An Investigation of the Use of Computer Supported Arguments Visualization for Improving Public Participation in Legislation Formation

Abstract

It has been argued that representative democracy, in order to be effective and address the problems and needs of different groups, and also at the same time legitimate and acceptable, should be combined with public participation (both off-line and on-line) of individual citizens and the civil society. However, the participation of citizens (either as individuals or as representatives of groups or any type of collective entities) in political debates in order to be meaningful and effective needs to be informed, which necessitates extensive study of large amounts of relevant material, such as reports, laws, committees’ minutes, opinions expressed by experts, stakeholders, political parties, et cetera. Most of this material is in a legalistic or in other specialist languages, or in a political rhetoric style that hides their substance, making it less discernible. The above problems are putting barriers to a meaningful and effective participation. This chapter presents research on the use of ‘Computer Supported Argument Visualization’ (CSAV) methods for addressing these problems and supporting and enhancing public participation in the legislation formation process. Based on an analysis of this process and its main documents, a comprehensive approach to the use of CSAV in the legislation formation process is designed, which covers all its fundamental stages and documents, and assists citizens and civil society groups to participate in it in a meaningful and effective manner with a reasonable amount of effort. It is based on the issue-based information systems (IBIS) framework. This approach has been implemented in a pilot e-participation project in the Greek Parliament, which was then evaluated based on the ‘Technology Acceptance Model’ (TAM) with positive results. Based on the conclusions of this evaluation an enrichment of the IBIS framework has been developed for improving the visualization of the main content (articles) of bills and laws.