Abstract

Digital democracy certainly offers new opportunities to make the institutions characterising representative democracy more efficient. Moreover, it allows new forms of popular partic¬ipation to be set up. However, the shift from a technical to a political perspective implies many critical issues that seem to hinder constructive and genuine forms of political com¬munication, debate and deliberation. The major criticalities are to be found at the electoral level, but, even from a more general perspective, the drawbacks seem to exceed the advan¬tages. Above all, it is not so obvious that digital democracy can totally replace representative democracy, albeit it can address some of its drawbacks and operating problems.