  While the Internet is often touted as a revolutionary technology, it might be
noted that democratic institutions have witnessed no digital revolution through
the Internet. This observation leads this chapter to argue that the field of
e-democracy has generally failed to live up to its own reformist rhetoric. It
argues that instead of reforming government processes through technology,
e-democracy projects have tended to focus either on lowering the costs and
increasing the efficiency of existing political processes or on analysing the
civic participation that occurs outside of purpose-built e-democracy platforms.
The chapter suggests that this lack of attention to the Internet's potential
for systemic change in formal political institutions has little normative
impact on the democratization of society and may even re-enforce, rather than
challenge, the sociopolitical status quo. Further, it suggests that the current
approach of e-democracy risks normalizing the Internet to the norms and
expectations of the offline world. To elucidate this argument, this chapter
overviews both the general trend of e-democracy projects and criticisms of
those projects. Finally, the chapter proposes a more radical vision of
e-democracy that, it suggests, would usher a larger potential for
democratization. This more radical vision of e-democracy consists of
recognizing the attributes of the Internet that transcend the limits of the
analogue world and applying these to democracy. Such an approach would open the
path for envisaging new political processes and systems, allowing the field of
e-democracy to live up to its own rhetoric, and affording society the means to
address multiple of the centuries-old problems faced by democracy.
