Resumen
In this article, the author discusses the concept of democracy as being essential to the debate on electronic democracy. Though the semantic meaning of the term "government by the people" is undisputed, there are great diversities in interpretations of who should be regarded as the people and how they technically should govern. In order to outline a basic framework, three models representing three different democratic ideals are presented, each providing different views of techniques and institutional settings assumed to make the principles work in practice. The three models used here: quick, strong, and thin democracy - are based on R Premfors complementary to B Barber strong and thin categories. These models are rooted in traditional democratic discourse and are useful as a link between democratic theory in a deeper sense and its electronic manifestations. Just as quick democracy, strong democracy wants and indeed requires, active citizens. The thin model does not consider it important to increase the level of citizen participation. This is because the ordinary citizen is perceived as uninterested in politics and unqualified to participate.