Smart City, Smart Participation? Digitally-enhanced democracy and the prospects of connective action

Is digitalization a process that weakens, strengthens or ignores democratic participation? Amidst the crisis of liberal democracy, the search for innovative democratic formats has taken on a new and urgent relevance. At the same time, the proliferation of digital information and communication has raised expectations about new approaches of ‘democratizing the democracies’. Building political and social trust as well as broad, equal, protected and mutually binding patterns of communication and consultation, or - as Charles Tilly noted, political inclusivity – are considered to be core mechanisms for deepening democracy. Local participation plays a crucial role in that perspective as it is a particular form of citizen participation in decision-making that gives people a greater sense of ownership of public affairs and increases public engagement. It also encourages people to listen to a diversity of opinions and contributes to greater legitimacy of decisions. Consequently, the question arises whether the current trend towards the digitalization of urban and regional development, in particular projects such as smart city concepts and the digitalization of public affairs, holds opportunities for a revitalization and advancement of democratic trust and local participation. To analyze the prospects and obstacles of digitally-enhanced democracy, we propose a theoretical approach that links the concept of connective action with digitally enhanced political communication. Connective action can be understood as public action that contributes to a common good as an “act of personal expression and recognition or self-validation achieved by sharing ideas and actions in trusted relationships” (Bennett/ Segerberg 2021: 752-53). Digital Connective Action can be understood as public (digital) action as an active contribution to the common good, based on social embeddedness - shared ideas, joint action and social trust - on the one hand, and individualistic claims of self-development, recognition and resonance on the other. The core question is whether and how digital urban processes may both profit from and foster digital connective action as a mode of local participation. Our paper aims to shed light on the extent to which digitally enhanced political communication can remedy the elitist bias of representative democracy and contribute to building trust and mutual binding consultation and thereby, to foster democratic inclusivity. The elaboration of a theory of digitally-enhanced democratization is based on an empirical study on the city of Frankfurt (Oder) and its urban development policy process of digital transformation in the sense of a smart city concept. This study is a status quo, needs and potential analysis of the contribution of Digital Connective Action to the further development of democracy in the digital age and helps to understand the innovative potential of local digitalization concepts for democratic inclusivity.