority of questions revolved around the challenges presented by the implementation of an open parliament. Despite the difficulties that were highlighted, the synthesis was positive. The speakers concluded by pointing out that transparency in the participatory process of legislative deliberations reduced many of the hazards that some attendees feared.

Lab Hacker is not alone in this quest. More than 10 years ago, the Chilean Senate created the “Virtual Senator,” a digital platform housed within its institutional page that allows citizens to vote bills that are under discussion in the Chilean upper house.

The great promise of democracy is that public decisions result from the discussion and consideration of all points of view. Despite the clarity of this assumption, no democracy in Western history has managed to fully satisfy it. Even in Aristoteles Athens –recognized for its high quality democracy- excluded women and slaves from expressing their opinion on the affairs of the polis. In the 21st century, digital technology gives us a new opportunity to open the debate on public issues beyond the physical borders of our own institutions. The challenge now is to start using these tools and increase citizenship participation in the legislative process.