Reflection of public opinion using the Internet and political dialogue with citizens — France and US

Upload: 16 February 2019. Last update: 14 December 2019.

Even though I have an impression that the Japanese government is more being closed to the public or giving information one-sidedly, when we look at US and France, they are trying to reflect the public opinion by using the Internet and have political dialogue with citizens.

First in US, as Japanese citizens have been using it to stop the Henoko landfill, the White House has the petition site called We the People which was created by the former president Barack Obama[1]. It enables people to get a official response from the government if they could assemble “100,000 signatures in 30 days”[2].

As another case, France is now conducting the grand débat national (national grand debate) from 15 January to 15 March 2019 in terms of “local meetings”[3]. There are many debates held, for example the President Macron talked with mayors and students, and the Minister of justice had a debate in a prison[4]. On the website of the national grand debate, it says that people can organise and join local meetings, and also can post their propositions online.

In Japan, there are petition sites every person can start a project, but it doesn’t guarantee that the government responds like the one in US. And in the case of Henoko, Japanese used the American system meaning that Japan doesn’t have similar way of expressing opinions. The advancement of technology can reflect the opinion of the public to politics more efficiently if the system is set up. Even the cases of US and France I describes in this article, I think we can have better ideas and make a better system that the political system can assemble civil opinion effectively.

The scale of a society gets larger, it is more difficult to have transparency between the decision makers and citizens. The political dialogue between them is important and technology can be a solution to reflect public opinions to politicians effectively.

[1]Pew Research Center’s article on the background of the petition system. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/12/28/the-background-of-the-we-the-people-website/ Accessed 15 February 2019

[2]https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ Accessed 15 February 2019

[3]https://granddebat.fr/# Accessed 7 February 2019

[4]http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2019/02/15/01016-20190215ARTFIG00289-grand-debat-les-detenus-font-entendre-leurs-voix.php Accessed 15 February 2019