240 research outputs found
Whither deliberation? Mass email campaigns and U.S. regulatory rulemaking
No full textABSTRACT. Mass e-mail campaigns are the organizational tool of choice for environmental activists seeking to inform and mobilize their constituencies. Some democratic theorists and reformers pin their hopes for more responsive and informed government policy on Internet-en-hanced dialogue and debate. Electronic advocacy campaigns and action alerts are changing the nature and scope of public deliberation in conten-tious federal rulemaking. This paper examines the new digital landscape Dr. Stuart W. Shulman is Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in School o
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eRulemaking: Issues in Current Research and Practice
No full textStuart W. Shulman, “eRulemaking: Issues in Current Research and Practice,” International Journal of Public Administration Vol. 28 (2005), 621-641.A rich and challenging dialogue about the shape of eRulemaking is underway. While in its infancy, an interdisciplinary research community has formed to assess and inform the development of information technologies that serve the public and rule writers. To date, little is actually known about whether this transition is likely to benefit or degrade the role of public participation. As with all policy innovation, particularly technologically determined innovation, the risk of unintended consequences is present. While the Internet may usher in a new era of more inclusive, deliberative, and legally defensible rulemaking, it may be just as likely to reinforce existing inequalities, or worse, create new pitfalls for citizens wishing and entitled to influence the decision-making process. This article examines the origin of Regulations.Gov, a federal Web portal, in the context of recent literature on public participation, and federally funded research into impact of eRulemaking. It draws on workshop, interview, and focus group experiences that have fed into a multiyear dialogue between researchers, regulators, and the regulated public. It argues this dialogue is a fruitful and necessary part of the development of a standard architecture for eRulemaking that is consistent with the intent of public participation in the regulatory rulemaking process
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Democracy and E-Rulemaking: Web-Based Technologies, Participation, and the Potential for Deliberation
No full textDavid Schlosberg, Stephen Zavestoski, and Stuart W. Shulman, "Democracy and E-Rulemaking: Web-Based Technologies, Participation, and the Potential for Deliberation,' Journal of Information Technology and Politics Vol. 4, No. 1 (2007), 37-55.
Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Vol. 4(1) 2007
Available online at http://jitp.haworthpress.com
© 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.Deliberative democratic theorists and public participation scholars have become increasingly interested in institutionalized forms of citizen discourse with the state, including those facilitated by information technology. However, there have been very few empirical studies of the claims that the Internet will make public participation more inclusive and deliberative. We report the results of an exploratory survey of 1,556 citizen participants in regulatory public comment processes in the United States. Our analysis focuses on the differences in deliberative indicators between those who submitted their comments using newly available electronic tools and those who postal mailed or faxed letters on paper. We also examine differences between those who submitted an original letter and those who submitted a version of a mass-mailed form letter. Overall, the data found modest evidence of the presence of deliberative democratic practices. More interesting are the apparently fundamental differences between citizens who submit original comments and those who submit form letters. We discuss the implications of these findings as they relate to the use of information technology to increase government-citizen deliberation
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Democracy and the Environment on the Internet: Electronic Citizen Participation in Regulatory Rulemaking
No full textStephen Zavestoski, Stuart Shulman, and David Schlosberg, "Democracy and the Environment on the Internet: Electronic Citizen Participation in Regulatory Rulemaking," Science, Technology & Human Values Vol. 31, No. 4 (2006), 383-408.We hypothesize that recent uses of the Internet as a public-participation mechanism in the United States fail to overcome the adversarial culture that characterizes the American regulatory process. Although the Internet has the potential to facilitate deliberative processes that could result in more widespread public involvement, greater transparency in government processes, and a more satisfied citizenry, we argue that efforts to implement Internet-based public participation have overlaid existing problematic government processes without fully harnessing the transformative power of information technologies. Public comments submitted in two United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) rule-making processes—the National Organic Program’s organic standard and the Forest Service’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule—compose our data. We conclude that the Internet provides an arena for playing out three types of conflicts that have long plagued environmental decision-making processes: conflicts over trust of federal agencies, the use of science, and the role of public values
The Federal Docket Management System and the Prospect for Digital Democracy in U S Rulemaking
No full textA large interagency group led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked diligently to set up a centralized docket system for all U.S. federal rulemaking agencies. The result, the Federal Docket Management System (FDMS), is still a work in progress, reflecting technical, administrative, financial, and political challenges. A close examination of the effort to design, fund, and shape the architecture of the FDMS suggests many important lessons for practitioners and scholars alike. While both the new technology and the 60-year-old administrative process of rulemaking offer tantalizing glimpses of innovation, increased efficiency, and remarkable democratic potential, the actual progress to date is mixed. Neither the information system nor its users have turned the FDMS into a techno-fix for all or even much of what ails the sprawling U.S. regulatory rulemaking system. In the great American tradition of incrementalism, the FDMS represents a small step toward a number of worthy but perennially elusive goals now routinely linked to the prospect for digital democracy.</jats:p
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The Challenges of Researching the Social Web
No full textPresentation for the 2012 International Internet Preservation Consortium General Assembly. Discusses barriers to archiving and researching social media records and the capabilities needed to theoretically do so, and talks about the Texifter tool
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