JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
Not a member yet
288 research outputs found
Sort by
Disruption and empowerment. Embedding citizens at the heart of democracy.
Get PDFThis paper describes a changing landscape of society and politics. Firstly it briefly situates current practices and methods of democratic engagement and representation within a recent historical framework. It then describes mediating factors relating to democracy, the media and civil society and contextualises these within the broader neoliberal shift from citizen to consumer. The paper then identifies some key transformational agendas in the modus operandi of citizen to government exchange that hint at a return to more civic-focused responsibility, the emergence of issues-based politics and discusses the transformative role that digital media can play in this. All of this pre-supposes that citizens have both the ability and opportunity to engage in democratic practices so, finally, the paper describes a transformative model for citizen-driven, issues-based democracy that might connect with the systems of power in a more effective and democratic way by harnessing digital media and by building on local skills, knowledge, ideas and partnerships
Do Facebook and video games promote political participation among youth? Evidence from Singapore
Get PDFThe importance of cultivating political engagement among youth has been widely discussed and its value for a well-functioning democratic society reaffirmed by numerous scholars. This study seeks to understand the relationship between the use of emerging platforms for online sociability and entertainment and political participation among young Singaporeans. Specifically, we focus on the intensity of Facebook use and frequency of video gaming, as well as more specific civic activities taking place on these platforms. The findings indicate that the intensity of Facebook use is related to both online and traditional political participation, while civic gaming is associated with online participation only. There is also evidence linking membership in civic/political Facebook groups with increased online participation. Lastly, although the results suggest that online participation may be an important driver of traditional political participation, the role of traditional media, particularly newspapers, should not be easily dismissed
E-Parliaments and Novel Parliament-to-Citizen services
Get PDFIn an era of citizens’ discontentment on democratic institutions, parliaments as a democratic cornerstone, are constantly striving to create alluring services taking, at the same time, into account the difficulty of achieving accessibility and transparency in citizens’ e-participation. At the same time, the evolution of ICT tools presents opportunities to revamp the traditional character, functions and services of parliaments worldwide, giving rise to new capabilities and opportunities that can transform their political and social role. An e-enabled parliament can not only offer flexibility in parliamentary proceedings and facilitate the work of its members, but also strive for the inclusion of citizens, without annulling the representative character of the institution. In this paper, we present an initial overview of the characteristics of modern parliaments, recording existing service offerings and proposing a stakeholder-based categorization, with specific categories that can best accommodate explicit and active citizen participation within parliamentary functions. A number of existing citizen deliberation applications and research projects are highlighted as potential candidates for deploying novel extrovert parliament-to-citizen services, focused directly on citizen involvement. Moreover, the focus area based on the procedure from inclusion to feedback will give good evidence for all those factors that are necessary for a successful adoption of novel e-parliament services
The two door Perspective: An assessment framework for Open Government
Get PDFThe recent trend of open government in the worlds has created an avalanche of initiatives, metrics, and research paths. However this directions are usually random and disperse. Governments around the world understand the trend with different perspectives, focus and theoretical approaches. Neverthelss the open government perspective is evolving step by step. This paper proposes an assessment framework to contribute on the line of reflection and understand of open government initiatives. And helps policymakers, stakeholders, practicioners and scholars to improve this field and spend public resources in a more accurate way. The paper is structured as follows: an introductory section that leads the open government problem and directions; a second section of literature review; a third section of model proposal and a final section of discussion and future research
Social Networking on Climate Change
Get PDFThis paper reports on the deployment of a multilingual Social Networking Platform in three Regions of Europe (Catalonia, Poitou-Charentes and Tuscany), in the context of an EU-funded Preparatory Action on eParticipation dealing with the issue of climate change and energy policy making at the level of the European Parliament. The US (“Obama”) approach and a novel (“European”) usage of social networks in political online discourses are compared. A recommendation to policy makers is that social networking can be useful whenever the topics under discussion are limited in scope, but also wide in implications, so that they require moving forward from “one-off” and “ad-hoc” participation experiments, towards the permanent coverage of “mission critical” Public Administration functions
Why some governments are ‘less’ open: Sketching out Models of Information Management
No full textThe purpose of this article is to consider why some national governments have been able to successfully take steps toward open government while others have not. In doing this it outlines two models of information management: a reactive model and a proactive model. Ultimately, it is found that governments following a reactive model, characterized by strong informational control and a lack of high-level political and bureaucratic support for open government, cannot fully or successfully realize open government
The Expressive Turn of Citizenship in Digital Late Modernity
Get PDFThe purpose of this paper is to connect the idea of expressive rationality to current debates on citizenship and political participation online. Socializing, cultural consumption/ production, identity management, information and publication strategies are both different and accentuated in digital, networked and late modern environments. In the paper I argue that the kind of network sociability that is emerging today favours an expressive form of rationality. I also claim that expressive rationality transcends the bipolar instrumental – communicative dimension that has been so important for normative theorizing in Political (and Social) Sciences and hence is a more rewarding theoretical concept for understanding political participation in digital late modernity
Public Agility and Change in a Network Environment
Get PDFPreparing for change is increasingly core business for governmental organizations. The networked society and the increasing connectedness of governmental organizations have as much impact on the complexity of the change process as the complexities of the corpus of law. Change is not only driven by changes in the law; changes in the organization’s environment often create a need to redesign business processes, reallocate roles and responsibilities, and reorder tasks. Moreover, preparations for change are not limited to the internal processes and systems of these organizations. Propagation of changes to network partners and redesign of network arrangements can be an enormous challenge. In the AGILE project, we develop a design method, distributed service architecture, and supporting tools that enable organizations - administrative and otherwise - to orchestrate their law-based services in a networked environment. This paper explains the Agile approach and describes some of its key principles
The disempowering Goverati: e-Aristocrats or the Delusion of e-Democracy
Get PDFWhen disaffection on political parties and politicians is pervasive, most argue whether it could be possible, thanks to the Internet – and Information and Communication Technologies in general – forget the mainstream political system and let the citizenry express their own opinion, debate in virtual agorae and vote their representatives and policy choices directly. In other words, the claim is whether the actual intermediaries can be replaced by citizen networks or, in the limit, just be overridden.Our aim in the following lines is to (1) explain that some dire (socioeconomic) changes are actually taking place,(2) why these socioeconomic changes are taking place and (3) infer, from this, what conditions shall take place in the future for (4) another wave of changes to happen that could eventually a much acclaimed new (e-)democracy. In a last section, we will discuss that despite lack of data, the trend seems to be just in the direction of the impoverishment of democracy, partly due to the weakening of political institutions
Open Access to Research. Changing Researcher Behavior Through University and Funder Mandates.
Get PDFThe primary target of the worldwide Open Access initiative is the 2.5 million articles published every year in the planet's 25,000 peer-reviewed research journals across all scholarly and scientific fields. Without exception, every one of these articles is an author give-away, written, not for royalty income, but solely to be used, applied and built upon by other researchers. The optimal and inevitable solution for this give-away research is that it should be made freely accessible to all its would-be users online and not only to those whose institutions can afford subscription access to the journal in which it happens to be published. Yet this optimal and inevitable solution, already fully within the reach of the global research community for at least two decades now, has been taking a remarkably long time to be grasped. The problem is not particularly an instance of "eDemocracy" one way or the other; it is an instance of inaction because of widespread misconceptions (reminiscent of Zeno's Paradox). The solution is for the world's research institutions and funders to (1) extend their existing "publish or perish" mandates so as to (2) require their employees and fundees to maximize the usage and impact of the research they are employed and funded to conduct and publish by (3) depositing their final drafts in their Open Access (OA) Institutional Repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication in order to (4) make their findings freely accessible to all their potential users webwide. OA metrics can then be used to measure and reward research progress and impact; and multiple layers of links, tags, commentary and discussion can be built upon and integrated with the primary research