Citizen participation is considered as one of the core elements of transparency of Governments with regard to their citizens. In these participations, Governments generally ask people to give their opinions with regard to particular subjects. Governments then consider these opinions in their decision-making process. With the emergence of new ICTs that are widely spread and used by citizens, Government made a shift from face-to-face citizens' participation to an electronic citizens' participation or the so-called e-participation. In this context, governments need to identify the best means to achieve electronic participation in a way and a time that gives the citizens the opportunity to have a real influence on the decisions to be made. However, the literature shows that there is no consensus about these means. This paper is an attempt to examine, through an extensive literature review, the current state of the art about e-Participation. Results show that social welfare is the dominant domain in which e-Participation was conducted. They show also that social media technologies are the most used to conduct e-Participation initiatives.

Electronic Citizens Participation: Systematic Review

Governments are more and more adopting Citizens' participation processes since they may help better understand needs and better reach communities' goals. With the emergence of ICTs, citizens' participation processes took new forms such as social media, blogs and participative platforms. Nevertheless, although citizens' participation outstands a great value for governments, its implementation raises several issues. Based on a review of the literature, this paper identifies a typology of issues regarding the implementation of CP processes. This paper is an attempt to open new research avenues on citizens' participation through the multidisciplinary typology of issues it proposes. As well, drawing on two categories of issues (citizens' and technology issues), a context-based citizen participation approach is proposed that is based on three main concepts: context-based reasoning, spatio-temporal representation, and visual analytics. Further empirical studies need to be established to assert the relevance of the proposed approach.

Towards a Context-based Citizen Participation Approach: a Literature Review of Citizen Participation Issues and a Conceptual Framework

This chapter approaches the complex relationship between eParticipation processes and democratic legitimacy by analysing several strategies for recruiting participants, a specific issue in the design of eParticipation processes with farreaching implications. The central argument of this chapter is that the possibility of strengthening systems of representative democracy through eParticipation initiatives depends on the strategies used to recruit participants into those initiatives. First, a review of the theoretical discussion around strategies for the recruitment of participants and their normative implications for democratic legitimacy is presented. Thereafter, a broad empirical overview of eParticipation projects is carried out, surveying the diffusion of different recruitment strategies in local eConsultations. This is followed by a case study of the European Citizens’ Consultations (ECC). In the chapter’s concluding discussion, lessons are drawn from the ECC case, and a set of questions are formulated that should be considered in the design of eParticipation projects related to the normative implications of different recruitment strategies.

Empowering Open and Collaborative Governance

This chapter reflects, from a holistic perspective, on the challenges surrounding the development of eParticipation in Europe, with special focus on EU programmes. To this end, first, we assess the field’s practical and theoretical achievements and limitations, and corroborate that the progress of eParticipation in the last decade has not been completely satisfactory in spite of the significant share of resources invested to support it. Second, we attempt to diagnose and shed light on some of the field’s systemic problems and challenges which are responsible for this lack of development. The domain’s maladies are grouped under tree main categories: (1) lack of a proper understanding and articulation with regard to the ‘participation’ field, (2) eParticipation community’s ‘founding biases’ around eGovernment and academy, and (3) inadequacy of traditional innovation support programmes to incentivize innovation in the field. In the context of the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’, the final section provides several recommendations that should contribute to enhance the effectiveness of future European eParticipation actions.

A Critical Analysis of EU-Funded eParticipation

Recent literature and project reviews suggest information technology is inadequately reflected in eParticipation research This study uses text search queries to investigate the occurrence of 60 technology categories in a bibliographic database consisting of over a thousand research articles The results show that eParticipation research have overwhelmingly focused on websites and discussion forums as the main technologies under study Many other technologies that are frequently mentioned in overview articles as being part of eParticipation have received relatively scant attention in actual research This article presents findings that may be useful in broadening and deepening the field’s treatment of technology

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Information Technology in eParticipation Research : A Word Frequency Analysis

This article looks at the challenges surrounding the development and mainstreaming of actions in the area of eParticipation in the EU. It analyses the experience of recent years, especially the ones from the eParticipation Preparatory Action, and looks at the latest policy initiatives which affect further developments in Member States and the EU.

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Mechthild Rohen

Papers

European eParticipation developments: from ad hoc experiences towards mass scale engagement