Speech by President of the Republic of Finland Tarja Halonen at the IDEA Democracy Forum 2001, Stockholm 27.6.2001

DEMOCRACY AND THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION

(IDEA International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance)





Democracy, human rights and the rule of law are principles that, in the view of all of us who have gathered here, should guide the ways in which society functions. Many of us have had fairly long and good experience of developing these principles in our own nation-states. However, our globalising world has brought us a whole bunch of new challenges.

Globalisation demands an ability to participate effectively in economic competition. Some aspects of globalisation appear, despite of its benefits, to clash with the sustainable development of both people and the environment. The astonishing pace of development in information technology has been one of the preconditions for globalisation. Free interaction between people is one of the cornerstones of democracy. One of the constructive possibilities of both international trade and IT may lie here.

The preparatory work for this meeting has in my view ideally highlighted the various sectors in which IT is having an impact. Information is a powerful tool and an effective democracy also depends on the free and open flow of information. Enhancing openness and freedom of information contributes to empowering citizens to participate in the political process and decision making.

Information technology creates possibilities to collect, process and forward information much more efficiently than ever in the past. This could either lessen inequality or increase it. It was in quite the same way that the invention of printing, while making a vastly greater flow of information possible, also made reading and writing skills much more important, just as Information technology now demands new abilities.

People who are already better prepared to receive and process information enjoy an advantage over others, but IT could be also be used to fill in some of the gaps in their education. That requires, of course, both political will and economic resources. Here, conferences like the IDEA Democracy forum 2001 have a very important role to play.

Greater equality between people is needed in many ways. Let me take an example from my own country. Finland enjoys a reputation for having made pretty good use of information technology. The Nordic system of society guarantees all of our children a good education irrespective of their parents' financial or social status. In addition to that, our society is able and willing to re-train our adult citizens to enable them both to meet the requirements of the workplace and simply enjoy a better quality of life. Making this ideal of lifelong learning a reality is a matter of great urgency, because the training that young people today have on graduation cannot conceivably prepare them for the rest of their life. Thus it is not only a challenge to today's adult population, but also a new way of life.

Groups who are dropping out from development should be given constant encouragement. Training to provide the unemployed with new-technology skills is already routine. There are also programmes to encourage pensioners to educate themselves further. That prevents marginalisation and makes it easier to develop services.

It is no less important to consider the gender dimension of the information revolution. As IT becomes a commonly used educational tool, careful consideration must be given to ensuring that men and women benefit equally from it. In particular, we must encourage girls to learn the skills that will be needed in the labour market of the future.

We must bear in mind, however, that in most cases information technology is only an instrument to do something in an enhanced way. Nevertheless, new technology itself could have an enormous influence on the development of this applied field. We all know, for example, how much publishing houses and the media in general have changed, but the same revolutionary transformation is taking place in other sectors as well.

The development taking place in the public sector is very strong. The efficiency of the police and the courts can be increased and people's legal certainty strengthened. The social security net can likewise be made more comprehensive. The accessibility of social-welfare, health, educational and cultural services can be improved by developing a network to combine services produced by a broader range of providers. This would give people a greater range of choice with regard to both the standard of quality and cost.

People can be helped, served and protected, but also controlled or bothered. Ethical rules about what is right and wrong will not change, unless we want them to; what will change is the way we apply them using new means and in new situations.

But will the ways that people participate in the affairs of a democratic society change? I found your advance material on this theme very interesting reading. New technology can increase the speed at which traditional forms of participation are done and improve people's legal security, but can they also create new and more efficient ways of participating - ways that would have the same guarantee of democracy? To ponder this question, we would have to return to an analysis of democracy itself.

Information and the ability to distribute it is part of this process. It is a very important part, but democracy also requires decision making. It calls for a commitment on the part of citizens that they will bear responsibility for the positions they adopt.

It is fully conceivable that new technology would enable opinion polls of different kinds to be carried out on even a daily basis. Indeed, that is what some media are already doing. These polls have their significance, but no political responsibility goes with them. It is important to make a distinction between opinion polls and elections.

Besides that, we must get our expectations with regard to voter turnout into the right proportion. I am still optimistic about people's willingness to participate, but it has to be admitted that anyway so many completely excusable things from taking care of children to holding down a job, studying or playing the piano take up so much of people's time and interest. Yet, I believe this still does not explain the downward trend in voter turnouts in countries like Finland or Sweden.

The voter turnout in Finnish general elections has traditionally been around 70 per cent. It was 65 per cent in the parliamentary elections in March 1999. Then it plunged to 31 per cent in the European Parliament elections. It soared again to 77 per cent in the first round of the presidential election in January 2000 (and on up to 80 per cent in the second round the following month), but it fell again to only 56 per cent in the municipal elections. What made the difference? In any event, "Too many elections" was the opinion of many.

In Ireland, support for the European Union has always been rock-solid. Then, in the referendum on the Treaty of Nice, under 35 per cent of the electorate went to the ballot boxes. The treaty was rejected by 54 per cent NO against 46 for YES (529,478 votes to 453,461.) An opinion poll just before the referendum had forecast the same winning margin - but for the YES-vote. The last general election in Austria is likewise a phenomenon that deserves study in its own right.

Also these examples raise many questions. What influence would e-democracy have? Would it make young people more active and thereby strengthen the democratic tradition? Or would it stimulate greater activity on the part of only certain types of people? Here, too, a democratic approach is important.

What explains why it is especially in many countries which have long been regarded as democratic that the percentage of young people voting has been falling? And yet at the same time some young people are travelling to, among other venues, summit meetings and demonstrating in a variety of ways. Does this prove that young people believe publicity has a faster and more forceful effect than voting, or is it that they only want a share of the publicity limelight?

The popularity of demonstrations is growing and demonstrations are part of democracy. It is violence and the publicity it easily attracts rather than demonstrations that worry me - and of course many others. I ask further: do voter turnout and other activity match?

My own belief is that for some people - especially the young - publicity can be a more exciting way of exerting influence than traditional participation in democracy. Then it is more a question of the relationship between power and democracy. And countering that demands more teaching of democracy than of technological skills.

The examples that I have just outlined show how difficult it is for democracy to be learnt in a lasting way. When we are discussing the same things within a global discourse, it would be good to bear this in mind. Let us dare, however, to consider our experiences useful.

For Finland, the promotion of democracy, human rights, rule of law and good governance are among the principal goals of our policies with regard to developing countries and countries in transition. We are using IT as a capacity-building tool in a number of our co-operation programmes from South Africa and Namibia to the Middle East and the Balkans. Let me mention a few examples to illustrate the point.

We have recently started a SADC-Finnish co-operation programme in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT). The role of these technologies is critical to regional integration within Southern Africa. Southern Africa cannot afford to be marginalised and the ability of the region to effectively integrate itself into the global economy depends on its capacity to handle, absorb and utilise information technology. The overall objective of this SADC-Finnish co-operation is to improve access to information and enhance opportunities for all groups to benefit from the use of ICT.

We are supporting a programme in the Balkans called South East European news exchange, which aims at enhancing the free flow of information, thus giving people a better understanding of affairs and problems in the region. Information technology constitutes an essential element in the training courses being arranged to help local desk editors, reporters and news crews take a common professional approach in giving news objective and balanced coverage.

These examples illustrate a few programmes, which use IT as a capacity-building tool to achieve long-term goals of democracy promotion. We recognise that the rapid advances taking place in the field are creating new areas where IT could be a useful tool for promoting democracy and we have to constantly search for methodologies to make our programmes more effective.

However, at the end of the day what really counts is building human skills to make use of the available tools; therefore the emphasis should be on developing human capital, ethics included.

I wish the conference every success in its work!