Anna Carola Freschi

A Tale of Six Countries: eParticipation Research from an Administration and Political Perspective

This paper presents a cross-national analysis of eParticipation research in the administrative and political domain. It covers eParticipation research in six European countries (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden) focusing on several aspects of eParticipation research, including research questions, methods, disciplinary approaches, units of analysis, research findings. The paper also provides an overview of national research, and outlines overall research findings and future directions in eParticipation research.

E-forums : refreshing the representative relationship?

Among the countries in the European Union, different measures have been taken with the aim of vitalizing representative democracy. Especially at the local government level, various trials and reforms have been developed and implemented, such as reformation of local institutions, and introducing new forms of citizen participation and new roles for local politicians (Denters and Rose eds. 2005). Within this frame of democracy-oriented reforms, electronic democracy (e-democracy) is increasingly seen as a promising concept. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are viewed as important tools for invigorating local representative democracy. In other words, electronic and representative democracy are perceived as a potentially happy couple (Rodota 1997; Hague and Loader 1999).

Making eParticipation Policy - A European Analysis

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.This Demo-net Booklet proposes a new way to look 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 (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, UK). For each country, institutional and political conditions, eParticipation infrastructure and policy, eParticipation initiatives initiated by civil society are sketched. Chapter 3 offers an introduction about the political role of civil society in network society and five brief case-studies about a range of quite differentiated experiences, promoted by non institutional actors in the different countries. The final Chapter proposes some methodological and comparative considerations, and a new research approach to cope with the growing complexity of this field.