// Does tech undermine democracy?
In many parts of the world, there is concern about “democratic backsliding” and how technology is undermining democratic processes.
- A Pew Research study in 2020 found that amongst tech experts, half predict that humans’ use of technology will weaken democracy by 2030.
- An analysis by Brookings in 2023 explored the drivers of democratic decline in the US, citing factors like the strategic manipulation of elections. Brookings also released an analysis in 2021 citing research about how extreme polarization online can lead to an erosion of democratic values.
For all the concern about technology undermining democracy, Taiwan represents an example of a robust democracy in the digital age.
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Tech-enabled democratic models could make more people feel like they’re winning a majority of the time.
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// Bridging technology & democracy
Taiwan is a new democracy—the country held its first elections in the 1990s—but it is considered a strong democracy. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global index of democracies, Taiwan ranks as the strongest democracy in Asia and 10th in the world.
Taiwan’s embrace of technology in its democratic processes is due to multiple factors:
Tang quotes the Dalai Lama to emphasize how Taiwan’s embrace of technology stemmed from necessity and adversity: “In order to carry a positive action, we must first develop a positive vision…It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.”
// Continuous democracy
In Taiwan, democracy doesn't just happen whenever there’s an election. As discussed in last week’s newsletter, it’s a continuous process—high bandwidth, low latency—between the government and its people.
// Broadband access as a human right
Tang emphasized that in Taiwan, broadband access is a human right. “If you do not have bidirectional access, then you’re back to a broadcasting model where the download bandwidth is far higher than the uplink bandwidth,” she said. In some places in the world, it costs virtually nothing to download content, but it’s far more expensive to live-stream and upload content. For Tang, “that asymmetry means that you do not have the right to participate.” In a democracy in the digital age, bidirectional communication is foundational.
// g0v & vTaiwan
The Sunflower Movement’s communication infrastructure was supported by a group of civic-minded technologists known as g0v (pronounced “gov-zero”), with an aim to improve the transparency of the government through the creation of open-source tools and alternative government websites. In the aftermath of the student protests in 2014, the Taiwanese government reached out to g0v to build a new online discussion platform called vTaiwan that enables an “open consultation process for the entire society to engage in rational discussion on national issues.”
Through vTaiwan, Tang and her team used an online deliberation technology called Polis to engage the public on digital issues. Unlike traditional polling that directs questions in one direction from researchers to the public, Tang’s team used Polis to create a participatory agenda-setting process where members of the public share sentiments, surface issues, and propose policies. In 2015, for example, vTaiwan helped drive consensus about how the government should regulate Uber.
// Deliberative polling
In March 2024, Tang’s ministry hosted dozens of small-group discussions with 10 people each—all managed by an AI-moderated process—to identify commonalities, invite a plurality of voices, and surface opportunities for bridge-building on issues related to digital policy. This deliberative polling process has explored issues around information integrity in the digital age.
Tang said this deliberative process has produced remarkable alignment across a diverse citizenry. Post deliberation, more than 85% of people are aligned on the way forward, leading to specific policy proposals that were ratified by the Parliament into law.
Today, anyone—from individuals to civil society—can go to Join.gov.tw to start a conversation and build consensus. The result? A high-bandwidth, low-latency, continuous process of the government responding to the wishes of its people.
// COVID
During COVID, Taiwan used a number of tech tools to address what Tang calls the “twin-demic": the viral pandemic and “info-demic” of rampant misinformation.
- The Cofacts.tw project provides a public dashboard online where people can monitor the reproduction rate of (fake) news.
- Tang directed government resources to citizen-built apps that tracked in real-time which stores across the country had face masks in stock.
// Election Integrity
During the country's elections earlier this year, Taiwan invited citizens to record the process of registering and counting ballots at polling stations across the country in an effort to “pre-bunk” any claims of election rigging.
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The common theme across these examples is how Taiwan leverages the power, voice, and technology of a distributed population to continuously contribute to its democracy. From new ideas on policies to reinforcing public trust in elections, the right use of technology can enable greater contribution, greater engagement, and greater trust—at scale.
// What can other countries learn from Taiwan?
Tang is quick to emphasize that she’s “not a solutionist” focused on prescribing specific measures to other countries. The set of approaches at the intersection of tech and democracy in Taiwan will need to be adapted and adjusted.
For Tang, the real work is to change our perspective and expand the imagination of what’s possible. In many jurisdictions, voting is a binary choice of selecting one candidate or another, or voting for or against a piece of legislation.
But new technologies have made alternative voting methods more possible than ever before: approval voting allows people to vote for multiple candidates or options in order of preference, and quadratic voting, which reflects the intensity of people’s preferences, allows people to double down or spread their preferences out. Both options could help people feel less polarized and more aligned with fellow constituents. As Tang pointed out, new, tech-enabled democratic models could make more people feel like they’re winning a majority of the time.
“As long as the technologists see democracy as something they can contribute to, and as long as the lawmakers see technology as something that can serve their public interests, then there is no longer an internal fight between democracy and technology,” she said. “We can bridge them together.”
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