Making eParticipation Policy - A European Analysis

Stephen Coleman, Anna Carola Freschi, Peter Mambrey, Joachim Åström, Georg Aichholzer, Doris Allhutter, Giles Moss, Thierry Vedel
2009 Social Science Research Network  
The creative and disruptive characteristics of digital networks have profound consequences for the production of citizenship, which has always been technologically constructed, but now derives its significance from a tension between elite intentions and network flows. Our aim in this paper is to explore this tension empirically by interrogating the process of policy-making with regard to eParticipation in six European countries. Executive summary This Demo-net Booklet proposes a new way to look
more » ... at eParticipation. By now, eParticipation has become a field of policy itself. Thus, there is a growing need to go beyond (and behind) the analysis of its practices and to seek to investigate the logics and the strategies implied, explicit as much as 'latent'. Crucially, within the frame of network society, eParticipation is a relevant ground of deployment of the dynamic nature of the institutional and non institutional processes of agenda setting and decision making. This fact has important implications for research about the transformations of polity, public policy and democratic participation. The Introduction of this booklet (1) is devoted to explain such main idea. A better comprehension of eParticipation requires to contextualize the emerging practices with reference to different political system, social and communicational settings. A first step in this direction is provided through Chapter 2, which is focused on the institutional and social contexts of eParticipation in six European countries
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1529798 fatcat:j5qvycpgz5cu5jjbn3pomggh7y