This paper is concerned with the legal and regulatory control of electoral campaigning online, in particular ‘microtargeting’. There has been a longstanding consensus in the UK on how to control political advertising, yet the shift of expenditure to the online environment, together with innovations in digital campaigning tools, are exposing tensions and gaps in the current regime. One central harm associated with microtargeting is its potential to undermine meaningful democratic deliberation. The paper interrogates the issues through the lens of electoral law and regulation, and questions the extent to which a recalibration is necessary to deal with the challenges of digital campaigning.

[Political representation] is the basis of modern representative democracy. Older and less sophisticated forms, such as direct democracy, subsist marginally, even if they keep exerting a certain attraction. But representative democracy does not carry the self-evident authority it once had. Like every modern institution it is under challenge and consequently needs to be defended. In actual politics, the defence often takes the form of discussion of the merits of one system over the other and of proposals for change. The part of this defence appertaining to constitutional scholarship is not concerned primarily with proposals and changes. It is, before all, to brush up the fundamentals underlying representative democracy, on the basis of topical issues.

There are three current issues upon which we would like to draw attention. They are: equality in structuring electoral systems, the processes of electoral reform and the rise of non-majoritarian institutions versus parliamentary democracy.

On 22 December 2009, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (hereafter: the Court) issued a judgment on the applications filed by two citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr Dervo Sejdić and Mr Jakob Finci. It found a violation of their rights under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and under the Protocols to the Convention. Bosnia and Herzegovina had violated the applicants' rights under Article 14 of the Convention in conjunction with Article 3 of Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and under Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.