Democracy is a serious game

Abstract

It is a common belief within scholars and practitioners of citizen engagement that it is necessary to introduce game-like aspects in democratic practices to improve the number and diversity of participants. This argument has been mainly based on the widespread diffusion of gamification practices that from the private sector have been progressively adopted in the delivery of public services. This paper focuses on the consequences of introducing game like elements in democratic practice, with a particular focus on participatory governance innovations. In particular, we aim to research the extent to which the gamification of citizen engagement affects the epistemology of democratic processes. On one hand gamification can be an effective strategy to promote inclusion of traditionally difficult to engage & retain strata of the population. On the other hand the introduction of game-based interactions risks to significantly affect key characteristics of democratic processes, promoting excessive competition, introducing behavioral incentives that might undermine capacity building and reflexive behavior. This paper reviews recent debates in the game design community and recent practices with the objective of fostering a debate in the participatory governance literature.