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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Serie: Antipode Book Series
- Sprache: Englisch
“This timely book carefully interrogates the increasingly fraught intersections of the digital, the city, and democracy. It is a book that will endure, bristling as it is with thoughtful reflection and insight on the democratic challenges that unfold amidst the ordinary, troubled and generative digital worlds of cities as different as Madrid, Taipei and Helsinki. Amidst the work of policymakers, activists, and engineers, what emerges is a hopeful exploration of what ‘digital democracy platforms’ might enable.”
—Professor Colin McFarlane, Durham University
“This vital book moves beyond a universal analysis of the effects of social media platforms on liberal democracy. Through an in-depth examination of civic platforms in Finland, Spain and Taiwan, Tseng provides a compelling and nuanced empirical and theoretical analysis of the contingent relationship between platforms, place and democracy.”
—Professor Rob Kitchin, Maynooth University
Reimagining Democracy in the Digital and Urban Age
How can democracy adapt and thrive in a world reshaped by artificial intelligence and digital platforms?
In Liquid Democracy, author Yu-Shan Tseng offers a bold new framework for understanding democracy as a dynamic, fluid process. Challenging the idea that AI and digital tools are inherently anti-democratic, this innovative volume bridges theory and practice to investigate various “liquid conditions,” a novel concept capturing how political action flows and transforms like water within the intersections of urban spaces and digital technologies.
Through an in-depth comparative study of three groundbreaking digital democracy platforms—Decide Madrid in Madrid, OmaStadi in Helsinki, and vTaiwan in Taipei—Tseng explores how digital platforms can foster participatory governance, pluralism, and alternative democratic futures. In-depth chapters critically examine the interactions between humans, algorithms, and urban systems, revealing how digital tools reconfigure the boundaries of political participation, decision-making, and collective action. Throughout the text, Tseng offers fresh insights into how democracy emerges under contingent conditions shaped by technology and geography.
Drawing from years of ethnographic fieldwork, Liquid Democracy is essential reading for master’s and PhD students in geography, political science, and urban studies, as well as scholars, practitioners, and policymakers interested in digital governance, smart cities, civic technology, and algorithmic politics.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
List of Figures and Table
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Approaching Democracy from the Fieldacknowledgments
1 Democracy in the Age of Platformisation
1.1 Reproblematising Democracy in the Age of Platformisation
1.2 Meeting ‘Differences’ of Democracy at the Intersections
1.3 Democratisations, Occupy Movements and Global Circulations
1.4 A Liquid Comparison and Epistemology
1.5 Liquid Conditions for Democracy in Digital and Urban Worlds
2 Dissolving Democratic Theories into Larger Worlds
2.1 Correct Ontologies, Normative Claims and Universal Assumptions in Democratic Theories
2.2 Democracy In‐The‐World Ontologies: More‐Than‐Human, Liquidity and Multiplicity
2.3 From a Correct Democracy to Democratic Multiplicity
3 DDPs at Comparative Conjunctures
3.1 Movements, Calculus and Futures
3.2 Convergent Democratic Movements Underpinning the DDPs
3.3 On Risk Calculus and Democratic Futures
3.4 Orienting Towards Different Democratic Futures
4 Frictions for Care Democracy
4.1 Gamification as a New Digital Solution and Environment for Democracy
4.2 Friction as Contestations
4.3 Tactical Friction: Power, Knowledge Inequalities and Care
4.4 Frictions as Ordinary Rhythms for Care Democracy
5 Algorithmic Reordering for Plural Democracy
5.1 Reordering as a Liquid Condition for Plural Democracy
5.2 vTaiwan: Reordering Plural Opinions for Uber Legalisation
5.3 Decide Madrid: Reordering Issues into Urban Services and Infrastructures
5.4 Reordering in Decision‐Making for Liquid Plural Democracy
6 Urban Thrown‐Togetherness for Ordinary Democracy
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Challenging Neoliberal Trends in Helsinki
6.3 Decide Madrid: Collective Presence for Alternative Urban Futures
6.4 Thrown‐togetherness in Liquid Temporal‐Geographies for Ordinary Democracy
7 Moving on with Liquid Democracy
7.1 Seeing Democracy Like Water
7.2 Becoming with the Liquid Worlds for Policymaking
7.3 Where to Look for Democratic Futures
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Anti‐ and pro‐Uber perspectives from the two opinion groups.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 The calculable relationalities produced during a vTaiwan consulta...
Figure 3.2 Decide Madrid’s banners in the streets of Madrid (left) and OmaSt...
Figure 3.3 Discussion before voting in Puente de Vallecas.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Screenshot of the featured proposals (e‐petitions) in a yellow ba...
Figure 4.2 vTaiwan’s interface at 12:00 (left); a glitchy moment in vTaiwan’...
Figure 4.3 Online promotion for the OmaStadi proposal for a football field i...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Screenshot of the vTaiwan UI visualising two opinion groups (in g...
Figure 5.2 Screenshot of ‘featured’ proposals in Decide Madrid on 3 July 201...
Figure 5.3 Screenshot of ‘featured’ proposals in Decide Madrid on 30 October...
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
List of Figures and Table
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Approaching Democracy from the Field
Begin Reading
References
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Antipode Book Series
Series Editors: Kiran Asher (University of Massachusetts, USA) and David Featherstone (University of Glasgow, UK)
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Liquid Democracy: A Comparative Study of Digital Urban DemocracyYu‐Shan Tseng
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Liquid Democracy
A Comparative Study of Digital Urban Democracy
Yu‐Shan Tseng
University of Southampton
UK
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“For Ann, Lily and Nai‐Nai”
List of Figures and Table
Figures
3.1 The calculable relationalities produced during a vTaiwan consultation
3.2 Decide Madrid’s banners in the streets of Madrid (left) and OmaStadi’s pamphlets (right)
3.3 Discussion before voting in Puente de Vallecas
4.1 Screenshot of the featured proposals (e‐petitions) in a yellow banner on Decide Madrid
4.2 vTaiwan’s interface at 12:00 (left); a glitchy moment in vTaiwan’s interface at 14:46 (right), 7 November 2019
4.3 Online promotion for the OmaStadi proposal for a football field in Herttoniemi on FutisForum2
5.1 Screenshot of the vTaiwan UI visualising two opinion groups (in grey clusters) and a majoritarian view during the Uber consultation
5.2 Screenshot of ‘featured’ proposals in Decide Madrid on 3 July 2019. Featured proposals appear at the top of the citizen proposal frontpage
5.3Screenshot of ‘featured’ proposals in Decide Madrid on 30 October 2019
Table
5.1 Anti‐ and pro‐Uber perspectives from the two opinion groups
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the support and contributions of numerous individuals, communities, and institutions to whom I am indebted. I take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to all of them.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to know and learn from many colleagues, whose wisdom and brilliance have nurtured a critical and liberal academic culture within Durham Geography. Those intellectually stimulating conversations and interactions had a profound impact on my research and worldview, both during and even more after my PhD. I constantly found myself in awe of their intellectual critique and creativity. I am grateful to Hannah, Cynthia, Hung‐Ying, Ludovico, James, Grace, Marcin, Ayushman, Tilly, Paul, Gordon, Lauren, and many others for their support and encouragement. It was an environment that constantly privileges the importance of acknowledging and appreciating someone's perspective on the world, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it may be to others. Durham was brimming with a strong sense of intellectual liberation, respect and a constant worry about ‘what might be foreclosed’. I enjoyed intellectual conversations undertaken in the purist possible way, imbued with passion and care, going beyond all kinds of numerical measurements and hierarchies.
I extend a special thank you to my PhD supervisors, Colin McFarlane and Andres Luque‐Ayala, for their unwavering patience, wisdom and support throughout and beyond my doctoral studies. I am also very grateful to Louise Amoore, who graciously provided me with her mentorship for a short time during my postdoc. Looking back, I realise that there were many things, spoken and unspoken, that I did not fully comprehend as a PhD student. However, as I transitioned to a postdoctoral position in a different country and department at the University of Helsinki, things began to illuminate themselves in strange and unexpected moments.
I am grateful to have been granted a three‐year independent postdoctoral position at the University of Helsinki, which provided me with the time and resources to delve deeper into the investigation of the OmaStadi platform and urban communities. During my time at the University of Helsinki, I had the pleasure of getting to know many wonderful colleagues, including David, Tuukka, Sonja, Laura, Santerri, Kirkissika, Mika, Jim, and Zhuo from Minna Ruckenstain's research group at the Centre for Consumer Society Research (CCSR). The biweekly seminars fostered interesting conversations and discussions on topics such as algorithmic decision‐making and digital technologies. There was always a sense of frankness in our discussions, whether regarding manuscripts or specific technologies.
Outside of the research group, insightful and constructive suggestions were gleaned from the two panels at the EEAST conference (in Madrid) and at the conference on ‘Digitalisation and Welfare’ hosted by the IT University of Copenhagen, where I had the chance to speak to Nanna Thylstrup and other Danish STS scholars. I also had the pleasure of presenting the outline of my book project at the National Taiwan University (online) and at the University of Aalborg where I received interesting feedback from STS scholars like Sung‐Yeuh Perng, Mei‐Chun Lee, Anders Munk and Anders Madsen. Back to Helsinki, I thank Niilo, Petteri, Visa, Joe and Mikko for their support on administrative matters and for engaging in conversations. Beyond the CCSR, I extend my thanks to fellow postdocs in urban studies and sustainability studies, including Stephan, Basile, Niharika, Anna, Nilay, Seona, and Lasse, for their peer support and for having fun during lunches, drinks and other social activities. I am particularly grateful to Annina, who provided me with support in various administrative matters.
I am grateful to the individuals who provided tremendous support during my fieldwork in Taipei, Madrid, and Helsinki. Foremost, I express my deepest gratitude to Audrey Tang, the digital minister of the Taiwanese government. Audrey has consistently responded to my inquiries about vTaiwan over the years and has been incredibly generous with her time and insights for my research project. I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to work at Audrey's cabinet office, where I had the pleasure of getting to know and engaging in conversations with key stakeholders such as Shu‐Yang, Yu‐Tzan, Tzu‐Yu, Mark, Fang and many others who were involved in and made significant contributions to the vTaiwan project. Additionally, I thank Christopher Small from Pol.is Inc. Christopher not only provided me with invaluable knowledge of machine learning algorithms but also recreated a highly unique database that allowed for the daily reconstruction of online participation in the Uber case. This database became a critical material for my analysis of algorithmic decision‐making.
In Madrid, a heart‐felt appreciation is, without doubt, given to Miguel for his invaluable assistance in interpreting during meetings and a few interviews with Spanish colleagues. His generosity with time and scheduling was a great help to my fieldwork. I also express my gratitude to Paula, Chema, Ana, Vicky, Rai, Yago, Pablo Aragon and Saya, who were involved in or conducted research on the Decide Madrid project. Their honest and intellectual insights, as well as their warm hospitality during our conversations, have been very helpful to my fieldwork. I am also grateful to Alberto Corsin for his inspirational conversations during my several visits to Madrid. Finally, I acknowledge the contributions of my research assistant, Tanja, who interpreted short conversations and interviews with activists and citizens (even in scorching hot weather) during the follow‐up fieldwork.
In Helsinki, a lot of gratitude goes to my research team members: Christoph Becker and Ida Roikonen. Ida provided assistance in facilitating interviews and participatory observations by interpreting Finnish to English (and vice versa), while Chris contributed to the analysis of voting patterns and provided comments on the journal manuscript. I also appreciated Antti Hukkanen for providing a user database upon request. On top of this, I have enjoyed the insightful conversations about OmaStadi with Thomas Wallgren at the University of Helsinki, Pauli Saloranta, Kirsi Verkka and many others at the City of Helsinki. I have enjoyed doing participatory observation in several suburban communities alone or with my master’s student, Ida. Finally, I also thank Vesa from Laajasalo and his son Thomas for their help with language interpretation during the walking tour, as well as Ina from Philajamaki for her help with interviewee recruitment.
The two editors at the Antipode book series – David and Kiran – have been instrumental in publishing this book. Their editorial comments on an earlier draft helped me feel companionship during the lengthy process. I felt encouragement and was prompted to think more critically and write more rigorously. In addition, I thank the dozens of reviewers from Urban Studies, Big Data & Society, AI & Society, and Cultural and Social Geography. Their feedback on the journal manuscripts, which I incorporated into empirical chapters 4, 5, and 6, indirectly contributed to this book.
This book could not have gotten off the ground without financial support from the cities of Helsinki, Vantaa, and Espoo, Centre for Consumer Society Research at the University of Helsinki, and the Taiwanese government, which funded my postdoc position and PhD study. I was also supported by small grants for fieldwork and conferencing from Royal Geography Society (the Dudley Memorial Award), Geography Department and Hatfield College at Durham University, and the Urban and Regional Studies Institute and the Social Science Faculty at the University of Helsinki. While funding was essential, the freedom of my three‐year position at the University of Helsinki allowed me to think and write slowly, steadily and critically. Finally, I also thank the University of Southampton for offering me a prestigious anniversary research fellowship. This fellowship ensured the financial security, continuity and intellectual recognition that allowed me to finish off the revisions. A conversation about post‐structuralism and comparison methods with Nick Clarke has been helpful for me to rethink what has been produced or added to democratic theories through my choice of a comparative methodology.
In my personal life, a massive thank you goes to my partner, Jeff, who has supported my academic career, fieldwork and the writing up of this book in his own way. It is comforting to find food on the table when you come home from curious trips. I thank my late mother‐in‐law, Ann, who was always there for me throughout and whose spirit still lives through my actions and words. I thank Dave and Richard from the Maughan family for their support. Speaking of unconditional love and support, I thank my sister, mum and dad in Taipei.
If there is anything left unsaid here or in the book, it is meant to be understood by way of the Dao. While it is often left unsaid or not completely clear in large measure, I can clearly recall such moments when the Dao brought new directions and visions into the world throughout different stages of writing this book. With Dao in mind, I ventured into the random directions that snowflakes swerve, without completely losing myself. I was able to join and let go of the wind whispering in the trees, upon which I had once rested my passion, yet allowed it to disperse into beams of light vanishing into the darkness of the night.
SouthamptonJune 2024
Introduction: Approaching Democracy from the Field
Democracy is being challenged by the emergence of new technologies and platforms that threaten to undermine its credibility, its conduct and its very conditions of existence. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies interfere with democratic politics by manufacturing information, images and audio that instil anxiety, fear and hatred in the minds of the public. Many people find themselves saturated and overloaded with different kinds of information, including that produced and disseminated by AI technologies. They can no longer confidently verify the veracity of information, whether it's an image of a political candidate or a recorded audio of an interview with the mayor of London. In this confusion, some are inclined to accept AI‐generated information as objective fact. Perhaps, after all, it is not completely ‘wrong’ to choose one side to place your faith in, as most electoral systems invite the public to choose the best politician to make decisions for them. It is, then, not far‐fetched to imagine that AI predict our political preferences, target us with content we like and push public opinions and sentiments on major political events to extremes and polarisations. In this dystopian scenario, people may become less tolerant of different political opinions, less trusting of political information and less confident in the credibility of electoral democracy.
Unsurprisingly, many citizens and scholars perceive emerging technologies as a categorical threat to the foundations of democracy. However, I want to reopen or, rather, reintroduce new questions about democracy that are impossible to ignore as new technologies emerge. Many find comfort in the easy and simple claim that ‘our' democracy is in crisis (again) and, this time, the problem is new technologies. This claim may or may not be true. Yet, the very question I wish to address and answer in this book is: How can we think, practise and theorise democracy from differences – from different platforms, from different historical democratic trajectories, from different cities, from different worlds – that have been made obscure when we only consider AI as a threat to democracy? I want to take a more modest yet critical position that does not begin with existing democratic principles, categories and theories. This position approaches democracy from the field, where digital and urban worlds intersect and unfold.
I hope to move away from certain obsessions that equate democracy with a universal formula or toolkit that promises to transform democracy through new technologies. In this universal world of democracy, policymakers, consultants and scholars rush to innovate one set of indicators after another to measure democracy against normative principles such as inclusivity, transparency and empowerment, or against matrices such as literacy rates, turnout rates and so on. I do not necessarily disagree with these universal approaches to democracy; indeed, these principles might yield democratic effects. However, I consider what is lost when we think and practice democracy from its universal norms, categories and theories. Whose histories and democracies are denied or written off (whether intentionally or unintentionally)? What if there are other ways of thinking and practising democracy? What if democracy is not about having closure? What if democracy is a journey that never begins or ends with technologies posed as solutions to fix democratic problems?
I hope to bring democracy closer to the urban and digital worlds that surround and constitute it. I draw out certain liquid conditions for democracy by taking seriously and comparing geographical, theoretical, empirical and relational differences between the worlds around and within three Digital Democracy Platforms (DDPs). DDPs are digital platforms, powered by open‐source software, that allow multiple actors to access, reuse and customise embedded algorithms to develop localised digital decision‐making processes. DDPs enable citizens, stakeholders and policymakers to get involved in decision‐making that directly impacts policymaking at the district, municipal or national level. This can occur through e‐petitioning, e‐participatory budgeting, e‐consultation, e‐voting, e‐debate and more.
In this book, I focus on three DDPs – Decide Madrid in Madrid, OmaStadi in Helsinki and vTaiwan in Taipei. These platforms are not simply case studies, but an assemblage that shapes and is shaped by digital and urban worlds. The liquid conditions illustrate contingent ways in which these platforms are constantly on the move to somewhere, constantly changing into something else, constantly becoming entangled (or disentangled) with different kinds of actors and processes in the larger worlds. They also produce new temporal‐geographies for political actions like voting, proposing, commenting, debating, campaigning and protesting. Under such conditions, platforms render the geographical, temporal and political boundaries that define political action fluid; they make actors and orders permeable, moveable and generative, like bodies of water flowing, braiding, forking or stalling. Water is both formless and of countless forms. It is under such liquid conditions that we can identify new and multiple democratic practices, openings, moments and movements that would otherwise be unknown. Without denying historical trajectories, liquid democracy lies in between its momentary existence and potential.
The following paragraphs outline how I began to understand democracy’s liquid conditions in the field. This field here refers to the digital and urban worlds that revolve around and within the three DDPs. The field, for me, comes into being through situated encounters with urban and digital worlds. It is these encounters that allow me to simultaneously encapsulate the field whilst liberating it. It is in these encounters that the rigid demarcations – between humans and algorithms, between we and they, between digital and urban, between democracy and platform – are simultaneously dissolved and fused into something new and productive. To put this in practical terms, my encounters in and with the field constitute the fieldwork for a comparative ethnography over seven years in three different cities Helsinki, Taipei and Madrid, where the three platforms are deployed. This represents a particular type of fieldwork, as informed by assemblage‐minded and ANT scholars, that seeks to uncover empirical accounts of the more‐than‐human worlds (Latour, 2005; Farías and Bender, 2009; McFarlane, 2011b; Anderson et al., 2012). At the heart of this fieldwork is a ‘sensitivity towards the active role of non‐human actors in the assemblage of the world’ – nonhuman and human actors mutually constitute one another in the becoming of heterogeneous associations (Farías and Bender, 2009, pp. 3–9). As such, the field is openly, generatively and dynamically constructed, enacted or brought into being by human and nonhuman actors in ways not fully explained by a ‘God’s eye view’ (Rose, 1997; Haraway, 2000).
In the field, I intuitively eschew theories when collecting data about the changing relations and processes within the three DDPs. In hindsight, I both unconsciously and consciously avoided pre‐categorising the DDPs as smart city projects, hoping they would speak for themselves in particular moments (Latour, 2005; Farías and Bender, 2009). I do not seek these moments, but rather, simply get myself involved in the field through the standard routines of ethnographic fieldwork: recruiting research participants, arranging interviews, observing online and offline events. Whilst this may sound straightforward, my encounters with and in the field are best described as staying with the field as much as staying with all the troubles and opportunities presented by it (Haraway, 2016). I clumsily follow and collect all the possible connections, statements and opinions as I encounter them. Most of the time, I do not know what to make of them, but I know they would, one day, speak to me. So, there I am – becoming part of the field, becoming part of the worlds of and around the DDPs. I am becoming part of the ‘constantly evolving’ and ‘unexpected’ entanglements between humans and algorithms, between the DDPs and their wider processes, between Madrid, Taipei and Helsinki and between democracy and platform. Such entanglements are not immediately and easily explainable through any established theory of democracy.
Now, I want to talk about the ‘troubles’ – practical and contextual challenges – involved in staying faithful to the field. Practical challenges include interviewee recruitment and access to actors and information (Flowerdew and Martin, 2005), whilst contextual ones were specific to the fluid, transient and situated nature of DDPs that intertwine with wider urban and digital worlds. In these worlds, algorithms, data, users, regulations, urban communities, politics, processes and spaces are made and remade (Graham, 2005, 2020; Crang and Graham, 2007; Kitchin, Maalsen and McArdle, 2016; Kitchin, 2017; Seaver, 2017; Barns, 2020).
Soon, I realise the major challenges of my positionality as a Taiwanese female early career researcher conducting comparative ethnographic fieldwork across Helsinki, Taipei and Madrid. This ‘original’ positionality is contextually constituted and challenged by the field (and vice versa). Without denying certain academic privileges of being affiliated with prestigious universities, my ‘original’ positionality instantly makes me an ‘uncommon’, ‘powerless’ and even ‘strange’ outsider in the worlds of the three DDPs – Decide Madrid, OmaStadi and vTaiwan (Rose, 1997; Mullings, 1999; Tseng, 2021). To balance this ‘assumed’ powerless position, I initially opt to undertake internships with the Madrid City Council and the digital affairs ministry in the Taiwanese government – the hearts of vTaiwan and Decide Madrid. This ‘altered’ positionality brings me closer to practitioners, citizens, algorithms and data that actively co‐constitute the processes and practices of the three DDPs.
As I step into the field, different people in different places perceive my ‘original’ positionality differently (sometimes good, sometimes bad). For example, most software engineers and some civic hackers in Taipei and Madrid do not consider me very competent because I do not know how to code. Civic hackers come from various backgrounds but share a common goal of using technology to solve problems for social good and democratic participation (Townsend, 2013; Schrock, 2016). Most have some familiarity with software engineering or can at least code for democracy. Certain policymakers in Helsinki and Madrid refuse to be interviewed or think of me as less‐than‐competent to conduct research as a foreigner. All these encounters put me in a less powerful position than my elite informants (mostly male white European or Taiwanese policymakers, software engineers and civic hackers).
Therefore, I have to improvise new and multiple positionalities as I decide to stay in the field. I have to adapt old ones to emergent and mostly uncontrollable situations and the particular ways research participants perceive me. I fold the new positionality back into the old one as I moved from one interview to another, one city to another and one platform to another. The ‘set up’ positionality as an intern helps me to create new positionalities for these situations. I am able to subvert by strategically performing tacit knowledge (e.g. complex or trivial facts about the DDPs), gender/sex (e.g. a woman), race (e.g. an ‘East Asian’), positions and affiliations (e.g. my affiliation with key policymakers; postdoc position) and academic qualifications (e.g. UK PhD education). This situational improvisation allows me to turn troubling situations into productive encounters between myself and the researched by acknowledging and working with power dynamics (Staeheli and Lawson, 1994; Mullings, 1999; Crang, 2003). Central to the making and remaking of my positionality is making the interviewees feel special about themselves or their experiences. They are then more willing to reveal information that allowed me to produce a situated and partial knowledge about DDPs (Staeheli and Lawson, 1994; Haraway, 2000).
In this spirit, I am hoping to constantly and partially render the field knowable by engineering positive encounters between myself, the researched and the field. Each encounter cracks open the worlds of DDPs in its own way. Each encounter is an entry point – a sprat being thrown to catch a mackerel – that could uncover deeper or different insights about the field and about the DDPs.
I arrived in Madrid in 2017 – a relative novice in DDPs – with an assumption that my positionality would not offer me privileged access to the field. Therefore, I opted to present myself as a PhD student from a relatively prestigious British university. I also emphasised my connection to Taiwan, a place many Spanish civic hackers and policymakers had an affinity with. This particular representation got me an internship at the Madrid City Council, an affiliation that proved useful for interviewee recruitment. As a completely powerless outsider, I became obsessed with the authenticity of my data in my desire to know, to become and to be locally validated (see Ahmed, 2000). I wanted everything to be verified by my Spanish informants, as I was worried that interesting information would be lost in translation. As my Spanish improved and I grew more connected to the Decide Madrid actors, I started to uncover ‘other truths’ from informal chats in cafés, tapas pubs and conferences. I also gained access to unpublished research reports and work‐in‐progress documents that offered deeper insights into how participants interacted with Decide Madrid's interface and online activities such as proposing, commenting and voting.
Certainly, such positive encounters would not have been possible without the friendly nature of Madrid’s people, my rebranded positionality as a Madrid City Council intern and my demonstrated knowledge of Decide Madrid prior to or during each interview. However, these tactics did not always balance the power relations between myself and the researched, for power dynamics in the field cannot be fully tamed or overcome (Rose, 1997; Ahmed, 2000). There was no such thing as an authentic account or becoming like a local (Ahmed, 2000). At times, I was not able to interview certain stakeholders and researchers. Sometimes, I had to carefully remind interviewees of my new positionality to quell boundary‐making behaviours and colonial or sexualised gazes. Rebranding myself with this positionality allowed me to endure and act upon the moments when I was deliberately undermined and reduced to a racialised, foreign or gendered body (Ahmed, 2002). I also ran into barriers with some activist communities and policymakers. Certain reports were withheld, as I already knew more than I should as a ‘foreigner’ or ‘outsider’ (for the latter, see details in the section on vTaiwan’s fieldwork). It was obvious that these gatekeepers were unwilling to release information and worried that it would potentially allow a strange foreigner like me to develop a critical analysis of Decide Madrid. As Ahmed (2000) describes, negative emotions are attached to the stranger, who is made ‘not knowing’ and ‘foreign’.
Fortunately, I had already built‐up knowledge of Decide Madrid through everyday observations and interviews with various actors, many of whom came from a more ‘mundane’ background but made important contributions to the DDP. It was in engaging with and speaking to these individuals, who left their positions at the City of Madrid or operated behind the scenes, that I gained alternative and insightful perspectives. I was able to focus on the impacts of administrative change within the City of Madrid and how selected urban communities shaped the latest (2022) participatory budgeting process. I returned to Madrid with a local research assistant in 2022 during the participatory budgeting voting stage for a short follow‐up ethnographic investigation. This revisit allowed me to explore what had changed under the new right‐wing administration at the Madrid City Council and in citizens', activists' and communities’ lived experiences of Decide Madrid.
My encounters with Taiwanese actors presented different challenges. Whilst I am native Taiwanese, my Taiwanese colleagues did not immediately think of me as an ‘insider’ nor was I given any more power due to a home advantage (see Mullings, 1999). Like my Spanish counterparts, they perceived me as a useful outsider who would affirm the self‐celebratory narrative of DDPs. In general, the Taiwanese practitioners were guarded and suspicious about my plural positionality (i.e. a native Mandarin speaker who does not code and who studied in the United Kingdom). This led to some strange encounters with informants who intentionally undermined my questions, refused to reveal critical information or rejected interviews (to render me powerless). Yet, I stayed with the difficult and uncontrollable situations by actively seeking out other key actors who recognised and appreciated my insightful understanding of vTaiwan. Their willingness to open up afforded me a lively picture, through which I was able to revisit the key moments and conditions of liquidity – the glitches, the algorithmic reordering and the coming together between the urban and the digital space over time.
The fieldwork for OmaStadi took a different turn since I held a postdoc position at the University of Helsinki and was funded by the City of Helsinki. Most residents I spoke with, both informally and formally, did not conform to the stereotype of shy Finns. Rather, they were talkative, opinionated and provided genuine accounts of OmaStadi, probably because they regarded me as an expert with international research experience in DDPs. Interestingly, such encounters were disproportionately positive (due to the alignment between positionality and local perceptions), unlike my everyday encounters with Finnish strangers who perceived me as a sexualised and racialised subject. As I walked and talked with local residents, they slowly opened up during journeys into the woods, across the water, in between the islands and over strong coffees and sweet buns. Their anxiety about speaking to a foreigner in English naturally dissolved, and we bonded over our (different) relationships with OmaStadi. Theirs was an emotional and political one that revolved around their participatory proposals and political actions on the platform. Mine was one of curiosity.
However, high‐ranking Finnish policymakers and civil servants often declined to be interviewed by non‐native researchers like myself but were more receptive to native researchers. This xenophobic attitude certainly presented additional challenges. In such moments, I could feel what Ahmed (2002, p. 46) calls racialisation as ‘a process of investing skin colour with meaning, such that “black” and “white” come to function, not as descriptions of skin colour, but as racial identities’. I was intentionally constructed into and perceived as the foreign, the strange and the racialised other. However, I stayed with – attached to – the field, enduring through the problematic making of otherness because it was ‘necessary’ to ‘get closer’ to the promise of the field (see Anderson, 2022). To this end, I resolved to expand my reach and engage with a wide network of practitioners, activists and policymakers involved in OmaStadi, but not necessarily affiliated with the City of Helsinki.
As a Taiwanese female researcher, I will never be perceived and treated like Western researchers (see Ahmed, 2002, p. 56). However, I do not assume that each interviewee/algorithm was inherently powerful, problematic (e.g. racist) or harmful, as this would foreclose the chance for an open, productive encounter. Staying with the field (which often manifested as unequal and changeable power relations) makes it possible for me to reframe and reconstruct my engagement with the field (or ‘fieldwork’) as a heuristic process in which I find ways to bridge differences commonly perceived as ‘incommensurable’ by many people. One becomes attached to the process, despite the ever‐present levels of risk, strangeness and unequal power relations (Rose, 1997). Indeed, my reflections and actions around fluid positionality are not far from feminists’ long tradition of acknowledging and refusing to undo or conceal power dynamics unfolding from sites of fieldwork, especially the intensified uneasiness involved in studying (benefiting from) subaltern groups (Katz, 1994; Rose, 1997; Ahmed, 2000). However, I want to discuss the troubles emerging from the field, saturated with differences – different geographies, cultures, societies and powers – that I choose to hold onto and face, sometimes as a Taiwanese, sometimes as a researcher, sometimes as an intern and other times as none. I can recall a few moments when locals and others perceived me as an academic intellectual and, at the same time, gazed into a racialised or gendered body, sometimes filled with fantasy, desire (Ahmed, 2002) or both (Said, 1977). But, I find ways to attach myself to these tensions and use them to navigate and capture the field as it unfolds. Yet, there is a price to pay. It was physically and emotionally exhausting to conduct three to five months of intensive online/offline participant observation and at least 35 interviews in each city over many years1. All these encounters – at once strangely intimate and alienated – allow me to delve into the flows, blockages and tensions of liquid democracy, where I find myself imbued with an ever‐shifting positionality and a growing sense of curiosity.
The Unfolding of Liquid Democracy by Chapter
The chapters that follow this introduction illuminate different democratic openings that unfold from various liquid conditions and relations in vTaiwan, Decide Madrid and OmaStadi. Whilst it is recommended to start reading this book with the introduction, followed by Chapters 1 and 2, there is no prescribed order for reading the empirical chapters (3, 4, 5 and 6). This is because each empirical chapter embodies a particular moment, or opening, in liquid conditions for a particular democracy to come.
In Chapter 1, I set the scene to repose problems of democracy in the age of platforms. In social science and human geography, the ‘mainstream’ narrative – based on analyses of ‘mainstream’ platforms in the Euro‐American context – sees emergent technologies and platforms as inherently anti‐democratic. However, the ‘actual’ problems of democracy in the age of platforms are ontological, epistemic and methodological. Too often, democracy is framed using existing universal democratic theories, categories, principles and epistemic binaries (e.g. human/algorithms, Global North/South). To address these issues, I adopt an intersectional approach that interlaces differences delineated by these theories, categories and binaries into multiple entanglements. This approach, coupled with the comparative method, enables me to understand the ‘liquid’ conditions from which political actions, actors and propositions are made and remade in an ongoing entanglement between settling and unsettling differences. Democracy, then, emerges from liquid conditions as multiple openings, moments and movements as the DDPs connect with urban and digital worlds.
In Chapter 2, I outline the theoretical groundwork for the concept of liquid democracy. I attend to assemblage thinking using ‘in‐the‐world ontologies’ to dissolve democratic theories and categories and generate new concepts that illustrate empirically and heterogeneously grounded democratic openings at the intersection of digital and urban worlds. I scrutinise a range of democratic theories, including aggregated democracy, participatory democracy, digital democracy, radical democracy, post‐colonial and feminist democracy and post‐structuralist democracy, to chart different theoretical tensions and assumptions. I then resettle assemblage thinking with a sense of worldness to illustrate ‘liquid’ conditions for democracy and to reconfigure democratic theories into new concepts that elucidate democratic manifestations.
In Chapter 3, I recontextualise the three DDPs as democratic movements that hinge on two comparative conjunctures: convergence and a calculated democratic future. I briefly describe the comparative method as a ‘river’ that flows, generating conversation – conjunctures – between theories, digital and urban worlds and the three platforms. The first juncture in this liquid comparison situates the three DDPs within parallel trajectories of convergent democratic movements. The second conjuncture reveals how the three platforms each renders democratic futures governable and calculable through risk calculus. Despite this democratic foreclosure, I tease out the alternative democratic futures that can emerge when risk calculus engages with wider urban worlds.
In Chapter 4, I engage with moments of contestation in liquid conditions. Such contestations can catalyse a situated practice of care for both the constitutive inside and outside (i.e. those whose concerns are undermined and absent in the DDPs). Such contestations occur in the form of ‘frictions’ between users and interfaces (or between users) in gamified environments, where game objects incite certain emotions in users and produce power and knowledge asymmetries between users. Frictions occur often – they are an ordinary rhythm of gamified democracy. Friction is neither positive nor negative for democracy, per se. Rather, it creates an opening in liquid democracy, where some participants can attend to those whose needs are undermined by knowledge and power inequalities and those who are never in the ‘games’.
In Chapter 5, I turn to moments of reordering in liquid conditions that render boundary‐defining political actors, opinions and actions permeable and generative for a renewed version of plural democracy. I address different moments of (re)ordering in which actors, actions and propositions are made pluralistic within (or against) democratic foreclosures. For instance, vTaiwan’s machine learning algorithms work with users to momentarily surface plural opinions that can be incorporated into plural propositions for legal action. In contrast, Decide Madrid’s ranking algorithms encourage policymakers to make decisions based on simple majoritarianism (thus configuring a democratic foreclosure). However, Decide Madrid benefits from a growing institutional network of policymakers, civil servants and resources dedicated to actualising as many citizens demand as possible, even beyond technical and legal confines.
In Chapter 6, I explore how the urban enables a distinctive condition of liquidity by binding together citizens, policymakers, materials and digital platforms to write, support and vote on participatory budgeting proposals. In this moment of urban thrown‐togetherness, the urban world galvanises heterogeneous objects, things and humans around certain urban issues (e.g. drug abuse, suburban elderly wellbeing and cultural‐historical heritage). In doing so, urban thrown‐togetherness evokes an ordinary democracy by unveiling and fostering existing everyday struggles by and for the marginalised. These stand against or envelop (rather than fundamentally dismantle) the apparently hegemonic power of neoliberal policymaking. Digital objects, people and things are thrown‐together across differences to turn their collective struggles into stories and knowledge‐making for urban futures. This thrown‐togetherness as ordinary democracy sits at the intersection between urban and digital worlds.
In Chapter 7, I demonstrate how the notion of liquid democracy captures multiple democratic openings, moments and movements by maintaining a lively and generative tension between different theories of democracy and digital and urban worlds. I explain how the liquid comparison helps reconstruct democracy by locating and differentiating a growing variety of ‘liquid’ conditions across differences. Liquidity describes a contingent condition of democracy that is enlivened and ongoing; each instance lives on, rolls along, drifts apart, gets entangled within or departs from the ‘status quo’ to create different democratic possibilities and foreclosures. Liquid democracy not only challenges dystopian and totalising assumptions about algorithmic power and control but also provides practical interventions for policymakers and citizens who want to improve DDPs. I incorporate feminist concepts of recognition and redistribution (Fraser, 1999, 2000) into the ‘become‐with’ approach (Haraway, 2016) to delineate ways to actualise DDPs’ potential for a more just democracy. In closing, I reflect on how Liquid comparison from a minor tone (Katz, 1996) can intentionally refuse to go ‘global’. It is an invitation to become curious and explore poorly known places, whose affinities and characteristics are obscured by global discourses or theories. This helps us uncover new forms of difference to enlarge the meaning of democracy.
I now invite you to delve with me into the flows, currents and turbulences that dissolve the binaries and divisions that have hindered our ability to think through and theorise democracy as it emerges from various fluid conditions in digital and urban worlds. These democratic moments in liquid conditions are meticulously mapped out, juxtaposed and woven together into a river of conversation that flows between theories and digital and urban worlds through comparative study.
Note
1
In 2016–2017, I conducted 60 interviews while working closely with policymakers, civil servants and software developers within Decide Madrid (the Madrid City Council) and vTaiwan (the Taiwanese government) (30 interviews for each site). In 2021, I conducted 30 interviews and visited five participant observation sites for OmaStadi in Helsinki. In 2022, I returned to Madrid for follow‐up fieldwork: I completed 10 interviews with policymakers, civil servants, and activists, 20 short interviews with randomly selected citizens and visited five participant observation sites.
1Democracy in the Age of Platformisation
1.1 Reproblematising Democracy in the Age of Platformisation
The question of how digital technologies – from basic ICT to more recent AI‐powered platforms – reconstitute democracy has caught the attention of scholars in geography, digital democracy, urban studies and science and technology studies (STS)1
