Democracy models and civic technologies: Tensions, trilemmas, and trade-offs

This paper aims at connecting democratic theory with civic technolo- gies in order to highlight the links between some theoretical tensions and tri- lemmas and design trade-offs. First, it reviews some tensions and `trilemmas¿ raised by political philosophers and democratic theorists. Second, it considers both the role and the limitations of civic technologies in mitigating these ten- sions and trilemmas. Third, it proposes to adopt a meso-level approach, in be- tween the macro-level of democratic theories and the micro-level of tools, to situate the interplay between people, digital technologies, and data.Peer Reviewe