U.S. President Joseph Biden hosted the online Summit for Democracy demonstrating the U.S. commitment to putting democracy and human rights at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. “In the face of sustained and alarming challenges to democracy, universal human rights … I wanted to host this summit because … we know as well as anyone that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort,” Biden said.
Criticizing Western democracy, Chinese President Xi Jinping said, “The electoral democracy of Western countries is actually democracy ruled by the capital, and they are a game of the rich, not real democracy.” It is easy to ignore Xi’s statement, blaming China as an autocratic nation, but Japan may have something to learn about democracy from China.
What is necessary: data-driven democracy
People’s participation in elections is the defining device of democracy. However, as society has become more sophisticated, a problem of political apathy (especially among young people) has emerged in Japan. The voting rates for the Japanese House of Representatives after World War II declined from the maximum 76.99% in 1953 down to 53.68% in 2017. The voting rates for the Japanese House of Councilors also declined from the maximum 74.54% in 1980 down to 48.80% in 2019. Nowadays, only about half of the electorate participate in the most important national elections in Japan. If the degree of democracy is measured by an electorate’s participation in national elections, Japan has been experiencing a steady deterioration of democracy. Under these circumstances, some fear that the rise of populist politics in the Abe administration is sacrificing long-term societal interests for easy-to-understand short-term interests. Others anticipate a more global deterioration of democracy.
Some argue that the emergence of information and communication technology (ICT) in the 1990s has had positive effects on democracy, stating that modern ICT is indispensable for solid participatory democracy, and that utilizing big data would lead to neutral and rational political decisions. Some have advocated for the idea that it is wrong to impose strict regulations on technology giants that advocate for liberal democratic values.
On the other hand, others contend that ICT, big data, and AI are threats to political stability, social values, constitutional rights, and democracy. Recently, big data has been implicated in two scandals involving Cambridge Analytica, which utilized large data sets to target voters during both the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and the UK’s Brexit decision in that same year. Contrary to an optimistic expectation that ICT would promote mutual understandings, it actually bolstered abuse and slander, which led to a cyber cascade in society. Automatic decisions made by AI analyses may bring short-term benefits, but they may also pose long-term dangers.
Authoritarian governments make the best use of ICT to solidify their political power, surveillance over their people, and promote economic growth. AI analysis of big data would allow for unconscious manipulation of people’s behaviors with ease, including their voting behaviors, and would also produce problems of discriminatory profiling (such as criminal and racial profiling). Big data itself tainted by historically biased prejudices can affect the results of an AI’s analysis of big data. Authoritarian states that pay little attention to protecting privacy are much more suitable for adopting and utilizing big data and AI than liberal democratic states. The 21st century is the era when liberal democratic countries and digital authoritarian countries are competing against each other, and Japan must find its own position in this field.
It is even more necessary to turn people’s needs into public policy in a democratic country. As Robert Dahl argues, a difficult question for democracy is how to mobilize citizens’ participation so that their input is effective to make concrete public policies. The more citizen participation we get, the better democracy becomes. Jessica Heesen makes an important argument on this topic: “In a society with a comprehensive use of big data, all areas of life gain importance for the public and the political and we get a ‘participation’ by the analysis of behavior.” This is a critical point in the 21st century. As society matures and the voting rate declines in developed countries, we need an alternative way to get people’s participation in the decision-making process to maintain and upgrade democracy.
Data is the answer. All things considered, Japan must move to a data-driven democracy to maintain its status as a first-rate developed country. Japan is already said to be behind the curve in the field of AI, and voting is precarious. People may not go to the polling places on election day. If they do not vote, their voice cannot be heard. Compared with this current voting situation, data is much more useful. People’s daily behaviors and actions would be collected and analyzed by AI. It is much more objective for politicians to be required to make policies based on collected data than on arbitrary decisions heavily influenced by specific interest groups. In this environment, people would no longer have to vote. By providing data, all Japanese people actually participate in the decision-making process. Their daily behaviors and actions would become the basis of politics. Politics would become science based on objective evidence instead of the art of human beings.
Of course, we need to make laws to prevent the violation of privacy and abuse of personal data. Even the most strict laws would not eliminate all problems, but we have to make a practical judgment: which benefit is bigger, a benefit derived from data-driven democracy or a benefit by the rigid guard of privacy and personal data?
Yoneyuki Sugita is a p*rofessor at Kobe Women's Junior College.
This article was originally published on SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.
