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Going online. Does ICT enabled-participation engage the young in local governance?
Abstract
Local governments increasingly use online strategies to strengthen political participation of citizens in policy and politics. Young people, however, are generally under-represented. This article studies age patterns of participation across offline and online forms of action to test whether online initiatives are able to overcome this age bias. We first report a case study of online and offline problem reporting to local authorities. We find that simply going from offline to online participation reinforces rather than mitigates age bias. We then report a case study of message posting on an online political forum. In this case, age bias disappears. In contrast to the traditional instrumental modes, a forum is an expressive form of online participation. The young seem to value the act of participating over the outcomes of participation. For practice, these findings suggest a need for participation policies that speak to these expressive needs of young. In recent years, social media have reinforced the potential for expressive participation.
... This article focuses on one particular group that is hard to include in participation, namely young adults (18-25) (Thijssen & Van Dooren, 2016). Considering that young adults are heavy internet users, be it in terms of frequency, time spent, or variety of usage (Büchi et al., 2016), one could expect that this is a target group for whom moving participation online could make a significant impact on their inclusion in participation. ...
... However, for most young adults this broader engagement does not include online direct participation, which are online activities through which individuals or groups directly share power with public administrators in decision-making (Roberts, 2004). The evidence so far shows that making direct participation available through online platforms is not enough to attract young adults to participate (Thijssen & Van Dooren, 2016;van den Berg et al., 2020). To better understand this discrepancy, this research asks how young adults explain their intention to participate in online direct participation. ...
... Together, these explanations illustrate why young adults are often missing in online direct participation, even though they are heavy internet users (Büchi et al., 2016;Thijssen & Van Dooren, 2016). Young adults are not easy to reach online because they are exposed to an abundant amount of information of varying quality, while being at a life-stage in which their education and identity formation already asks a lot of their time and energy. ...
Facilitating direct citizen participation through online channels is considered as an opportunity for including harder to reach groups in participation. Because young adults (18‐25) are heavy internet users, this group is expected to be easier to include online. Evidence shows, however, that also in online direct participation young adults remain underrepresented. To better understand this discrepancy from the perspective of participants, this research asks how young adults explain their intention to participate online. Thematic analysis highlights that young adults' intention to participate in online direct participation can be explained through: (1) cause‐oriented participation, (2) the role of social (media) networks, (3) selective attention to cope with information overload, and (4) navigating misinformation and negativity. In the discussion section, this article considers how these explanations can inform government strategies for better including young adults in online direct participation.
... It is, however, noted that participation processes often predominantly end up including "usual suspects," namely citizens that are easier to reach and more vocal (Bryson et al. 2012). Groups that are more difficult to reach in direct participation are, for example, women, (religious) minorities, the youth, the elderly, the unemployed, and others (Thijssen and van Dooren 2016). The inclusion of citizens from a wide variety of backgrounds is a vital factor impacting whether participation alleviates democratic deficits in society, yet experience has shown that inclusivity in participation is difficult to achieve (van den Berg et al. 2020). ...
... Each stage in the life cycle has different challenges and opportunities that can affect whether a person participates online. For example, older people generally have a higher stake in society (e.g., by having a mortgage or raising children), which can mean that participation has more instrumental value (Thijssen and Van Dooren 2016). If older participants particularly participate out of self-interest (Gustafson and Hertting 2017), this group may hold self-interest as a behavioral belief whereas younger people do not. ...
... For example, digital natives are a cohort that grew up in the digital age and are therefore generally very engaged with technology and used to rapid innovations in information and communication technologies (Zavattaro and Brainard 2019). Belonging to this "internet generation" may impact online participation, for example, through impacting control beliefs (Thijssen and Van Dooren 2016). ...
Theory about the participants in online citizen participation is scarce, limiting government’s ability to design online participation in such a way that many and diverse citizens are facilitated to participate. To fill this gap, this article theorizes about the factors that influence the intention of citizens from diverse sociodemographic backgrounds to participate in online platforms. The theory of planned behavior is used as theoretical lens, which posits that behavioral intentions depend on three main factors (attitude, perceived norm, and perceived behavioral control), which are in turn informed by behavioral, normative, and control beliefs. To identify relevant beliefs that impact online participation, an open-ended questionnaire was administered among 442 respondents. Fourteen behavioral and control beliefs are defined using thematic analysis. Building on these insights, the article formulates propositions about beliefs that are particularly influential for specific sociodemographic groups, in an effort to advance theory about online participation of citizens.
... One of the priorities for public managers designing public participation is bringing about inclusivity (Feldman and Khademian 2007). Inclusivity is sometimes directly linked to better participation outcomes, because it may avoid biases in policy formulation and responsiveness (Thijssen and van Dooren 2016). For example, participation processes can only be truly legitimate when all relevant stakeholders are included and public managers take the time to consider who is participating or not (Few, Brown, and Tompkins 2007). ...
... Generally speaking, people gain a greater stake in society as they age, such as a family, property, and mortgage (Panagopoulos and Abraja 2014;Pickard 2019). In contrast, participation may be less instrumental for younger citizens who do not yet have many vested interests to protect (Thijssen and van Dooren 2016). Recent research finds that the relationship between age and participation is curvilinear (Panagopoulos and Abraja 2014; Thijssen and van Dooren 2016). ...
Governments are increasingly implementing smart and digital approaches to promoting citizen participation. However, whether online participation platforms are tools that improve inclusivity in citizen participation remains underexplored. To address this gap, this article focuses on the role of recruitment messages and their effect on participation in an online participation platform by gender and age. A field experiment with a neighborhood census sample (N = 6,066) shows that online participation dips for younger and older citizens and is equal among women and men. For the age groups between 60 and 75, differences in the control and intervention recruitment messages significantly impacted participation. These findings can help public managers tailor recruitment strategies to facilitate inclusive participation and represent a first step toward learning what types of messages are effective for whom.
... PG has motivated a great variety of practices in different public administrations (Christensen & McQuestin, 2019;Fung, 2006) and it has emerged as a new way for innovation in the public sector (Ewens & van der Voet, 2019). By using new technologies to promote e-participation in public administration (Schulz & Newig, 2015;Scott, 2006), PG's concrete applications have assumed new possibilities, particularly regarding the participation of young people (Thijssen & Dooren, 2016) through innovative tools of public participation such as social media (Ellison & Hardey, 2014). ...
Participatory governance is an administrative practice aimed at civic engagement and the promotion of direct democracy. The many applications of participatory governance make it a valuable practice in local government. Furthermore, participatory governance offers a possible answer to societal demands for greater civic engagement, as well as a possible solution to the generalised decline of trust in public institutions after the financial crisis. This article develops empirical research on diffusion and applications of participatory governance in Italian medium-large municipalities before the 2008-2009 financial crisis, after its outbreak, and today. Through mixed method research, the work seeks to understand the evolution of participatory initiatives in local government during a ten-year period. The results show that the financial crisis probably had an immediate negative impact on the diffusion of participatory governance, but also inspired changes in citizens' perceptions, as well as political responses to these perceptions though participatory processes.
... Both in e-participation and interactive policymaking, it is again the well-educated citizens who are overrepresented, even if e-participation is more likely to mobilize young people (Christensen et al., 2017;Stolle & Hooghe, 2011;Thijssen & Van Dooren, 2016). The same holds for citizen governance, which involves citizens in directly providing and shaping the delivery of public services through decision-making forums. ...
Since less well educated citizens are underrepresented in many forms of citizen participation, deliberative ‘mini-publics’ have been introduced as a democratic innovation to redress some of this inequality. Using data from eleven Dutch deliberative mini-publics (G1000s), this study shows that despite attempts to broaden the appeal of the mini-public, a clear educational bias in the output of the deliberations remains; the output largely reflects the wishes and preferences of the more highly educated. Themes like crime and safety, immigration and integration, which are important concerns for many citizens in their local communities, rarely made it onto the G1000 ‘Agenda for the City’. From a perspective of democratic legitimacy, this finding is worrisome. The paper concludes with some suggestions that combine the strength of a deliberative setting with equality and external democratic legitimacy to overcome this problem.
... Later, thanks to technological advances and the rapid diffusion of internet access and use, (new) digital channels were made available for citizen reporting at the city level (Abu-Tayeh, Neumann, & Stuermer, 2018;Schmidthuber, Hilgers, Gegenhuber, & Etzelstorfer, 2017a;Thijssen & Van Dooren, 2016). For instance, the phone-only 311 systems have been expanded to introduce internet-based service reports via websites, emails, social media sites, and mobile applications (Clark & Brudney, 2019). ...
Public service producers are heavily investing in the development and implementation of more efficient new digital channels to engage users in citizen sourcing efforts, such as the reporting of public service-related issues. Nevertheless, user-reporters have continued to favor earlier implemented channels including traditional (e.g., phone, office) and e-government channels (e.g., web, email) over new digital channels such as m-government channels (e.g., mobile applications). Drawing on channel choice literature and theories, this study aims at explaining users' reporting behavior by examining the role of users' personal factors, including digital divide determinants, users' service experience, and channel satisfaction. We use a combination of survey and log data on actual reporting behavior among smart bike-sharing users to explain users' channel choice. Using a multinomial logistic regression, we found that the digital divide predicts user-reporters' channel choice. Moreover, user-reporters with a longer service membership favor traditional and e-government channels, over the newly implemented m-government channels. Finally, user-reporters' satisfaction with the mobile application is negatively associated with the user-reporters' choice of traditional and e-government channels. Our results expand and update the empirical evidence on channel choice at the user level, and provide insights for public service producers who aim at enhancing public service delivery through digital users' engagement.
... • transparency in management (Klang and Nolin, 2011;Oliveira and Welch, 2013;Yavuz and Welch, 2014) • public engagement (Hand and Ching, 2011;Medaglia, 2012;Bonsón et al., 2012Bonsón et al., , 2015Oliveira and Welch, 2013;Fedotova et al., 2013;Kollmann et al., 2013;Ellison and Hardey, 2014;Firmstone and Coleman, 2015;Zheng et al., 2014;Martín et al., 2015;Zavattaro et al., 2015;Thijssen and Van Dooren, 2016) • advantages and disadvantages of using social networks (Ellison and Hardey, 2014;Sivarajah et al., 2015) • internal work collaboration (Oliveira and Welch, 2013) • use of the social networks for managing crisis situations (Kavanaugh et al., 2012;Panagiotopoulos et al., 2014;Graham et al., 2015) • city branding campaigns and government public relations (Graham and Avery, 2013;Bernhard and Dohle, 2015;Sevin, 2016). ...
The social networks have increased the ways in which public administrations can actively interact with the public. However, these new means of communication are not always used efficiently to create an open and two-way relationship. The purpose of this study is to analyse the presence on and use of the social network Facebook by the large councils in the USA, UK and Spain. This research adapts Facebook assessment index (FAI) to the field of local authorities. This index assesses three dimensions: Popularity, content and interactivity. The results show that there is no relationship between the population of the municipality and the degree of use of Facebook by the council, but there are notable differences depending on the country. By creating this ranking, we are helping those responsible for this management to carry out benchmarking activities in order to improve their communication strategy on the social networks.
... • transparency in management (Klang and Nolin, 2011;Oliveira and Welch, 2013;Yavuz and Welch, 2014) • public engagement (Hand and Ching, 2011;Medaglia, 2012;Bonsón et al., 2012Bonsón et al., , 2015Oliveira and Welch, 2013;Fedotova et al., 2013;Kollmann et al., 2013;Ellison and Hardey, 2014;Firmstone and Coleman, 2015;Zheng et al., 2014;Martín et al., 2015;Zavattaro et al., 2015;Thijssen and Van Dooren, 2016) • advantages and disadvantages of using social networks (Ellison and Hardey, 2014;Sivarajah et al., 2015) • internal work collaboration (Oliveira and Welch, 2013) • use of the social networks for managing crisis situations (Kavanaugh et al., 2012;Panagiotopoulos et al., 2014;Graham et al., 2015) • city branding campaigns and government public relations (Graham and Avery, 2013;Bernhard and Dohle, 2015;Sevin, 2016). ...
... Governments use ICTs to strengthen political participation of citizens in policy and politics. Online platforms can bring their voices to the higher levels [6]. In a country like India, where the major share of population is below the age of 35 [7], the involvement of youth adds value by participation than its outcome. ...
The Government of India through its various programmes like Digital India aims to provide digital literacy to all its citizens. Towards this mission, National Digital Literacy Mission and Digital Saksharata Abhiyan conducted various training programmes throughout the country. The authors collected details of 5 lakh participants, who successfully completed the training programme and to learn the quality of the training and identify its impact 30,003 participants were interviewed based on a systematic sampling. This study based on the survey and interview identifies a model to predict and validate the impact of similar Digital Literacy training programmes in India. The various components identified in this study were then ranked based on the participant responses using the analytical hierarchy process. The various constructs identified for assessing the quality of training includes conduct, delivery and content, and perceived value. The impact of training was measured using knowledge gained, comfort level achieved and frequency of usage. To identify the impact of training a simple linear regression technique was also used.
As online platforms are swiftly becoming a dominant interface of government–citizen interactions, it is crucial that these platforms are inclusive. This article considers the potential of using digital trace data for assessing inclusivity in online platforms. Given that Google Analytics (GA) is a popular tool for collecting and analyzing digital trace data, this article asks to what extent GA is useful in usability evaluation for assessing inclusivity. This article reports on a case study in which GA was used for the usability evaluation of an online participation platform of a local government in The Netherlands. The usability evaluation via GA highlights that the platform was less inclusive toward two categories of users, namely, mobile users and users who access the platform via social media or referral. We conclude that GA is helpful for assessing inclusivity in online government platforms, particularly to the extent that it can be used to monitor whether there are differences in usability for different categories of users. Shortcomings of GA are that it gives limited insights into underlying reasons for identified behavioral patterns, that data quality can be compromised, and that functionalities of GA are restricted based on privacy or legal considerations.
In terms of the inclusivity of democracy, both the opportunities and risks of using digital media have been highlighted in the literature. Empirical research into the use of digital media and the inclusivity of citizen participation, however, is limited. More specifically, we have a limited understand of the relation between the ‘richness’ of digital media and the inclusivity of citizen engagement The introduction of digital participation by governments during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a highly interesting situation for studying the relation between digital participation and the inclusivity of citizen engagement. This paper presents an assessment of five cases in the Netherlands to explore to what extent the media richness of digital participation affects the inclusivity of citizen engagement. Our findings present few indications for the exclusion of citizens and, in contrast, highlight the participation of more citizens when access was facilitated through digital media. The overall picture that emerges is that especially lean digital tools, webinars, enhance inclusivity in terms of access but only richer tools, interactive platforms, also facilitate participation as interaction with citizens. To our surprise, we found that hybrid forms of participation fall short in providing opportunities for inclusive interaction. We end the paper by recommending governments to realize both broad and in-depth inclusive democracy by sequential use of lean media – webinars – to boost the access to participation and rich media – platforms and offline meetings – for interactions with citizens.
Governments worldwide invest heavily in digital initiatives to develop information societies with connected and actively engaged citizens, but problems like lacking sustained engagement and quality of participation still plague them. We undertook a systematised literature review on the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases, covering dispersed literature surrounding Digital Citizen Empowerment (DCE) from the past two decades.Categorising the literature under four thematic categories or strategies of DCE: Digital Activism (DA), Multi-channel Service Delivery (MCSD), Participatory Budgeting (PB), and Deliberative Governance (DG) critical comparative analysis is done. A conceptual model of DCE, covering how theories from different inter-disciplinary areas of political, social, and information science influence the development of information societies and DCE is presented. Action points in our conceptual model are mapped to policy objectives targeting improved delivery of empowering policy goals by practitioners, and future research opportunities in the context of DCE are discussed.
The digitalization of public administration is increasingly moving forward. This systematic literature review analyzes empirical studies that explore the impacts of digitalization projects (n=93) in the public sector. Bibliometrically, only a few authors have published several times on this topic so far. Most studies focusing on impact come from the US or China, and are related to Computer Science. In terms of content, the majority of examined articles studies services to citizens, and therefore consider them when measuring impact. A classification of the investigated effects by dimensions of public value shows that the analysis of utilitarian-instrumental values, such as efficiency or performance, is prevalent. More interdisciplinary cooperation is needed to research the impact of digitalization in the public sector. The different dimensions of impact should be linked more closely. In addition, research should focus more on the effects of digitalization within administration.
Burgerbegrotingen hebben al heel wat kilometers op de teller als instrument van participatie op het lokale niveau. Het Vlaams Parlement stelt zich nu de vraag of en hoe een burgerbegroting ook op regionaal niveau kan georganiseerd worden. Op basis van lokale ervaringen in binnen en buitenland concludeert deze studie dat een burgerbegroting op Vlaams niveau zinvol kan zijn. Grote steden zoals Parijs en Madrid hebben immers al succesvolle burgerbegrotingen in de steigers staan. Ondanks de lokale ervaring, blijft een burger-begroting op Vlaams niveau een democratisch experiment. Alleen Portugal en Frankrijk experimenteren met en discussiëren over een nationale burgerbegroting. Voor het overige zijn de burgerbegrotin-en lokaal. De buitenlandse praktijk laat dus niet toe om eenduidig te concluderen dat een burgerbegroting op een bovenlokale schaal werkt of niet werkt. Wel denken we dat het experiment uitgeprobeerd kan worden. Dit rapport bespreekt daarom de centrale keuzes en ontwerp-principes van een Vlaamse burgerbegroting. Studie in opdracht van het departement Financiën en Begroting, Vlaamse Overheid
The last two decades have witnessed a significant turn towards community participation in public policy around the globe, raising concerns that states are resorting to ‘government through community’, shifting responsibilities onto communities. In order to unpack the ambiguous rhetoric of policy statements, this article employs ideas from evaluation methodology to develop a generic theory of change for community participation policy. The model is then utilised to analyse and compare the UK Coalition Government’s Big Society/Localism agenda and the Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment approach, demonstrating the ways in which these represent a clear example of policy divergence, and potentially significant alternatives to state–community relations in the context of austerity. The article also demonstrates the potential wider applicability of ‘theories of change’ methodology for policy analysis.
This study examines the effects of informational, interactional, and creative forms of Internet use on behavioral and cognitive indicators of youth democratic engagement. Data from an extensive two-wave panel survey of Swedish adolescents (N = 1,520) were examined. Results show that the effects of informational and interactional Internet use on political participation are indirect, with online political interactions acting as an intervening variable. In addition, creative production was found to be a direct positive predictor of online and offline political participation but negatively related to political knowledge. The effects were statistically significant even when accounting for self-selection and previous levels of democratic engagement. Taken together, these findings contribute novel theoretical insights into the mechanisms by which Internet use may encourage or hinder youths’ democratic engagement.
This book demonstrates that people’s basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world’s population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely.
This article explores how the social ambiguities concerning audience and reception of posts on Facebook shape the forms of political interaction among young citizens on the site. Two sets of in-depth interviews are used to illustrate the ways that uncertainties about audience reception on Facebook inspire strategies for ‘inventing’ modes of political interaction on the one hand, and, for others, suppress opinion expression by creating the sense that talking politics on the site is a high risk endeavor.
Recent developments suggest a strong relationship between social media use and political engagement and raise questions about the potential for social media to help stem or even reverse patterns of political inequality that have troubled scholars for years. In this paper, we articulate a model of social media and political engagement among young people, and test it using data from representative samples of young people in Australia, the USA, and the UK. Our results suggest a strong, positive relationship between social media use and political engagement among young people across all three countries, and provide additional insights regarding the role played by social media use in the processes by which young people become politically engaged. Notably, our results also provide reasons to be optimistic concerning the overall influence of this popular new form of digital media on longstanding patterns of political inequality.
This article seeks to assess and understand the role played by new forms of internet-based communication in UK local governance. Drawing on a survey of all English local authorities the article examines the utilisation of social media before going on to ask what potential these media might hold for the enhancement of local participation. Amidst contemporary debates about the nature of local governance, not least those prompted by the recent preoccupation with the Big Society, Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook and Twitter afford new opportunities for online interaction that could contribute to the reinvigoration of the local public sphere. In particular these platforms could encourage forms of participation that would bridge the divide that has emerged in recent years between residents as consumers of local services and residents as citizens, or local democratic actors.
The aim of this paper is to review the main questions dealt with by the literature on the effect of Internet on political participation. The paper distinguishes three relevant aspects: the estimation of the impact of Internet on the levels and types of political participation; the analysis of the causal mechanisms that lie behind the relationship between Internet use and participation; and the effect of the Internet on participatory inequalities. We conclude by identifying the aspects on which there is a relative consensus among scholars, the debates surrounding controversial conclusions obtained from different empirical analyses, and those questions where further research seems particularly necessary.
In governance structure legitimacy is required not only of the governing system, local authorities or public organisations but also of other participants, including citizens. The legitimacy cannot be judged either by traditions of representative democracy or by innovative theories of deliberative or participatory democracy. The article analyses scientific publications on citizen participation in local governance. It asks how empirical studies on local sustainable development planning (SDP) and New Public Management (NPM) practices construct legitimate citizen participation. In general, studies on citizen participation have not conceptualised the relations between citizens and power holders as questions of legitimacy. However, the studies approaching citizen participation in the local processes of SDP and NPM include various empirical, theoretical and normative arguments for citizen participation. These arguments recognise, accept and support particular activities, arguments and outcomes of citizen participation, and include and exclude agents and issues. They construct and reflect the definition of legitimacy in the local governance. As constructed by scientific texts, justifications for citizen participation reproduce a discursive structure in which citizen participation becomes marginalised and citizens’ views excluded. The results illustrate that discursive structures of legitimate citizen participation support conventional governing practices and hinder innovative practices in local governance.
Group differences in the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) were investigated, to test the diversification hypothesis that argues that minorities and immigrants will be more likely to use CMC to compensate for their lack of social capital. Data were gathered from a sample of Internet users reflecting the percentage of minorities in the general population (n = 1,264). The results provide support for the hypothesis, indicating that in multicultural societies disadvantaged groups show greater motivation to use CMC to expand business and occupational contacts, whereas members of the majority group are more motivated to use CMC to maintain existing family and friendships ties. Implications of the finding are discussed.
There is a growing literature exploring the role of the Internet in influencing levels and styles of political participation. However, it is not yet clear why the Internet is perceived as a medium that can, at least potentially, increase participation. Moreover, putting the emphasis on the Internet as a technology rather than on its information and communication capabilities signals a tendency for technological determinism. In order to avoid this, the article explores the relation between the Internet and political participation by examining three different facets of the Internet: the Internet as an information source, as a communication medium and as a virtual public sphere. The main argument of the article is that it is these facets of the Internet that may affect levels and styles of political participation and hence are of interest for political scientists. The article also emphasizes the relevance of established theories of participation within political science in evaluating the potential role of the Internet for affecting levels and styles of political participation.
The uses and gratifications approach is well suited for studying the World Wide Web as a whole and for examining specific types of sites within the Web. This study, therefore, examines the uses and gratifications of accessing online sources for political information. A factor analysis revealed 4 primary motivations for connecting to online political information: guidance information-seeking/surveillance, entertainment, and social utility. Additionally, significant correlations emerged between the 4 motivations and amount of use, trust in government, feelings of efficacy, interest in politics, and the likelihood of voting.
In recent years, voluntary associations and political organizations have increasingly switched to Internet-based mobilization campaigns, replacing traditional forms of face-to-face recruitment and mobilization. The existing body of empirical research on Internet-based mobilization, however, is not conclusive about the effects this form of mobilization might have. In this article, the authors argue that this lack of strong conclusions might be due to the failure to distinguish different behavioral outcomes of mobilization, and more specifically, a distinction between online and off-line forms of participation is missing. In this experimental study, participants were exposed to potentially mobilizing information either by way of face-to-face interaction or by website. The results of the experiment indicate that web-based mobilization only has a significant effect on online participation, whereas face-to-face mobilization has a significant impact on off-line behavior, which would imply that mobilization effects are medium-specific. The authors close with some observations on what these findings might imply for the democratic consequences of the current trend toward an increasing reliance on Internet-based forms of political mobilization.
We examined audience uses of the Internet from a uses-and-gratifications perspective. We expected contextual age, unwillingness to communicate, social presence, and Internet motives to predict outcomes of Internet exposure, affinity, and satisfaction. The analyses identified five motives for using the Internet and multivariate links among the antecedents and motives. The results suggested distinctions between instrumental and ritualized Internet use, as well as Internet use serving as a functional alternative to face-to-face interaction.
US local governments are under increasing pressure to adopt electronic participation technologies to engage stakeholders in decision-making. The choice set of technologies and the ease with which they can be applied, has potentially increased the complexity of the context within which managers operate. Using data from a national survey of 850 government managers in 500 cities, we investigate whether different channels of e-participation technology and the intensity of e-participation technology use are associated with managers' perceptions of outcomes. We find that the relationships between complexity of e-participation technology and perceived outcomes depend upon the type of external stakeholder group considered.
There is widespread concern that the growth of the Internet is exacerbating inequalities between the information rich and poor. Digital Divide examines access and use of the Internet in 179 nations world-wide. A global divide is evident between industrialized and developing societies. A social divide is apparent between rich and poor within each nation. Within the online community, evidence for a democratic divide is emerging between those who do and do not use Internet resources to engage and participate in public life. Part I outlines the theoretical debate between cyber-optimists who see the Internet as the great leveler. Part II examines the virtual political system and the way that representative institutions have responded to new opportunities on the Internet. Part III analyzes how the public has responded to these opportunities in Europe and the United States and develops the civic engagement model to explain patterns of participation via the Internet.
Although many scholars are convinced of the apparent civic disengagement of youth, others suggest that civic participation of young people is stable and increasingly expressed through non-institutionalized forms of practicing politics.
This book makes a key contribution to this discussion by asking whether the "decline or shift" paradigm is sufficient in understanding political participation of the youth. It argues that we need to move beyond this framework and develop a renewed reflection on the meaning of "civic and political engagement". It asks crucial questions such as:
How can the young be educated into assuming civic and political responsibility?
Why and how do young people engage in social and political action?
Questions have arisen about the added value of public encounters for participatory democracy: Do problems with living up to its promises occur because of or despite public professionals and citizens coming together? This article presents the findings of a study that examined their public encounters, or communicative “in-between,” in participatory projects in three European cities. A narrative analysis revealed how the communicative capacity of public professionals and citizens is imperative and yet largely overlooked, that is, their ability to recognize and break through dominant communicative patterns by constantly adapting the nature, tone, and conditions of conversations to the situation at hand. Less time, energy, and resources will be lost if they pay more attention to how they communicate (process) rather than what they talk about (substance). As this proves to be inherently difficult in everyday practice, researchers could play an important role in cultivating communicative capacity.
When people say that they trust local authorities, is it simply because they have generalized trust in national government? Or is trust in local government rooted in distinctive considerations, connected to the character of local communities and the balance of power across levels of government? We explore how trust in local and national government differs across individuals and across countries in western Europe. We find that people trust local government for different reasons than those that drive trust in national government. Cross-national differences in levels of trust in government reflect the character of national institutions. While both proportional representation systems and federal systems are power-sharing designs, each has distinctive consequences for trust. When opportunities for voice in local government are high, as in decentralized systems, people report greater trust in local government. When opportunities for voice in national government are limited, as in majoritarian systems, people report lower trust for national government and higher trust in local government.
The past two decades have seen a proliferation of large- and small-scale experiments in participatory governance. This article takes stock of claims about the potential of citizen participation to advance three values of democratic governance: effectiveness, legitimacy, and social justice. Increasing constraints on the public sector in many societies, combined with increasing demand for individual engagement and the affordances of digital technology, have paved the way for participatory innovations aimed at effective governance. Deepening legitimation deficits of representative government create opportunities for legitimacy-enhancing forms of citizen participation, but so far, the effect of participation on legitimacy is unclear. Efforts to increase social justice through citizen participation face the greatest obstacles. The article concludes by highlighting three challenges to creating successful participatory governance: the absence of systematic leadership, the lack of popular or elite consensus on the place of direct citizen participation, and the limited scope and powers of participatory innovations.
Participation in neighbourhoods is a highly valued phenomenon. Participation is the basis of a shared social life, but it also makes everyday life, and the lived experience of people participating in it, political. From a public administration perspective, governance and formal policy-making are increasingly reaching out to citizens, instead of drawing solely on representative mechanisms of local government. This paper investigates how practitioners working in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Dutch cities enhance participation. Using empirical data from research in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in The Netherlands, the paper shows that these practitioners either start projects that connect people in their own life world or connect policy-makers and policy to initiatives on the ground. As a result, they create the opportunity for many to develop their citizenship and become a more active participant in their local communities.
This article examines the relationship between electronic participation (e-participation) and trust in local government by focusing on five dimensions of the e-participationprocess: (1) satisfaction with e-participation applications, (2) satisfaction with government responsiveness to e-participants, (3) e-participants’ development through the participation, (4) perceived influence on decision making, and (5) assessment of government transparency. Using data from the 2009 E-Participation Survey in Seoul Metropolitan Government, this article finds that e-participants’ satisfaction with e-participation applications is directly associated with their development and their assessment of government transparency. The findings reveal that e-participants’ satisfaction with government responsiveness is positively associated with their perceptions of influencing government decision making. Furthermore, there is a positive association between e-participants’ perception of influencing government decision making and their assessment of government transparency. Finally, the article finds that there is a positive association between e-participants’ assessment of government transparency and their trust in the local government providing the e-participation program.
Public encounters, face-to-face contact between public professionals and citizens, was first identified as a key issue in public administration 80 years ago, but never developed into a subject area of its own. Although receiving attention in research on street-level bureaucrats' contact with customers, clients, and citizens, the concept of public encounters is hardly used. However, it has great potential to overcome current limitations in understanding how public encounters can enhance the quality of services, decisions, and outcomes. This article traces the historical development of research on public encounters and sets a future agenda for developing it into a subject area of its own. The main argument is that, so far, the encounter, or ‘in-between’, has not been captured as a distinct phenomenon. A framework is developed to examine this in-between in terms of the everyday communicative practices and processes through which public professionals and citizens encounter each other.
Political participation refers to all forms of involvement in which citizens express their political opinion and/or convey that opinion to political decision-makers. Some of the most innovative forms of political participation developed during the past decade are based on the use of online communication tools. There is still no consensus in the scientific literature, however, about the impact of online communication on citizens’ civic and political engagement. The main goal of this article is therefore to understand whether specific online and/or offline political participation patterns exist especially among young people who are known to be the most fervent Internet users. The analysis utilizes survey data on various forms of offline and online political engagement among undergraduate students from 2011.
This controversial new look at democracy in a multicultural society considers the ideals of political inclusion and exclusion, and recommends ways to engage in democratic politics in a more inclusive way. Processes of debate and decision making often marginalize individuals and groups because the norms of political discussion are biased against some forms of expression. Inclusion and Democracy broadens our understanding of democratic communication by reflecting on the positive political functions of narrative, rhetorically situated appeals, and public protest. It reconstructs concepts of civil society and public sphere as enacting such plural forms of communication among debating citizens in large-scale societies. Iris Marion Young thoroughly discusses class, race, and gender bias in democratic processes, and argues that the scope of a polity should extend as wide as the scope of social and economic interactions that raise issues of justice. Today this implies the need for global democratic institutions. Young also contends that due to processes of residential segregation and the design of municipal jurisdictions, metropolitan governments which preserve significant local autonomy may be necessary to promote political equality. This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.
Local government in England has, in general, struggled with exploiting the much heralded democratic potential of the Internet. Evaluations of the local e-democracy initiatives, funded as part of the New Labour Government's e-government programme, were largely unfavourable. Since this initiative ended usage of the Internet has arguably reached a critical mass opening new opportunities for local policy makers interested in more effectively involving citizens in the local decision-making process. This article illustrates these opportunities by drawing on new empirical evidence of the online political activity associated with the 2008 Manchester Congestion Charge referendum. It also serves to highlight the political challenges facing local government and argues that if the Internet is to be used for strengthening local democracy then local government must become a fit for purpose institution and develop strategies that tackle the online influence of vested economic interests and the problem of enacting local citizenship online.
This paper is based on empirical research on the implementation of a series of online services inspired by the logic of the 'social web' in the City of Venice. The empirical research focuses on IRIS, an online platform where citizens can report urban maintenance problems by posting a message on a web page and expect an almost instant reply by local government. The theoretical focus of the paper is the effect that the implementation of web services that require an "Internet-time" response has on the bureaucratic structure of government. The research is mainly based on expert interviews and describes the managers' and representatives' interpretations and sensemaking realized in order to manage the implementation of this kind of Internet service. The paper presents a theoretical analysis of the empirical data and attempts to assess how the provision of an Internet-time service, such as IRIS, and the development of an effective interactive web platform by a local government influences the structure of government. The analysis highlights that the use of this type of technology implies a redefinition of the Weberian structural elements of bureaucracy, such as the principles of legitimacy, hierarchy and specialization.
From the Publisher:
Digital Divide examines access and use of the Internet in 179 nations world-wide. A global divide is evident between industrialized and developing societies. A social divide is apparent between rich and poor within each nation. Within the online community, evidence for a democratic divide is emerging between those who do and do not use Internet resources to engage and participate in public life. Part I outlines the theoretical debate between cyber-optimists who see the Internet as the great leveler. Part II examines the virtual political system and the way that representative institutions have responded to new opportunities on the Internet. Part III analyzes how the public has responded to these opportunities in Europe and the United States and develops the civic engagement model to explain patterns of participation via the Internet.
The transition to adulthood has received the attention of scholars, practitioners, and policy makers in recent years. For some, the transition is an extended period during which commitments to adulthood institutions are delayed, termed emerging adulthood. For others, the transition is brief and commitments to adulthood institutions begin without delay, termed accelerated adulthood. Institutions play an important role in accumulating advantages or disadvantages for individuals, influencing the likelihood of an emerging or accelerated adulthood. This article introduces an institutional framework that explores the link between institutional forces and individual outcomes. This article proposes the concept, institutional constellation, which is the specific set of institutions operating in an individual's life, and their lived experience of/within that institutional constellation. The degree of integration within the institutional constellation and the degree to which the institutional constellation is aligned to dominant social norms influences the resources that will accumulate advantages or disadvantages for an individual.
This article investigates how communications advances affect citizens’ ability to participate in coproduction of government services. The authors analyze service requests made to the City of Boston during a one-year period from 2010 to 2011 and, using geospatial analysis and negative binomial regression, investigate possible disparities by race, education, and income in making service requests. The findings reveal little concern that 311 systems (nonemergency call centers) may benefit one racial group over another; however, there is some indication that Hispanics may use these systems less as requests move from call centers to the Internet and smartphones. Consistent with prior research, the findings show that poorer neighborhoods are less likely to take advantage of 311 service, with the notable exception of smartphone utilization. The implications for citizen participation in coproduction and bridging the digital divide are discussed.
While the study of e-participation has gained increasing attention within political science, our understanding of its underlying structure and relationship to offline participation is limited. This article addresses these gaps by focusing on three interrelated questions: (1) Is e-participation a multidimensional phenomenon (differentiation hypothesis)? (2) If submodes exist, do they mirror existing modes of participation (replication hypothesis)? (3) If offline forms are replicated online, do they mix together (integration hypothesis) or operate in separate spheres (independence hypothesis)? We test our hypotheses through confirmatory factor analysis of original survey data from the U.K. General Election of 2010. The results show that distinct submodes of e-participation, comparable to those occurring offline, can be identified. Support for integration and independence varies according to the type of participation undertaken. Finally our results suggest that the online environment may be fostering a new social-media-based type of expressive political behavior.
Social media has opened up unprecedented new possibilities of engaging the public in government work. In response to the Open Government Directive, U.S. federal agencies developed their open government plan and launched numerous social media-based public engagement initiatives. However, we find that many of these initiatives do not deliver the intended outcomes due to various organizational, technological, and financial challenges. We propose an Open Government Maturity Model based on our field studies with U.S. federal healthcare administration agencies. This model is specifically developed to assess and guide open government initiatives which focus on transparent, interactive, participatory, collaborative public engagement that are largely enabled by emerging technologies such as social media. The model consists of five maturity levels: initial conditions (Level 1), data transparency (Level 2), open participation (Level 3), open collaboration (Level 4), and ubiquitous engagement (Level 5). We argue that there is a logical sequence for increasing social media-based public engagement and agencies should focus on achieving one maturity level at a time. The Open Government Maturity Model helps government agencies implement their open government initiatives effectively by building organizational and technological capabilities in an orderly manner. We discuss challenges and best practices for each maturity level and conclude by presenting recommendations.
Voting is a habit. People learn the habit of voting, or not, based on experience in their first few elections. Elections that do not stimulate high turnout among young adults leave a ‘footprint’ of low turnout in the age structure of the electorate as many individuals who were new at those elections fail to vote at subsequent elections. Elections that stimulate high turnout leave a high turnout footprint. So a country's turnout history provides a baseline for current turnout that is largely set, except for young adults. This baseline shifts as older generations leave the electorate and as changes in political and institutional circumstances affect the turnout of new generations. Among the changes that have affected turnout in recent years, the lowering of the voting age in most established democracies has been particularly important in creating a low turnout footprint that has grown with each election.
This paper examines the relationship between Internet use and political participation among Australian young people. Based on original survey data it demonstrates that there clearly exists a ‘digital divide’ amongst 18–34-year-old Australians, which is delineated on demographic characteristics of geography, education level, income level and occupational classification. While the Internet has far from replaced the traditional information sources of television and newspapers, it does, however, facilitate participation undertaken by already politically engaged young people. The Internet has fundamental importance in facilitating information sharing and organizing for young people involved in activist and community groups. The paper also provides case studies of two non-government, youth-oriented organizations with participatory Internet sites (Vibewire Youth Services and Inspire Foundation) to further explore the potential of Internet enhancement of young people's autonomous political spaces. One site provides Internet-only, youth-specific mental health services and has developed a portal for active community-based participation. It has won commendations for encouraging youth ownership of service provision and providing space for youth participation. The other site provides discussion and journalism for and by young people on a range of cultural, social and political issues. This site also engages in mainstream political issues through ‘electiontracker’, which provided four young people with the opportunity to join the mainstream media in following and reporting on the 2004 Australian federal election campaign. The focus in this paper on heterogenous acts of participation is able to expand our understanding of the democratizing potential of young people's Internet-based political practices.
This article argues that there is a need to enrich the theory of citizen participation and the design of deliberation practices through greater attention to the cultural politics of deliberative space. The article focuses on the ways the social valorization of political space influences basic discursive processes such as who speaks, how knowledge is constituted, what can be said, and who decides. From this perspective, decentralized design principles are necessary but insufficient requirements for deliberative empowerment. The point is illustrated through an analysis of the Science for the People movement in Kerala, India, a prominent example of deliberative empowerment. The discussion shows how the movement employed cultural and pedagogical strategies to facilitate an empowered participation of local citizens in the deliberative planning process. These experiences demonstrate the importance of a deeper understanding of cultural meaning and political identity in the theory of democratic deliberation and the practice of participatory governance.
Dramatic developments in information technology are transforming society, challenging our nation's many governments to keep pace. As e-governance grows in popularity, Web pages could well become the new face of government. But how are citizens responding? We suggest that government Web sites may provide a new vehicle for citizen-initiated contacts with government, and, drawing from the literature on those traditional contacts, we propose a number of hypotheses on citizen interaction with government via the Web. To test those hypotheses, we examine data from a survey concerning how Georgians are contacting government via the Web. We find that citizen visits to governmental Web sites are increasingly common, and as such appear to have become a major new form of the traditional citizen-initiated contact. To date, however, most of these Web contacts have been made only to obtain information, thus lacking the interactive quality crucial to other citizen-initiated contacts. As an encouraging finding for government, visitors to governmental Web sites appear to be mostly pleased with their experiences, rating those sites as at least comparable in quality to other Web sites. A discouraging finding, however, is that the demographics of these visitors suggest cause for concern, since the digital divide is even more pronounced among government Web site visitors than among Internet users in general. In the concluding section, we discuss the implications of the findings for government and for future research.
This article evaluates the participatory citizenship of Australian young people. Its argument is that in the utilisation of empirical research 'contemporary citizenship needs to recognise what people actually do' (R. Prokhovnik, Feminist Review 60(2) 1998: 95). For this research, an alternative approach to the exploration of participation has been developed which questions the traditional, institutionalised measures of political participation and/or notions of civic engagement that do not look at a broad range of individual and organisational experiences. The article is based on a survey of 18-34-year-old Australians conducted via telephone, by Newspoll Market Research, in early 2001. The article shows that rather than 'Generation X' having homogeneous (or even negligible) participatory experiences, four distinct participatory typologies emerge. These four typologies are labelled as Activist, Communitarian, Party and Individualistic to reflect the clustered modes of participation. The article also explores the relationships between participation and the discussion of political and social issues.
A normative literature in political science and public administration calls for enhanced citizen participation in public decisions. However, this approach overlooks the environment that shapes administrative behavior, an oversight likely to hamper reform efforts targeted at achieving the normative goals of participation. The administrative perspective is important because public managers shape participation forums and determine whether public input has an impact on decisions. In organizing participation, administrators are likely to be guided by an instrumental view of relative costs and benefits. Washington, D.C.’s Citizen Summit illustrates the primacy of the instrumental perspective but demonstrates conditions of compatibility with normative goals. In this case, public managers perceived administrative costs to be low relative to instrumental benefits, such as the quality of public input and a need to increase governmental legitimacy. They also applied innovative participation technologies to reduce administrative costs and raise instrumental benefits, reinvigorating the frequently criticized public hearing.