E‐Democracy at the American Grassroots
Donald Norris 1 and Christopher Reddick 2
1 University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland, USA 2 University of Texas, San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA
norris @ umbc. edu chris. reddick @ utsa. edu
Abstract: Using data from national surveys conducted in 2006 and 2011, we examine the extent to which grassroots or local governments in the United States have adopted electronic democracy( e‐democracy). The results show that few American local governments have adopted e‐democracy, particularly meaningful elements in which citizens can actively participate in governmental activities, programs and decision‐making. These results are highly inconsistent with the claims of e‐democracy advocates. Two important factors account for the lack of e‐democracy at the American grassroots: lack of funding and lack of perceived demand. Another important factor may be that early predictions were incorrect. Based on these findings, we would expect that e‐democracy at the American grassroots will not be substantially different in the foreseeable future than it is now.
Keywords: e‐democracy, digital democracy, e‐participation, e‐Government, local government
1. E‐Democracy at the American grassroots
In this paper, we examine empirically whether America’ s grassroots or local governments have adopted electronic democracy( e‐democracy). We do so because since the very early days of electronic government( e‐ Government), scholars and advocates have argued that e‐Government has the potential not simply to deliver governmental information and services online but, more importantly, to produce e‐democracy( e. g., Nugent, 2001; Garson, 2004: and Ward and Vedel 2006). Proponents have made numerous claims about the potential of e‐democracy, most of which suggest that e‐democracy will produce primarily if not solely positive results in such areas as democratic engagement and deliberation, citizen participation in government and politics, and voter turnout in elections( e. g., Meeks, 1997; Baum and DiMaio, 2000; Becker, 2001; Gronlund, 2001; Hiller and Belanger, 2001; and Westcott, 2001; OECD, 2003; King, 2006; Ward and Vedel, 2006; Amoretti, 2007).
2. Literature review
For this research, we conducted an extensive review of the e‐democracy literature. The great majority of the works we found were speculative or theoretical in nature or address e‐Government applications. Very few were empirical. We then reviewed the empirical works to find those that sought hard evidence( e. g., through case studies, surveys, website analyses, etc.) of the existence of e‐democracy anywhere around the world. We discuss findings from this review in the following paragraphs. Our review begins with Australia and moves alphabetically to the US and then to multi‐national comparative works.
A study by Gibson, et al., in 2008, reported that there was little citizen uptake of e‐participation efforts in Australia. The authors also suggested that“… widespread mobilization is unlikely to occur in the near future( 111).” Medaglia( 2007) found that very few Italian municipal websites provided opportunities for active citizen participation( 93 percent did not). In an examination of Korean government websites, Lyu, et al.( 2007), discovered low citizen uptake of and demand for e‐participation efforts.
Astrom( 2004) found that although the elected heads of Swedish municipalities favored aspects of e‐ democracy, there was little evidence of these initiatives on municipal websites.“ As the analysis shows, most local governments "… use the Internet for modernization rather than radical regeneration( 111).” Astrom, et al.( 2011), found little evidence of e‐participation in municipal planning in Sweden, despite the fact that a large fraction of local planning directors said that they favored it.
In a paper about e‐Government in Istanbul, Turkey, Akdogan( 2010) was unable to identify any significant amount of e‐democracy via governmental websites in that metropolis. Similarly, Sobaci( 2010) found that the Turkish parliament website offered very little in terms of e‐participation. In a web based survey of civil servants in six New Zealand government departments, Baldwin, et al.( 2012), found that while civil servants generally had favorable views of e‐Government( though not of e‐transformation), the actual extent of e‐
371