of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man: liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression. This can be ascertained in an ecosystem of e-democracies only if the decisions of each are transparent to the others.

5. Property and Privacy: A17 recognizes the right for property and its private use, which, extended to our times, incorporates the right for the ownership and privacy of information. The right to safety and resistance against oppression (A2) entails voter privacy to resist coercion.

6. Justice: Revolt against unjust rulers was crucial to the emergence of democracy, and justice is the focus of early charters of democracy such as the English Magna Carta12 and the French Declaration. Indeed, A1 and A4–13 address the equal and just conception, application, and enforcement of the law. Furthermore, A16 states that a constitution is needed to guarantee the rights of citizens and the separation of the powers of government.

Requirements of Foundations
of E-Democracy

I now aim to derive from these core democratic values requirements for the foundations of e-democracy.

1. Sovereignty: Internet communi-
ties today, from the local bulletin board
to almighty Facebook, are dictatorial,
with an omnipotent administrator who
determines who gets in, who is thrown
out, and what actions each member may
take. The administrator also has the ca-
pacity to shut down the community and
annihilate its recorded history at will.
Furthermore, communities like Face-
book employ rule-by-decree like bygone
Middle Ages fiefdoms. The owner, like a
feudal lord, sets the rules (sometimes in
secrecy), tries members for breaching
them, and executes the punishment.
The members, like serfs, toil for the fi-
nancial benefit of the lord while having
no (intellectual) property, civil rights, or
voting rights. They have no say on their
remuneration or tax, on community
rules of conduct or their enforcement,
or on the election of community lead-
ership. In the event of a bankruptcy or
hostile takeover, the entire community
and its recorded history may be anni-
hilated, with community members be-
ing helpless bystanders. All this clearly
as a foundation for e-democracy is a
non-starter: They are prone to dupli-
cate and fake accounts and, crucially, to
nondemocratic oversight, control, and
arbitrary intervention by their owners.
Even Wikipedia, a hallmark of Internet
participation, is governed neither by its
readers nor by its editors, but by an ap-
pointed board that has full legal author-
ity to shut it down, for example, to avert
bankruptcy.

Hence, new foundations for e-democracy are needed. I envision these foundations to simultaneously support the democratic conduct of all types of communities: Associations, clubs, unions, cooperatives, organizations, movements, and political parties; and at all levels—local, national, transnational, and international; eventually including cities, states, and federations; and, ultimately, uniting the entire humanity in a global e-democracy.

Among these communities, the pivot for revolutionizing earthly democracies may be Internet-resident democratic political parties, or e-parties. Only by winning real-world elections, e-parties can export the participatory practices of e-democracy from their inner workings to real-world governments, enacting legislation that gradually supplants traditional representative democracy by e-democracy.

But what are these foundations? Who could guide us in their construction? A standard method in requirements engineering is to interview the prospective customer. The prospective “customer” for e-democracy is humanity at large. Hence, in lieu of an interview, I enlist one of humanity’s most inspiring documents: The 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen4 (henceforth: Declaration), which offers a concise, clear, and bold expression of the essence of democracy. I study its Articles, extract from them core democratic values, and derive from these values requirements for the foundations of e-democracy.

Core Values of Democracy

Here, I list the core democratic values extracted from the Articles (marked by A) of the Declaration (Interpreting Man→Person, Citizen→Member, and Nation→Community):

1. Sovereignty: The Declaration’s Ar-
ticle III (A3) states “The principle of any
sovereignty resides essentially in the
Nation. No body, no individual can ex-
ert authority that does not emanate ex-
pressly from it.” We interpret this prin-
ciple to mean that the members of an
e-democracy are its sovereign.

2. Equality: A1 states that “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. …”. Together with A3 they imply that sovereignly must be equally shared, often stated as one person-one vote. But there is more to equality than the right to vote. A4 states that the law is the expression of the general will and that all people have the right to contribute to its formation; and equally so, according to A1. A6 further states that all people, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally admissible to all public posts. Equality extends not only to rights but also to obligations: A12–14 ascertain the need for public services and for equally sharing their financing among members, but progressively, according to their ability to pay.

To summarize, all members of a democracy must have equal capacity to act as voters, discussants, proposers and public delegates, as well as share progressively the burden of public expenditures.

3. Freedom: A1 states that “men are born and remain free.” The nature of this freedom is further elaborated in other articles: A10–11 espouse the freedom of expression within the limits if the law. A5 proclaims the freedom to take any action that is not harmful to others. Among those implied freedoms

I note the freedom of assembly3 granting any group of people the freedom to assemble, and the subsidiary principle, granting such a group the freedom to make decisions that pertain to them.

4. Transparency: A14–15 require that the conduct of public agents and the collection and expenditure of public funds be transparent. Furthermore, A2 states that the goal of any political association must be the conservation The prospective

“customer” for
e-democracy is
humanity at large.