Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 303 pp. $60 hbk., $20 pbk. Forecasts that the Internet heralds a world of more democracy and less poverty seem as inflated as dot.com stocks. This rosy view has electronic voting, political chat rooms, and email access re-engaging apathetic publics in politics. Digital technologies redress economic disparities, and the benefits of the Internet percolate down to transform poor societies. Equally exaggerated is the gloom of naysayers. The Internet Age has done little to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, the information haves and havenots, cyber-skeptics contend. Indeed, digital technologies could create new inequalities and reinforce the dominance of power elites. In her new book, Digital Divide, Pippa Norris, associate director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, steps into this fusillade of cyber-hyperbole, lowers the decibel with a well-written and thoughtful examination of Internet use and access in 179 countries and dissects the claims and counter-claims. Her research and findings place her on middle ground, somewhere between current reality and optimism. The Internet era seems to be changing "politics as usual" in a number of countries, expanding and loosening information about governments and politics, allowing the entrance of new political players, and fostering international movements on the environment, women's rights, and other issues across borders. The disappointment is that digital technologies are activating the already politically active and passing up the disengaged and uninterested. A major challenge to digital democracy is the gulf between the United States, Scandinavia, and other early Internet adopters and the rest of the world. That gap is now so wide that at the turn of the century, more than three-quarters of the online community lived in the developed world. Internet use tracks the path of economic and technological development. But that situation could begin to change, Norris says. The Internet is in its technological adolescence. Costs of access are falling. And governments can make a difference if policymakers take the initiative. We have the historical patterns of other communication technologies to study. Norris examines theories of technological diffusion and points out that the American response to the Internet is more akin to the rapid spread of televisions and VCRs than the slower adoption of telephones and radios. American dominance could recede as Internet access grows worldwide. Contrary to what officials of the Bush Administration contend, Norris finds that the digital divide between rich and poor within the United States remains substantial. Europe mirrors that trend. In the long run, the Internet could become more accessible to the excluded: lower income families, minorities, and women. …

Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide

This is the first comprehensive critical evaluation of the use of rational choice theory in political science. Writing in an accessible and nontechnical style, Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro assess rational choice theory where it is reputed to be most successful: the study of collective action, the behavior of political parties and politicians, and such phenomena as voting cycles and Prisoner's Dilemmas. In their hard-hitting critique, Green and Shapiro demonstrate that the much heralded achievements of rational choice theory are in fact deeply suspect and that fundamental rethinking is needed if rational choice theorists are to contribute to the understanding of politics. In their final chapters, they anticipate and respond to a variety of possible rational choice responses to their arguments, thereby initiating a dialogue that is bound to continue for some time.

Pathologies of rational choice theory: A critique of applications in political science.

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov New York: Public Affairs, 2011 409 pages $16.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a highly touted speech on Internet freedom in which she stated, "The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate. Once you're on the Internet, you don't need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society." Evgeny Morozov, in his book The Net Delusion, takes great issue with the implication, however, that the so-called "Arab Spring" and "Twitter Revolution" were caused by unfettered access to the Internet. Instead, Morozov, a research academic, provides a cautionary tale about what he argues is any attempt to establish a monocausal relationship to meaningful political change (especially when that single focus is information technology). The book opens with a discussion of cyber-utopianism and Internet-centrism--mind-sets that focus on the positive "emancipatory" aspects of Internet communication while ignoring the downsides. The argument throughout centers on nation-state policy, or lack thereof, that attacks the "wicked" problem of authoritarianism by, as a colleague of mine has dubbed it, "wiring the world." Morozov, expectantly, but importantly, cites the hedonistic world portrayed by Huxley and the "Big Brother" world of Orwell to consider both the proactive and reactive approaches to Internet freedom by authoritarian regimes. Interestingly, he notes that there is often a mix of both. Such regimes certainly use the anonymity and openness of the Internet to spy on their people and shutdown undesirable sites. But there is also a subtle approach that belies the jackboot on the keyboard methodology. While China may be known more for suppressing the Internet and for employing the masses to counter antiregime rhetoric, Russia imposes no formal Internet censorship. It relies on entertainment (porn is specifically cited) to soothe the masses, assuming that given options for political discourse and anything else, most opt for "anything else." Hitler would understand. And in nations where freedom is not widely understood from a western perspective, any bit of additional mindless diversion may be viewed as liberty by the populace. Perhaps most importantly, Morozov rails against social media determinism as driving the end of authoritarianism, labeling it "an intellectually impoverished, lazy way to study the past, understand the present, and predict the future." He does not dismiss the value of Facebook and Twitter to quickly mobilize like-minded individuals. He notes as well that the development of that very like-mindedness is complex and potentially can be manipulated by authoritarian governments using the same Internet freedom. …

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age.

“Open government” used to carry a hard political edge: it referred to politically sensitive disclosures of government information. The phrase was first used in the 1950s, in the debates leading up to passage of the Freedom of Information Act. But over the last few years, that traditional meaning has blurred, and has shifted toward technology. Open technologies involve sharing data over the Internet, and all kinds of governments can use them, for all kinds of reasons. Recent public policies have stretched the label “open government” to reach any public sector use of these technologies. Thus, “open government data” might refer to data that makes the government as a whole more open (that is, more accountable to the public), but might equally well refer to politically neutral public sector disclosures that are easy to reuse, but that may have nothing to do with public accountability. Today a regime can call itself “open” if it builds the right kind of web site — even if it does not become more accountable. This shift in vocabulary makes it harder for policymakers and activists to articulate clear priorities and make cogent demands.This essay proposes a more useful way for participants on all sides to frame the debate: We separate the politics of open government from the technologies of open data. Technology can make public information more adaptable, empowering third parties to contribute in exciting new ways across many aspects of civic life. But technological enhancements will not resolve debates about the best priorities for civic life, and enhancements to government services are no substitute for public accountability.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2126869_code387075.pdf?abstractid=2012489&mirid=1&type=2

The New Ambiguity of 'Open Government'

What effect does bureaucratic responsiveness have on citizen participation? Since the 1940s, attitudinal measures of perceived efficacy have been used to explain participation. The authors develop a “calculus of participation” that incorporates objective efficacy—the extent to which an individual's participation actually has an impact—and test the model against behavioral data from the online application Fix My Street (n = 399,364). A successful first experience using Fix My Street is associated with a 57 percent increase in the probability of an individual submitting a second report, and the experience of bureaucratic responsiveness to the first report submitted has predictive power over all future report submissions. The findings highlight the importance of responsiveness for fostering an active citizenry while demonstrating the value of incidentally collected data to examine participatory behavior at the individual level.

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The Effect of Bureaucratic Responsiveness on Citizen Participation

This paper reviews evidence on the use of 23 information and communication technology (ICT) platforms to project citizen voice to improve public service delivery. This meta-analysis focuses on empirical studies of initiatives in the global South, highlighting both citizen uptake (‘yelp’) and the degree to which public service providers respond to expressions of citizen voice (‘teeth’). The conceptual framework further distinguishes between two trajectories for ICT-enabled citizen voice: Upwards accountability occurs when users provide feedback directly to decision-makers in real time, allowing policy-makers and program managers to identify and address service delivery problems, but at their discretion. Downwards accountability, in contrast, occurs either through real time user feedback or less immediate forms of collective civic action that publicly call on service providers to become more accountable and depends less exclusively on decision-makers’ discretion about whether or not to act on the information provided. This distinction between the ways in which ICT platforms mediate the relationship between citizens and service providers allows for a precise analytical focus on how different dimensions of such platforms contribute to public sector responsiveness. These cases suggest that while ICT platforms have been relevant in increasing policymakers’ and senior managers’ capacity to respond, most of them have yet to influence their willingness to do so.

When does ICT-enabled citizen voice lead to government responsiveness? Digital dividends : background paper

Does online voting mobilize citizens who otherwise would not participate? During the annual participatory budgeting vote in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil -- the world's largest -- Internet voters were asked whether they would have participated had there not been an online voting option (i-voting). The study documents an 8.2 percent increase in total turn-out with the introduction of i-voting. In support of the mobilization hypothesis, unique survey data show that i-voting is mainly used by new participants rather than just for convenience by those who were already mobilized. The study also finds that age, gender, income, education, and social media usage are significant predictors of being online-only voters. Technology appears more likely to engage people who are younger, male, of higher income and educational attainment, and more frequent social media users.

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Effects of the internet on participation : study of a public policy referendum in Brazil

This paper concerns the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a strategy for reinforcing democratic processes - broadly defined as “electronic democracy” practices - and focuses on the use of ICTs in participatory democracy initiatives. By considering the experience of the e-Participatory Budgeting (ePB) in the city of Belo Horizonte (Brazil), the aim is to understand some of the possible prospects and limitations offered by ICTs in participatory processes at the local level. Given that citizen participation in the process of allocation of budgetary resources is becoming increasingly common in Europe and elsewhere, the Belo Horizonte case should be of particular interest to practitioners and academics working in the domain of eParticipation. Considering the fact that the e-Participatory Budgeting took place in a city with 1.7 million electors and attained a level of participation of nearly 10%, the eParticipatory Budgeting of Belo Horizonte is, by any standards, one of the most significant initiatives in the world in the domain of eDemocracy and eParticipation to have been implemented so far. Among other findings, this paper argues that even though the use of ICTs was essential to the success of the initiative, other factors were also crucial in accomplishing such a level of participation, notably: i) the scope of the public works at stake; ii) the salience of the initiative and iii) citizens’ perception of their actual impact in the decision-making process. It is expected that the outcomes of this incipient research will contribute to the literature on electronic and participatory democracy, as well as provide a policy evaluation of the use of ICTs at the local level in a large-scale participatory initiative.

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Beyond Theory: e-Participatory Budgeting and its Promises for eParticipation

By looking at the nature of data that may be disclosed by governments, Harlan Yu and David Robinson provide an analytical framework that evinces the ambiguities underlying the term “open government data". While agreeing with their core analysis, I contend that the authors ignore the enabling conditions under which transparency may lead to accountability, notably the publicity and political agency conditions. I argue that the authors also overlook the role of participatory mechanisms as an essential element in unlocking the potential for open data to produce better governmental decisions and policies. Finally, I conduct an empirical analysis of the publicity and political agency conditions in countries that have launched open data efforts, highlighting the challenges associated with open data as a path to accountability.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2264369_code1122431.pdf?abstractid=2264369&mirid=1&type=2

Tiago Peixoto

Papers

The Effect of Bureaucratic Responsiveness on Citizen Participation

When does ICT-enabled citizen voice lead to government responsiveness? Digital dividends : background paper

Effects of the internet on participation : study of a public policy referendum in Brazil

Beyond Theory: e-Participatory Budgeting and its Promises for eParticipation

The Uncertain Relationship between Open Data and Accountability: A Response to Yu and Robinson's 'The New Ambiguity of Open Government'