m-Cognocracy: A Solution to Participatory Democracy With Mobile

Technology

José I. Peláez
Department of Languages and Computer Sciences - University of Málaga - Málaga 29071 - Spain
jignacio@lcc.uma.es

Jesús M. Doña
Department of Languages and Computer Sciences - University of Málaga - Málaga 29071 - Spain
jmdona@lcc.uma.es

David L. La Red
Computer Science Department - Faculty of Exact Sciences - National Northeastern University -
Corrientes – Argentina
lrmdavid@exa.unne.edu.ar

Carlos R. Brys
Computer Science Department - Faculty of Economics Sciences - National University of Misiones -
Misiones – Argentina
brys@fce.unam.edu.ar

Abstract mobile technologies and operators of

For many people, practice of democracy has
become synonymous of elections, an event
where ordinary citizens only participate in
politics the day of polling, once every four or
five years. This is causing the decline in civic
participation around the world, causing what
has been called the crisis of political parties.
aggregation OWA providing a new model for
citizen participation in city governments.
Keywords: Participatory democracy, e-
government, citizen participation,
municipalities, participatory budget, electronic
voting, weights of the vector of the OWA
operator.

The use of ICTs and new forms of participation 1. Introduction

in city governments by the practice of the
Participatory Budget, it shown as an effective
means to reverse citizens’ apathy. But for these
new forms of participation to have the desired
effect it must have two characteristics. The first
is to reach the greatest number of citizens,
which in a simple and safe way can exercise
such participation, and the second, that
synthesizes citizens’ preferences into results that
are representative of the same.
Increasing quantities of “white” votes and
electoral abstention in the elections, support the
conclusion that many people do not perceive
politics as a constructive dimension of civic
identity, but as a ritual that results to be not
theirs (“e-Government and Election Process”.
Executive Secretariat for Integral Development
(ESDI). Organization of American States
(OAS)).

This paper presents a new form of civic The percentage of citizen participation around
participation called m-Cognocracy, using the world has been reduced from 68% in the
mid-1980’s to 64% after 1990, and according to [6].
the data that has being recorded, from the year
2000 that participation continues to decline [6].
Within these studies on citizen participation, we
can establish two essential aspects to the new
The following table and figure show the model of participatory democracy be initially
decrease of the participation in the European considered as valid.
elections.
The first would be referred to the form of
Year % Participation participation, which must involve the universe
1979 61,99 of the population, so the system should be easy
1984 58,98 and safe to use, in addition to be within reach of
1989 58,41 more people, so that they can cast their opinions
1994 56,67 or preferences regarding projects to be under-
1999 49,51 taken, and the second referred to the way of
2004 45,47 weighing these preferences to achieve a result
2009 43,01 that show the opinions of citizens, it is desirable
that such weighting is independent of the values
Table 1: European elections (European Parliament1).
of the alternatives and dependent of the position
they occupy. This ensures that any process of
voting weighted equally to the alternatives,
independently of the preferences expressed by
the citizens, thus reaching two objectives: one
of equality between all the votes, and a second,
a filter for pressure groups since it ponders
position and not preferences.

Several researchers have attempted to give an

answer to the above conditions in a global or
local way. For example Moreno-Jiménez in
[12], proposes a global solution to the problem
Figure 1: European elections (European Parliament). of participatory democracy through the e-
cognocracy, a new model that combines direct
Apathy for participating in the elections shows a
participatory democracy with the representative
growing estrangement between citizens and the
democracy, and that is supplemented by use of
political class. At present the use of new
electronic voting via the Internet. To carry out
technologies has propitiated the appearance of
this process, Moreno-Jiménez makes use the
new models of human relationships, for
Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) [17–19],
example through virtual communities that use
so that the political class establishes the
the Internet as a communication media [13]. It
hierarchy of decision criteria of choice and
is encouraging that in many places of the world,
possible alternatives (projects), and are citizens
researchers, sociologists, politicians, citizens in
who set preferences in a single voting round,
general, are questioning the traditional methods
using the Internet [13]. But this method presents
of citizen participation, because they have not
the problem that makes a participatory exercise
been adapted to the technological and social
in a technologically mature society, where all
changes, and new ways to achieve the peoples’
citizens use Internet as a usual resource, inform
government are subjected to debate, and the
themselves and learn through the network, and
participatory methods using new technologies
cast their votes in electronic form, so the
practice of this kind of democracy is limited to a
1 European Parliament, 2009.
very specific social stratum and can become
exclusionary of society in general. In addition to
this problem, using the AHP method implies
that citizens express their preference for
comparisons between pairs of alternatives, and
because of the quantity of judgments that must
be emitted, a computer or mobile devices are
needed that are not available for the whole
population.
The second aspect for a method to be con-
sidered valid, is referred to the weighing of
alternatives. Some operators designed to carry
out the weighting of the position, independently
of content, are called OWA operators (Ordered
Weighted Averaging). Defined by Yager in
[21], and implemented in a multitude of areas
such as neural networks, fuzzy logic controllers,
vision systems, expert systems and multi
decision aids. This paper proposes an alternative
model of citizen participation, which makes use
of mobile phones together with the OWA
operators, and matches the two main aspects to
a system of citizen participation to be
considered as valid.
This paper has been organized as follows:
Section 2 provides an introduction to par-
ticipatory democracy through participatory
budgeting and analyses their problems; in
Section 3 it presents the m-Cognocracy, as a
new form of practice participatory democracy
using electronic voting with mobile devices, for
which we present how to build-up the
knowledge, it will show the technological
paradigm, will treat safety aspects and finally
will present the way to weight the alternatives
through the OWA operators, and finally we will
show an example and compare the results with
other methods; the fourth section presents
conclusions.
2. The Participative Budget. Problems
One of the contexts where there have been
success stories of citizen participation, is in the
application of the concept of participative
budgets, an idea that emerged in Porto Alegre
(Brazil) in 1989 [22], and is replicating ever
more frequently throughout the world. This
concept can be simplified in the following idea:
the city administration, rather than deciding for
everyone, invites neighbors for they themselves
to determine which should be the projects that
the city should invest public money in.
From the study of a number of practical ex-
periences of participatory budget (PB) [3,15],
we conclude that the procedure, generally takes
place in three stages: in the first, neighborhood
assemblies are conducted where neighbors are
trained in formulating projects; in the second,
the projects are formulated by the ideas that the
neighbors contribute, and the projects that
neighbors established through voting according
to their priorities are selected; in the third phase,
the projects are adopted and implemented by the
municipal authorities.
One can infer from the three stages that the
second is the most important where neighbors
formulate and vote on the projects to be carried
out. According to an analysis conducted in
different participatory budgets, it was seen that
the project priorities are set by the political class
in a subjective way and not by the opinions of
citizens or neighbors. In this scenario, it is
desirable that these priorities be determined by
the citizens themselves through their pre-
ferences.
3. m-Cognocracy
The general definitions of what the electronic
government is, limits it to the delivery of public
services to citizens using Information &
Communications Technology (ICT). This def-
inition, although it is the simplest, is the most
popular [2, 4]. If one looks at how the Internet
has evolved, we can see that the web has
become interactive and focused on the in-
volvement of the user in a concept called Web
2.0 [14], and where connections are becoming
increasingly wireless. In the Information
Society, people with capacity to participate in
decision-making have become more
participatory, are better informed, they are more
analytical, less submissive and are much more
demanding about their political administrations
[8]. Today young people handle more
communication and technological resources
than the political class that governs. There has
been a generational gap in the capacity to
manage knowledge. It is a fact that citizens
while maintaining their support for democracy,
respect the authority increasingly less [7].
communications, that capture a set of ideas and
makes popular initiatives. These ideas are
argued and enriched while transmitting through
various communicating media, with
increasingly greater mass participation and
scope, as shown in the next figure.

However, there is a seemingly contradictory

situation. The numbers show an alleged lack of
motivation and desire to participate in the
traditional way, but the experiences in which the
citizen can see himself as an active element
through his direct participation in public affairs,
show high levels of satisfaction and the desire to
participate more often in making decisions that
affect their future [20]. These facts do not go
unnoticed by the political class, which perceives
that something is happening to the citizens, and
believes that one way to legitimize its mandate
is to improve the processes of citizen
participation. But this is not an easy task, for the
simple fact that no one knows how to do it. In Figure 2: Knowledge Building Process.
this scenario governments must adapt to new
technological paradigms, it is necessary to adopt
new methods for making decisions and rethink In short, in the practice of m-Cognocracy few
alternatives to exercise democracy. people use a blog to socialize an initiative.
Others take these ideas to the forums and in a
To define this new paradigm the term “m- wiki build the proposal. The proposal is sent to
Cognocracy” is proposed, a new model of par- nearly all by e-mail by an electronic newsletter.
ticipatory democracy where “e-citizens” build Everyone participates in the assembly for
knowledge in consensus to make the community discussion of the alternatives. Finally, among all
proposals, and decide for the best alternatives they vote using SMS (Short Message Service)
voting at the time of their choice, anywhere via from their mobile devices to determine which
their mobile communication devices, in are the best proposals and get the prioritization
electronic form and also remotely [16]. To of projects that best represent the interests of the
illustrate how this new participation model is, it group.
will be shown how to manage the knowledge
construction, it will present the technological
paradigm, and the authentication system. 3.2. The Technological Paradigm

3.1. Knowledge Building The development of ICT has created a

In the technological context proposed by this
paper, the knowledge required for the process of
the decision-making community, is built from
an initial group of e-citizens with skills in
managing various resources in technology and
technological context where access to
communication with mobile devices is global
and universal. The communication resource
most available to the population is cellular
telephony, a resource exploited through SMS
messages.
 technology [9–11]. This means that eventually
According to Informa Telecoms and Media2, people will be able to exercise their civic duties
with a inter year growth of 18%, penetration of using a mobile device.
cellular telephony is close to 50% of the world’s
population. It is alleged that in 2009 the 3.3. Security and Authentication
penetration will be 60%, and in 2012 it will
reach 66%. One of the aspects that we can argue in the
hypothesis of this paper is the security level that
The next table and figure show the penetration cell phone voting can provide, although it is
of the movable telephony (MT) in respect of the important to bear in mind, it is not the object of
fixed telephony (FT) and the penetration of the study of this work. Fortunately, today’s
movable telephony (MT) in respect of the technology others solutions to reliably ensure
Internet3. the identity of the person who votes, through the
electronic signature infrastructure in the mobile
MT / [5].
Country MT / FT Internet
World 1,72 2,13 From the standpoint of implementation, in order
European Union 1,96 1,87
to use the system, the user must apply for a
China 1,25 2,85
digital certificate for his mobile phone which
United States 1,35 1,12
will allow them to certify his authenticity and
India 3,34 2,77
Japan 1,84 1,16 sign electronically through an SMS message.
Brazil 2,58 2,35 For security, the digital certificate is not stored
Germany 1,56 2,18 in the mobile device, but it will be installed
safely on the SIM card (Subscriber Identity
Table 2: Movable Telephony / Fixed Telephony; Module).
Movable Telephony / Internet.
3.4. Weighting of Alternatives

As mentioned earlier, the second aspect to be

considered as a valid method, refers to the
weight of the alternatives being desirable that
the weighting being independent of the values
of alternatives and depending on the position
they occupy.

This ensures that any voting process will weigh

Figure 3: Movable Telephony / Fixed Telephony;
Movable Telephony / Internet.
These facts define a paradigm where the
technological media of citizens communication,
are cellular phones and not the Internet,
therefore it is not wrong to think that services
will be developed on the basis of mobile
equally the alternatives, independently of the
preferences expressed by the citizens, achieving
in this way two objectives: one of equality
between all the votes, and secondly a filter for
the pressure groups, as it ponders the position
and not the values.
To carry out the weighting, this paper proposes
the use of the OWA operator along with Borda-
Kendall’s method [1] for determining the weight
of the operator.

2 http://www.informatm.com An OWA operator is defined as a function of

3 CIA. Factbook 2008. USA.
dimension n of the type F: possessing each citizen votes using their mobile phone with
an array of weights associated W = [w1,...,wn]T , the following procedure: they send a SMS text
where wi [0, 1], = 1, to aggregate a identifying the projects in the order of their
list of values {p1,...,pn}. preference. Table 3 shows that voting along
with the absolute frequencies of the order of
Also, preferences for each project.

Project 1st 2nd 3rd 4th

(1) A 3 3 4 3
B 4 5 5 2
where bi is the ith largest value of pn. C 6 2 3 2
D 6 2 2 6
The vector of weights W is obtained by using E 0 4 3 4
Borda-Kendall’s method, so that:
F 1 4 3 3
Table 3: Votes received for projects A-F.

)
The vector of weights which is obtained using
Borda-Kendall’s method (2) is:

Therefore, the operator would be defined as

W = (0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.1)
follows:
Applying the aggregation equation (3) with the
(2)
vector of weights W we obtain aggregated
values for each project, as seen in Table 4.
So: vij is the absolute frequency of voters who
placed the alternative j in the position i of the Project 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Count
ranking (j = 1,..., m); and wi is the relative A 1.2 0.9 0.8 0.3 3.2
weight of importance corresponding to i place in B 1.6 1.5 1.0 0.2 4.3
the ranking (i = 1,…, n). C 2.4 0.6 0.6 0.2 3.8
D 2.4 0.6 0.4 0.6 4.0
The total account of each project Zj is an E 0 1.2 0.6 0.4 2.2
aggregated utility that is defined as a linear F 0.4 1.2 0.6 0.3 2.5
function of the relative weights of importance. Table 4: Counts for projects A-F using the
Once the weights are determined, in the vector of weights of OWA.
exploration phase the projects are sorted
according to their total accounts. Arranging the column Count that represents the
aggregated values of each project the following
In (3) we observe that the weights are related to list results:
the positions in the ranking, and not to the order
of the votes. BÆDÆCÆAÆFÆE

3.5. Numerical Example If we compare the values of Tables 3 and 4 we

A group of 20 residents of a neighborhood has
drawn up a list of projects A, B, C, D, E, F, that
the municipal government will finance. Among
the neighbors they must choose which are the
most important projects for the neighborhood,
can see that if it had applied the method of
choice for a single project by a simple majority
(column 1 of Table 3), projects C and D would
have won with equal importance (6 votes). But
this method does not consider the different
magnitudes of preference which may be had by
the neighbors as to other projects.
However, using the method of aggregation with
the vector weights OWA, the magnitudes of
preference of all the projects are counted, and is
obtained that project B is the most
representative of the interests of the citizen
group.
4. Conclusions
This paper presents a new form of citizen
participation called m-Cognocracy, that using
mobile technologies and operators of
aggregation OWA they provide a new model for
the civic participation in the governments of the
cities.
For that, the way how to build knowledge has
been presented, the technological paradigm that
is based on the use of mobile phones using SMS
has been established, it has raised the security
scheme that allows using digital signatures to
cast the votes from the mobile communication
devices, and finally, it has proposed a new way
of weighing alternatives which weights the
position, using OWA operators, and has
proposed a new way of determining the weights
of the operators using Borda Kendall’s method.
Finally, it has compared this new form of
weight with other methods and has shown how
this way of weighing addition to weigh the
position and not the content; it takes into
account all the votes in all magnitudes of
preference.
5. Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Ministry of
Education and Science of Spain. (Project
TIN2006-14285).
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