Anastasia Golubeva and Diana Ishmatova
al( 2012) report that the“ Potemkin e‐villages” phenomena is present in some non‐democracies that are offering e‐participation mechanisms without providing any means of using them, but enabling filtering and suppressing Internet content, demonstrating the government ' s disinterest in public input and actively monitoring users. Implementation of e‐participation projects in such countries is used as a misleading symbol communicating to the international community democratic image, openness of government, modernization with the aim to increase their external legitimacy and to secure international investments and resources.
In other words, democracy is not necessarily the conceptual basis of government led e‐participation initiatives. It is therefore necessary“ to go beyond the appearance and availability of certain types of information and features and undertake more contextual analyses”( Åström et al 2012, p. 2).
Despite improvements in democratic decision‐making through the use of information and communication technologies, there has been limited research related to similar issues regarding Russian citizens. The goal of this paper is therefore to explore the potential of e‐participation in Russia for increasing public involvement in decision‐making, taking into account the current political context.
The structure of this paper is as follows. First, the authors present evidence from the literature about the extent to which the use of ICTs for engaging citizens in political decision‐making has proven efficient so far in terms of its impact on citizen participation and discussing obstacles of e‐participation.
Then we present evidence from 2 surveys of young adults in Russia conducted with 2 year difference which reveal individuals’ attitude to participation in political decision making processes as well to the preferred e‐ participation mechanisms. Comparing results from two surveys we analyse the potential of e‐participation to increase public involvement in decision‐making through the prism of the ability of top‐down and bottom‐up e‐ participation mechanisms to counter the current obstacles preventing young Russian adults from becoming motivated and engaged citizens. The last section provides some final comments and suggests areas for future research within this topic.
2. Obstacles to e‐participation
Prior research has found that the main reason behind citizens’ reluctance to contribute in decision making processes is the lack of the commitment of politicians and policy makers to e‐participation projects( Charalabidis et al 2010). This makes citizens feel that even if they are to share their views, they will not be taken into account when making the final decision. The authors also stressed the fact that people had no trust in politicians and policy makers and believed that decisions have been made even before issues were set for public deliberation. The lack of trust along with lack of commitment of politicians results in low contribution to e‐participation projects.
At the official level of political democracy, the lack of institutional and political involvement is considered a serious obstacle for successful enactment of e‐participation. Evidence of weak support is distributed both across a wide variety of national European research scenarios and the US( Freschi et al 2009; Norris 2010).
One of the explanations of the above mentioned problem is the potential change in the distribution and access to power brought about by e‐participation projects. Macintosh et al( 2009) argues that this change has implications for both policy makers and citizens. Expanding the mechanisms of participation in political decision‐making through e‐participation has consequences for citizens’ responsibility for political outcomes and for policy makers accountability to their constituency that require them to consider citizens input in more regular intervals than only during election times. The problem arises when sides do not want to make a commitment to their changed roles and responsibilities.
Thus, the lack of institutional support is not solely the issue of a power shift for influential institutions but for citizens as well. This problem is not new, just like e‐participation activities are not new, but rather an evolution of many existing activities given an extra push by the widespread deployment of the Internet( Sæbø et al. 2008). As was discussed decades ago by Verba( 1967), the problem of participation concerns both the participants and the decision‐makers. The notion of intentionality is central to his concept of participation. The definition of participation involves the intention of the actor to influence a political decision‐maker. Therefore, it is as important for decision‐makers to respond as it is for community participants to participate.
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