“The idea that people are suddenly going to become engaged because they can have a councillor as a friend on Facebook is just fantasy.”
But Dr Wilks-Heeg added that there would need to be a radical overhaul of local government to make people engage, not just new technology.
He added: “Lancashire County Council has been doing live webcasts of its meetings for years and they are awful. Meetings can be boring any way, and watching them on TV is even more tedious.”
He added that the problem with the idea of holding US-style primary elections of candidates would be extremely difficult to put into practice, because the political parties no longer had a broad enough base of supporters and activists.
“They need to do something to reconnect on the basic level.
“You can see why new technology appeals because it looks very efficient, but it’s not going to fix anything.
“New technology only increases involvement if it builds on sound democratic foundations – in Liverpool, those foundations need fixing.”
