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    Crowdsourcing Legislation New Ways of Engaging The Public

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    Crowdsourcing Legislation New Ways of Engaging The Public

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    crowdsourcing

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    Crowdsourcing Legislation New Ways of Engaging The Public

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    Julia Iunes Monteiro
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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 5

    The Theory and Practice of Legislation

    ISSN: 2050-8840 (Print) 2050-8859 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpl20

    Crowdsourcing legislation: new ways of engaging


    the public

    Sofia Ranchordás & Wim Voermans

    To cite this article: Sofia Ranchordás & Wim Voermans (2017) Crowdsourcing legislation:
    new ways of engaging the public, The Theory and Practice of Legislation, 5:1, 1-4, DOI:
    10.1080/20508840.2017.1303224

    To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20508840.2017.1303224

    Published online: 15 Mar 2017.

    Submit your article to this journal

    Article views: 395

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    http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtpl20
    THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF LEGISLATION, 2017
    VOL. 5, NO. 1, 1–4
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20508840.2017.1303224

    EDITORIAL

    Crowdsourcing legislation: new ways of engaging


    the public

    After reading this special issue entitled “Crowdsourcing Legislation: New


    Ways of Engaging the Public”, readers might conclude that legislation is not
    what it used to be. With the development of Web 2.0 and the growing acces-
    sibility of the Internet, citizens have become increasingly connected. The
    Internet has changed their role from passive observers to active participants
    in society, economy, and politics. Instead of relying on their elected represen-
    tatives and other experts, citizens resort to new technologies of participation
    for example by signing e-petitions or crowdsourcing legislation. This special
    issue provides an overview of some of these forms of direct citizen partici-
    pation as well as their implications for the democratic legitimacy of the legis-
    lative process.
    E-participation, e-rulemaking, and crowdsourcing legislation are far from
    being recent concepts. Instead, their effectiveness and growing potential have
    been discussed in the literature in the past decade.1 In the last few years there
    appears to be a growing perception that knowledge is not exclusive to the
    experts but it is rather dispersed among individual actors, as Friederich Hayek
    argued a number of decades ago. 2 The first article of this issue “Can a Group
    of People be Smarter than Experts?” by Mirko Pečarič discusses the value of
    this dispersed knowledge and the power of crowds to deliver invaluable input
    to the legislative process. In his contribution to this special issue, Pečarič discusses
    how the collective wisdom of the people extracted from individual opinions by
    aggregation can “provide more unbiased, independent and more accurate
    decisions than the assessment of experts.” This article defies conventional knowl-
    edge and argues that “legitimacy and accountability (…) can be enhanced system-
    atically through people’s greater involvement in the administration of public
    affairs, in much the same way as crowdsourcing enhances effectiveness and effi-
    ciency in markets.” By discussing the conditions under which collective wisdom
    can be of added value to the lawmaking process, Pečarič makes an important and

    1
    See, e.g., Cary Coglianese, ‘Assessing Consensus: The Promise and Performance of Negotiated Rulemaking,
    (1997) 46 Duke Law Journal 1255; Cynthia R. Farina, Dmitry Epstein, Josiah Heidt, Mary Newhart, (2012)
    ‘Knowledge in the People: Rethinking ‘Value’ in Public Rulemaking Participation’ 47 Wake Forest Law
    Review 1185; Amy Gutmann & Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Harvard University
    Press 1996) 1-9; Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, ‘Rethinking Regulatory Democracy’, (2005) 57 Administrative
    Law Review 411, 431.
    2
    F. A. Hayek, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ (1945) 35 American Economic Review 519, 521–22.
    © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
    2 S. RANCHORDÁS AND W. VOERMANS

    innovative contribution to the literature on e-participation, crowdsourcing, and


    democratic legitimacy.
    With the help of technology, it is now possible to locate dispersed infor-
    mation, gather and process complex data in order to improve the legislative
    process. E-participation of citizens at both national and local levels has
    thus reached a new dimension. This can be explained by a number of
    factors. First, the exponential access to the Internet in developed countries
    and the development of interactive technology facilitate the interactive par-
    ticipation of citizens. In addition, the Internet is no longer a publication plat-
    form but an interactive form of communication that invites users to “do it
    themselves”. Second, the development of crowdsourcing, the “sharing
    economy,” and the different uses of digital platforms as a peer-to-peer
    process have changed the traditional capitalist model based on top-down
    regulation and expert-driven rules designed to address information asymme-
    tries in the consumer-professional relationship. The development of technol-
    ogies of participation have reminded us of the conflict between the experts
    and the wisdom of the crowds: in a world where you can be anyone on the
    Internet and learn to do everything yourself without attending any specific
    training, citizens also feel that they should be involved in the rulemaking
    process.
    While the formal participation of stakeholders in the lawmaking process has
    been formally regulated in many Western countries in the context of public con-
    sultations and parliamentary hearings, the active participation of anonymous
    citizens beyond these instruments remains limited. As this Special Issue
    shows, additional reflection on new forms of citizen participation in lawmaking
    is required. In the second article of this Special Issue entitled “Digital Agoras:
    Democratic Legitimacy, Online Participation, and Uber’s Petitions”, Sofia Ran-
    chordás explains how the platform Uber has attempted to mobilize citizens to
    initiate and sign electronic petitions regarding the deregulation or flexible regu-
    lation of this ride-sharing platform. By generating the appearance of a grass-
    roots movement, these petitions have been successful at putting pressure on
    city councils to be responsive to Uber’s users. The broader and low-threshold
    citizen participation enabled by digital platforms and smartphone applications
    can also be placed in the context of the demand for a more open government
    where active citizen participation is not limited to the interests of primary
    stakeholders.
    Although the largest part of legislative activity remains in the hands of
    elected representatives, the involvement of citizens has increased significantly
    in the last few decades: citizens not only sign e-petitions inviting regulators
    and legislators to enact new legislation on the regulation of digital platforms
    such as Uber but they also provide direct suggestions to the content of bills on
    traffic law in Finland or even constitutions (for example, in Iceland). The
    process and value of crowdsourcing of legislation is discussed in the third
    article by Tanja Aitamurto and Kaiping Chen. In “The Value of Crowdsour-
    cing in Public Policy-Making: Epistemic, Democratic, and Economic Value”,
    Aitamurto and Chen explain how crowdsourcing legislation can create value
    THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF LEGISLATION 3

    for public policy and lawmaking. They offer a three dimensional analysis
    referring to the democratic, epistemic and economic value of crowdsourcing.
    Drawing on practical examples from Finland, the authors argue that “demo-
    cratic value is created by increasing transparency, accountability, inclusive-
    ness and deliberation in crowdsourced policymaking. Epistemic value is
    developed when crowdsourcing serves as a knowledge search mechanism
    and a learning context. Economic value is created when crowdsourcing
    makes knowledge search in policymaking process more efficient and
    enables the government to produce policies that address citizens’ needs and
    societal issues better.
    The direct participation of citizens in the drafting of legislation is further dis-
    cussed in this Special Issue regarding the specific case of Brazil’s Internet Bill of
    Rights. This innovative and well-known piece of legislation has convinced a
    number of jurisdictions to rethink their laws on privacy but little is known
    about its underlying legislative process. The fourth contribution to this Special
    Issue “Notes on the Creation and Impacts of Brazil’s Internet of Rights” narrates
    the participatory process conducive to the implementation of this statute. In this
    article, Carlos Souza, Fabro Steibel, and Ronaldo Lemos explain how citizens con-
    tributed to the drafting of this important law and discuss the impact of this statute
    on future legislation and case law.
    This special issue results from a number of academic encounters and initiat-
    ives. The seed for this issue was planted on March 12, 2015 when a group of dis-
    tinguished scholars debated the advantages and shortcomings of crowdsourcing
    legislation and other participatory initiatives in a workshop organized by the
    International Association of Legislation at the Swedish Law and Informatics
    Research Institute in Stockholm. This Special Issue discusses not only how
    citizen participation is transforming the legislative process but also how technol-
    ogy is affecting and reshaping the legislative process in different, and more or less
    haphazard ways: sometimes as an unintended side effect and sometimes as a
    deliberate design. This process will undoubtedly continue to reshape the legisla-
    tive process as we know at present.
    Legislative procedures throughout the world have proved to be adaptive to
    developments in societies, markets and technology. The emergence of technol-
    ogies of participation, crowdsourcing and novel forms of “connected action”
    pose however new challenges to traditional legislative processes. Moreover,
    technologies of participation should also remind legislators that new legislative
    procedures should be more inclusive. Citizens, institutions and businesses
    alike should be more involved in the agenda-setting part of legislation,
    either in formal (e.g., referenda, petitions) or more informal ways (e.g.,
    social media). In addition, the future of legislative procedures should also be
    characterized by increased transparency, efficiency, and overall accessibility
    to legislation. This Special Issue invites legislators to rethink who should
    have a say in the legislative process and how citizen participation should ulti-
    mately be taken into account so as to enhance the democratic legitimacy of
    legislation.
    4 S. RANCHORDÁS AND W. VOERMANS

    Sofia Ranchordás
    Leiden Law School, Steenschuur 25, 2311 ES Leiden, Kamernummer B 1.16
    s.h.ranchordas@law.leidenuniv.nl

    Wim Voermans
    Leiden Law School, Steenschuur 25, 2311 ES Leiden, Kamernummer B103
    w.j.m.voermans@law.leidenuniv.nl

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