E-democracy designates the set of institutional practices enabled by new information and communication technologies (henceforth ICTs). Such practices are supposed to help further the core values of democracy and have been suggested as a potential remedy to some of the shortcomings of current Western democracies. Specifically, so it is hypothesised, such ICT solutions could make up for the growing disaffection with political participation and the widespread discontent with contemporary political practices. The extent to which, so far, this has actually been the case, is still a matter of debate.

Bioethics, on the other hand, is the fairly young discipline that deals with the ethical issues arising within the broad domain of the life sciences. Its birth is traditionally associated with the Nuremberg trials. Since then bioethics has however grown into a full-fledged institutionalised discipline hosting and articulating the process of adjudication of claims to the moral acceptability of practices within the field of the life sciences (ranging from basic research to clinical practice). It has recently (and eventually) turned into a device upon which politics relies when decisions have to be made vis-à-vis genuine moral disagreement (which is a fact of pluralist societies).

Bioethical institutional bodies have so far complied with a fairly ‘expertocratic’ model, whereby experts (and at times stakeholders’ representatives) get political appointments to the participation in panels or advisory councils meant to tackle issues picked out by policy-makers in that raising substantial moral controversy and likely political disagreement. These working groups take upon themselves a consultive role to policy-making proper, issuing recommendations, drafting reports and papers, providing foresight. The bluntly top-down approach just sketched suffers from a number of difficulties.

1. Opaque agenda setting: the very process through which issues are picked for discussion and deliberation is obscure. The task of judging political relevance and ethical controversiality of the topics is left entirely to policy-makers’ discretion. While it is true that when issues command attentive ethical and political scrutiny, chances will be that politics within a functioning democracy will have to be responsive and put those issues on the agenda, it is also likely that it may do so for reasons other than genuine ethical concern, e.g. postponing controversial decisions or backing up desired conclusions with the academic prestige of like-minded experts.
2. Political appointment of participants: appointed participants are currently selected according to their expertise or to the stakes they are supposed to represent politically. However, when it comes to the hotly debated details of scientific issues (which is often the case in bioethical debates), it becomes essential that any willing contributor bearing the right kind of expertise be enfranchised as a potential member of the assembly. This is so because some crucial piece of information might get overlooked due to a lack of oversight. As famously stated in Linus’s law, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”[1].
3. Unclear political efficacy: the impression that these institutional bodies may serve purposes other than an authentic debate concerning the way in which, as a polity, we ought to go about deciding on some controversial ethical issue, is further strengthened by the unclear link between the output of these deliberative bodies and the decisions which are then politically implemented.
4. Poor representation of voices: there are two issues as to the representativeness of stakeholders in institutional bodies for bioethical deliberation. First, the top-down nature of the recruitment of parties can easily lead to under or overrepresentation of positions due to the contingent representation of voices within standard democratic institutions. Secondly, the solution generally deployed in order to counter the effect just mentioned, is that of representing each and every existing positions regardless of the actual weight the represented voices have in society.
5. Obstacles to scaling up participation: whenever confronted with the possibility of turning these institutional devices into loci for large-scale civic engagement, this kind of institutions have to face the reality of scarce outreach, limited resources and exponentially rising costs.

E-democratic tools seem, at least prima facie, to offer a promising solution to some of these problems. Hosting consultive or deliberative bioethical forums online would allow for an open-ended process of bottom-up agenda setting, with institutions constantly responsive to the direct suggestion of new issues to be tackled. Having these forums open for participation to anyone satisfying certain (agreed upon) epistemic and rhetorical standards would allow for access to a whole lot of information to be leveraged in order to achieve a truly considered decision. Disclaiming openly the “rules of participation” to the forum would clarify the political efficacy that is expected of the institution. Due to the self-selection of the community that will draft the recommendations or the working papers, it will hardly ever be the case that some positions are over or under-represented as a result of political historical contingencies. This does not mean that positions will be properly represented: ICTs are available to and proficiently used by specific strata of the populace and this is likely to produce some representational distortion. Finally, ICTs offer the ideal setting for scaling up participation without incurring in skyrocketing costs.

In conclusion, as long as it can manage to be both more inclusive (i.e. not giving rise to different representational distortions) than today’s institutions and comply with shared rhetorical and epistemic standards currently not tested for, then an e-democratic forum can prove be superior to the present standard practice for bioethics in most respects. Of course there remain some unanswered empirical questions. And upon these rests the promise of e-democracy for bioethics.

A. Gutmann, A., D. Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge: Belknap Press 1996.

G. Boniolo, Il pulpito e la piazza. Democrazia, deliberazione e scienze della vita, Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore 2012

[1] Eric S. Raymond (1999). The Cathedral & the Bazaar. O'Reilly.