E-PARTICIPATION AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE: A CASE STUDY

Angel Iglesias Alonso ()
Additional contact information
Angel Iglesias Alonso: Department of Law and Political Science, University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain

Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, 2009, vol. 4, issue 3(12), 49-62

Abstract: Together with an extensive review of recent literature in the area of civic participation and drawing upon a series of interviews with citizens of a neighbourhood in a large city that experimented with the use of NICT and Internet in order to reinforce citizen’s participation and voice, this article offers an appraisal of the impact of such an experience. We particularly question whether in their enthusiasm for bringing the use of NICT into politics its advocates really look to increase citizen’s involvement in local policies by allowing them to participate in the outcomes of nearby public issues. A particular concern raised is that local authorities place much less weight on democratic underlying issues and place a high value on political marketing and in the control of technologies involved, expecting higher levels of citizens’ participation by means of a cosmetic exercise. This paper examines structural democratic local issues and uses a field experiment in the neighborhood of a large European city to examine the degree to which the use of Internet impacts local residents, the importance they place on NICT to participate in local issues, and the impact they have for enhancing local democracy and network governance.

Keywords: democracy; e-democracy; e-governance; local government; new information technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H83 O14 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://um.ase.ro/no12/4.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rom:terumm:v:4:y:2009:i:12:p:49-62

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management is currently edited by Colesca Sofia

More articles in Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management from Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Colesca Sofia ().