Empowering local citizens: assessing the inclusiveness of a digital democratic innovation for co-creating a Voting Advice Application

Giada Gianola, Dominik Wyss, André Bächtiger and Marlène Gerber

Local Government Studies, 2024, vol. 50, issue 1, 174-203

Abstract: Increasing citizen dissatisfaction with democracy leads governments and municipalities across the globe to seek new ways of including and empowering citizens. Little is known about whether ‘Digital Democratic Innovations’ (DDIs) could contribute to this goal. We developed a new DDI in a Swiss municipality, dubbed Demokratiefabrik, where 1,079 citizens co-created a questionnaire that served as an official Voting Advice Application for candidates and voters in communal elections. We find that while sophisticated and allegiant citizens and left-green voters participated more in the DDI, they did not dominate the process of creating the questionnaire. Intriguingly, citizens with lower political trust were particularly active on the platform, suggesting that DDIs might give disenchanted citizens a new voice in the political process. Overall, carefully designed DDIs can be a venue for inclusive citizen participation, involving and empowering local citizens in decision-making.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2023.2185228 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:flgsxx:v:50:y:2024:i:1:p:174-203

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/flgs20

DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2023.2185228

Access Statistics for this article

Local Government Studies is currently edited by Helen Hancock

More articles in Local Government Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().