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Like other policy subsectors, power generation has been affected by the governance changes of the last two decades, including a shift to more collaborative state-society relations. Collaborative governance implies new kinds of public engagement designed to provide both input legitimacy, through the involvement of a broader range of actors in policy design, and output legitimacy, through enhanced feedback and policy learning. This paper compares the impact of “governance-driven engagement” in the power generation subsectors in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan, arguing that engagement increased the complexity of the policy mix in the subsector without succeeding in providing better feedback and learning. The paper notes a recent trend towards more expert-driven and less collaborative processes, as both provinces struggled to rationalize and simplify power generation policy goals and instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sector websites are heavily invested in influencing policy outcomes through information provisioning and dissemination. Traditionally e-government research has focused on the internal functions of e-government studying service delivery, horizontal information processing integration and levels of implementation maturity. This paper shifts the analytical focus to external-facing e-government to consider the macro presentation of state-sponsored sites on the Web. To evaluate the external face of Canadian e-government this project measures the web-based impact of public sector websites in virtual policy networks. Virtual policy networks are web-based issues networks containing content on a specific policy topic and connected through hyperlinks. It is argued that government's online nodality in these networks is an indicator of public sector websites' authority and influence on the Web. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Internet, operating as a technologically embedded laboratory of human activity, provides social scientists with a new set of analytical tools by which to test and replicate models of social and political behaviour, with data extrapolated from the regularities of online activity, organization and information exchange. This research note demonstrates that virtual policy networks, arrangements of public interaction between mutually supporting actors that form around policy activities, exist on the Web. In addition, the note considers whether or not Canadian virtual policy networks are mimicking their respective national policy communities through the application of a methodological approach referred to as link structure analysis. Four sectorally based networks, including Aboriginal policy, agriculture, banking and women-centred policy, are analyzed to assess the extent of virtual policy networks' replication of real world policy dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]