Lord Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster, London

Eddy Galeotti / Shutterstock

It may not look like it, but -- this -- is part of a dispute that is as old as British democracy. And you can help.

In 1649, amidst the chaos of the English Civil War, the idea of democracy sprung into life. With the smell of musket smoke still hanging in the air, perhaps the most powerful idea politics has ever produced put down roots in the UK. People were sovereign, and could only truly be free in a system authored by their will.

Yet the loftiest ideas always produce a train of practical challenges. How could the People's Will best be captured and expressed?  What structures had to be in place, what powers created, what balances struck and what boundaries policed to truly have a democracy, a rule of the people? The earliest debates of what democracy practically looked like pivoted on a crucial question: how far you needed representatives to sit between the people and power.

For some, like John Lilburne, giving too much power to any body of people in the name of democracy was actually fatal to it. In a series of seventeenth century pamphlets he sang out a warning: "We are your Principals and you our agents" he warned Parliament.  "For we might justly have done it our selves without you, if we had thought it convenient; choosing you (as Persons whom wee thought fitly quallified, and Faithfull), for avoiding some inconveniences." He was part of a group, the Levellers, that saw Parliament as a dangerous means to an end; a necessity given the many millions that needed to be governed, but one that needed to be kept in check through careful delegation, citizen control, frequent elections and powers to easily recall any representative that stepped out of line.

The Levellers themselves had a less than happy ending. Cromwell came down on them hard and -- imprisoned, shot, marginalised and ignored -- they sank into impotence and, eventually, irrelevance. But the question they raised has lived on. Amidst falling turnout in elections, plummeting Party membership and now with only a third of young people saying they are interested in politics, it is clear that Democracy must become more 'everyday'. It has to mean more than voting once every four years. It has to routinely involve citizens in the decisions that affect them. More direct citizen involvement in politics, more regular voting, voter vetoes and voter juries capable of helping to guide, and criticise the work of Parliament.

Less clear has been how to achieve this. Direct citizen involvement in politics is hard: onerous, time-consuming, expensive, insecure, open to manipulation and, as many people have pointed out to me, many people can't even be bothered to vote. The rub has always been the translation of a perfectly good idea into reasonable and affordable practice.

But for the first time, we might actually have a shot at direct democracy. The internet and social media has proved to be so transformative to so many other parts of our lives and jobs, creating myriad new ways for us to connect, engage and be heard, to reach others and be reached ourselves. Yet in politics: no change at all. The daily reality of democracy in the UK today -- how we express consent and have a say in decisions -- hasn't changed for generations. The frustration is that the internet has made us more powerful as individuals -- but not as citizens of a political system.

This might be set to change. Parliament -- in a move that would have raised a ragged cheer from the Levellers -- is now listening. John Bercow, the Speaker of the House, has established a Commission on Digital Democracy. In 2015, it will report on how it can use technology to allow citizens to scrutinise the work of Government, help make laws, represent the people and hold the powerful to account.

The questions of the debate would be as familiar to a seventeenth century Parliamentarian as it is to us: can we really trust the people? Are representatives the only way to coordinate such a large body? How do you guard against the influences of power and money, of hidden interests and rotten boroughs? The answers, of course, will not be. But we do not know what they are. The pace of technological change is constantly redrawing what is possible, and new and important tools are emerging everywhere from people's bedrooms to the labs of major companies. The question of what specific technologies are capable of paying democratic dividends is, we strongly suspect, not best answered by the think tanks, academics or even technology companies most usually drawn on to help inform Parliament's work. This is a problem for the crowd.

This is a precious window of opportunity; so we have teamed up with Wikipedia --  here -- to tap you, the crowd, and submit your thoughts to the Commission as formal evidence. Could you think of technology to recall misbehaving MPs, or influence how they vote? How about to propose new legislation or discuss laws going through Parliament? Can new platforms be built to allow people to fact check the government, or to dive into bodies of evidence themselves? And, of course, do technologies open up new avenues for citizens to directly, regularly and meaningfully vote on more than just their representatives?

You could be a digital Leveller. Give us your thoughts. And this time around, hopefully no one gets imprisoned in the Tower of London.


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