Potential use of e-democracy in MCDA processes. Analysis on the basis of a Swiss case

In this paper, we compare the ‘vision’ of e-democracy presented by the European Scientific Foundation programme Towards e-democracy (TED) with our practice of MCDA. On the basis of a recent real-world case, we try to analyse the potential for electronic tools. In our opinion, the first steps towards e-democracy are to be made in the direction of the external legitimization (exchange of information with actors not involved directly in the decision process). The relationship with the external actors could be dramatically improved if an Extranet site was used to gather and publish relevant information about the project. It remains to be seen if the introduction of e-democracy at the heart of the decision process – done at face-to-face meetings for the time being – is possible and useful. There are many issues to address, dealing for instance with the balance of legitimacy and power and the changing role of the actors.