E‐Democracy in Russia: Political Awareness and Participation Among Young Citizens
Anastasia Golubeva and Diana Ishmatova Public Administration Department, Graduate School of Management St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia golubeva @ gsom. pu. ru ishmatova @ gmail. com
Abstract: It was suggested that the most important opportunity provided by the Internet is the ability to practice democracy. There are two main trends in the Russian political landscape, as far as e‐participation is concerned. First is the growth of political awareness and concern especially among the young population which promoted the bottom‐up selforganizing e‐participation. In the absence of censorship, the Internet is increasingly used as a platform for bottom‐up political organizing in the face of centralized control of other media and lack of « official » e‐participation mechanisms capable to consider citizens’ input or to enable dialectical discussion on political issues. The second trend ‐ is the increasing attention paid at the official government level to e‐democracy development. Nevertheless the lack of institutional involvement and support alongside other negative factors of government‐society relations might become a serious obstacle for successful enactment of e‐participation. The goal of this paper is to explore the potential of e‐participation in Russia for increasing public involvement of young citizens in decision‐making, taking into account current conditions and historical legacy. We approach the problem by examining the ability of top‐down and bottom‐up e‐participation mechanisms to overcome the current obstacles preventing young citizens from engaging in conventional participation mechanisms.
Keywords: e‐democracy, e‐participation, Russia, young citizens
1. Introduction
There is a growing literature exploring the problem of improving democratic decision making by encouraging broad participation through online communication tools.
The advantages of using e‐democracy opportunities for involvement of citizens in political participation are discussed in the contexts of the decline in citizen participation in traditional democratic forums, government transparency and accountability, reduced individual costs of participating in civic life, opportunities for overcoming geographic distance and compensating for physical disabilities of the citizens, facilitation of discussions about sensitive subjects such as drugs, domestic violence etc.( Lenihan 2002; Demo‐net 2006; Tambouris et al 2007).
In the view of high digital literacy levels among younger populations, special hopes are vested in the information technologies in an attempt to increase the involvement of young people in the political process( Edelmann et al 2009; Macintosh et al 2003; Masters et al 2004; Maier‐Rabler & Neumayer 2009; Scherer et al 2009; Spaiser 2011; Theocharis 2011).
Following other countries Russia is taking actions to implement e‐participation mechanisms. These include the recently signed Presidential Decree on Establishment of the Special Presidential Agency on ICT Use and Development of Electronic Democracy, the adoption of the Concept of Electronic Democracy Tools Development in Russian Federation till 2020, approval of Information Society programme stipulating the creation of electronic services and supporting public debate and control over activities of public authorities, as well as the creation of online and mobile mechanisms for public participation in decision‐making.
Interestingly, the above mentioned processes take place against a background of an oppressive political environment, characterized by limitation of democratic rights, censoring traditional media, misuse of government power, high levels of political corruption, low accountability to the citizens and weak governance in general( The World Bank 2010; Freedom House 2010).
The replication of e‐participation in such political environments has the potential for e‐participation projects to become“ Potemkin e‐villages”, a term introduced by Katchanovski & LaPorte( 2005) to denote significant differences between the appearance and substance of electronic forms of democratic governance. Åström et
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