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This conceptual paper attempts to understand the necessity of intertwining Democracy and e-Democracy for the success of institutionalization of e-Democracy. In this respect, it proposes the "Four-Forces Framework of Democracy" and their Drivers. The paper also explores the challenges that e-Democracy may face in its growth and evolution, highlights the risks involved in ignoring the challenges, and suggests the future direction. In the present scenario, there is a considerable push for Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The paper discusses whether this will lead to the strengthening of people's voice and empowerment of the individual and collective aspirations. Societies in their evolution develop cultural contexts, social and ethnic values. It is a challenge for any e-Democracy to integrate them into its mechanisms. In the Indian context, it is essential to develop foresight on how e-Democracy gears-up to also address various contradictions and conflicts, which are possible due to the digital-divide, multitude of people's aspirations, socio-cultural diversity, space for democratic thinking, etc. Keeping many aspects of Democracy and governance into consideration, the paper focuses on how ICT and e-Democracy will honour people's aspirations in the coming years, to keep the public, individual, and society, vibrant and democratically functioning.

The rapid development of new technologies and their impressive communication capacity has fundamentally changed modern democracy by providing easy and universal access to information, as well as increasing participation and accessibility of political involvement tools. One of the electoral participation tools is e-voting which has been used in only a few countries. The main aim of the paper is to explore whether and how e-voting has been presented in Polish mass media (1), as well as to investigate people’s opinions about e-voting against certain political factors (2). The research is based on a media content analysis (quantitative and qualitative), data collected via the Content Analysis System for Television (CAST) and a quantitative analysis of data from a survey conducted by the authors (2018, sample: 1717 Poles). The results of the analyses show that the debate on the implementation of e-voting is rather poor, but the support for e-voting among Poles remains considerable. The public media rhetoric is interlinked with attitudes towards political parties. To some extent, determinants are reflected in the public opinion on the implementation of e-voting since Poles declare both their support for the introduction of e-voting and willingness to vote online., Brz razvoj novih tehnologija te njihov impresivan komunikacijski kapacitet iz temelja su promijenili modernu demokraciju, omogućujući jednostavan i univerzalan pristup informacijama, kao i sve veću participatiju te dostupnost alata za političko sudjelovanje. Jedan od alata za sudjelovanje na izborima je e-glasovanje koje se koristi u samo nekoliko zemalja. Glavni cilj ovog rada jest istražiti je li i kako je e-glasovanje predstavljeno u poljskim masovnim medijima (1) te istražiti mišljenja ljudi o e-glasovanju u odnosu na određene političke čimbenike (2). Istraživanje se temelji na analizi medijskog sadržaja (kvantitativnoj i kvalitativnoj), podacima prikupljenim putem Sustava za analizu televizijskog sadržaja (Content Analysis System for Television - CAST) te na kvantitativnoj analizi podataka prikupljenih anketom koju su proveli autori (2018, uzorak: 1717 Poljaka). Rezultati analiza pokazuju da je rasprava o implementaciji e-glasovanja prilično loša, ali podrška e-glasovanju među Poljacima ostaje značajna. Također, rezultati pokazuju da je retorika javnih medija povezana sa stavovima prema političkim strankama. Donekle se te odrednice odražavaju u javnom mnijenju o implementaciji e-glasovanja, budući da Poljaci daju potporu uvođenju e-glasovanja te izražavaju spremnost za glasovanje putem interneta.

The aim of the article is to present the opportunities and threats resulting from the implementation of voting via the Internet (i-voting) and to discuss the conditions for effective implementation of this alternative voting procedure on the example of Estonia and Switzerland. Estonia is the only country in the world where i-voting is widely used. In Switzerland, on the other hand, this voting method has been used most often, although its use has been suspended for several years due to legal, infrastructural and political problems. What are the conditions for successfully implementing Internet voting? The attempt to answer this research question was possible thanks to the use of the following research methods: comparative, formal-dogmatic, behavioral and modified historical method. The key conclusion is that the implementation of i-voting must be preceded by many years of political, legal, infrastructural and social activities, and that the created system must be as transparent as possible. Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie szans i zagrożeń wynikających z realizacji głosowania przez Internet (i-voting) oraz omówienie warunków skutecznej realizacji tej alternatywnej procedury głosowania na przykładzie Estonii i Szwajcarii. Estonia jest jedynym krajem na świecie, w którym powszechnie stosuje się głosowanie i-głosowanie. Z drugiej strony w Szwajcarii ta metoda głosowania jest najczęściej stosowana, choć jej stosowanie zostało zawieszone na kilka lat ze względu na problemy prawne, infrastrukturalne i polityczne. Jakie są warunki skutecznego przeprowadzenia głosowania internetowego? Próba odpowiedzi na to pytanie badawcze była możliwa dzięki zastosowaniu metod badawczych: porównawczej, formalno-dogmatycznej, behawioralnej oraz zmodyfikowanej metody historycznej. Kluczowy wniosek jest taki, że wdrożenie internetowego głosowania musi być poprzedzone wieloletnimi działaniami politycznymi, prawnymi, infrastrukturalnymi i społecznymi, a tworzony system musi być jak najbardziej przejrzysty. 1 133 146 Przegląd Politologiczny

The article examines the crisis of modern Western democracy. It is noted that the important causes of the crisis are slowing down of economic growth and deepening inequality in developed countries. It is shown that inter-party competition inevitably generates a mechanism of degradation of moral norms in the political sphere and reduction of the political system efficiency. These processes have intensified dramatically as a result of the spread of the Internet. They contributed to the reduction of citizens’ participation in political life and at the same time to the ochlocratization of the political system. It is shown as well that a number of transformations taking place in the Western countries are aimed at improvement of interaction mechanisms between the state and society and contribute to overcoming the crisis. These include expanding the role of parliamentary committees, increasing the number of parties, largescale reforms of public sector governance basing on collaboration. In this context, the experience of e-platforms and the possibilities of institutional collaborative platforms are analyzed. The concept of collaborative democracy is proposed, based on the analysis of the trends studied. The mechanism for collaborative democracy should ensure greater choice and broader direct participation of citizens in decision-making, control the costs of political competition and maintain ethical standards, prevent ochlocratization and improve governance. Contours of this mechanism are outlined. It is based on the use of a proportional electoral system of a special type, a system of expert councils and collaborative platforms for public decision-making, as well as on the implementation of decision-making rules close to consensus. The significance of these conclusions for Russia is discussed.

The growing communication needs demanded by a constantly changing society significantly stimulate the current information and communications technology industry. Consequently, we can see an exponential development of ICT which, corroborated in the IoT context with the new paradigms in the field of software development (cloud computing, fog computing, blockchain, etc.), and in the nanotechnology industry draws the boundaries of a new technological ecosystem. As any ecosystem presupposes the existence of a food chain, and in the case of the new technological ecosystem we discover the producers and decomposers. They can be assimilated to technological tools and primary resources on the one hand (IoT, internet, water, air, electricity, etc.), respectively to individuals and communities on the other hand. This is the overall image or background over which aggressive digital solutions are being developed, in various fields, which respond to increasingly specialized, more concrete needs: education, culture, socialization, sports, transport, health, administration, government. In this paper we will present the main aspects of governance in the new technological ecosystem, emphasizing the aspects of e-government and democracy, voting and e-legislation contained in what we generically call e-government.

Purpose This study aims to revisit and extends the work of Rosacker and Rosacker (2012) that called for increased interdisciplinary efforts to address and solve the critical issues (critical success factors) facing technologically-enabled remote-access voting platforms. It builds upon the background platform presented there, which included an historical timeline of information and communication technologies and an e-voting literature review, and extends that work by providing a state-of-the-art update and review of the rapidly changing voter environment from societal, technological and experiential studies over the past decade. Specific focus is directed at technology-enabled, remote-access voting, while also considering the important role technological advances can play in improving voter registration/confirmation procedures. Design/methodology/approach First, a brief review of significant societal and technological changes, including the rapid evolution of the internet of things, is undertaken to frame the discussion. Second, a sample of several technology-enabled, remote-access voting experiments are reviewed and critiqued. Third, currently available technical solutions targeting technology-enabled voter registration and vote casting are offered as the next step in the process that will ultimately lead to remote-access voting becoming widely deployed across smart devices. Finally, some contemporaneous conclusions are tendered. Findings Society and technology-enabled devices have each witnessed myriad changes and advancements in the second decade of the 21st century. These have led to numerous remote-access voting experiments across the globe that have overwhelmingly proven the concept of technology-enabled, remote-access voting to be viable while also identifying/reasserting issues (critical success factors) that continue to restrain its full implementation. Importantly, none of the problems identified is fatal to the concept. Originality/value This study considers the issue of technologically-enabled, remote-access voting focussing on the impacts associated with the portfolio of recent societal and technological advancements including the many vexing concerns and issues presented by the coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing is limiting access to the traditional methods of in-person voting for both election officials and voters bringing into question the November 2020 US national election. Calls for expanded mail voting options and the requisite federal funding required to support these efforts are increasing, widespread and broadly persuasive. Wholly missing in this debate is an exhaustive consideration and discussion of technologically enhanced, remote-access voting systems and their role in filling the void.

The purpose of the article is to understand the socioeconomic conditions and driving forces that facilitate and motivate civic developers to reuse open data and create their own data-driven service...

PurposeThe peer-to-peer perspective on open data is an interesting topic to research, taking into account that data-driven innovations and related startups are often developed independently by civic and private stakeholders in a highly collaborative manner and are tentatively beginning to directly compete with traditional e-government solutions, providing arguably better services to citizens and businesses. In this regard, the paper aims to further debate on the potential of such independent data-driven collaboration not only to transform the traditional mechanisms of public sector innovations but also provide more democratic ways to ensure greater transparency of government and its responsibility before the society.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on a cross-country case study, resorting to the content analysis of three demonstrative cases in the development of open data-driven projects, which specifically promote peer-to-peer communication between its stakeholders. In this regard, the case study itself relies heavily on the analysis of rich empirical data that the author collected during his field studies in the Northern European region in 2015–2017, particularly in Estonia, Finland and Sweden. The practical research itself consists of three major parts, which reflect peer-to-peer perspectives of correspondingly civic, public and private stakeholders through manifested examples of related independent projects in the area.FindingsThe paper's results demonstrate that the use of peer-to-peer mechanisms in advancing related public sector reforms allows to transform the traditional understanding of e-government phenomena in a conceptually new way. E-government or its last more political interpretation – from the perspective of its peers could be regarded not necessarily as a platform to provide digital public services but as a source of raw material for various third party projects in, respectively, civic, government and business peer-to-peer dimensions of such reforms. As a result, open data provides an interesting playground to change the very nature of public sector innovations in the area.Research limitations/implicationsThe choice of countries for research was motivated by purposive and convenience sampling because all these countries are situated in one region, have both similarities and differences in historical, political and socioeconomic backgrounds and, therefore, provide an ideal playground to investigate open data as a context dependable phenomenon. In this regard, the unique political and socioeconomic contexts of these countries provide an interesting playground to debate on the potential of social democracy, egalitarian society and social equality, i.e. public values that are deeply embedded into the fabric of societies there, to benefit the open data movement in a fundamental manner.Practical implicationsThis paper reports on unique practical approaches for peer-to-peer collaboration and cooperation in advancing open data-driven platforms among stakeholders. The results of the case studies in three Nordic countries, which are currently among global leaders in advancing the concept of open government, are presented in an intrinsically illustrative manner, which could help practitioners and policymakers to understand better the potential of such a peer-to-peer perspective on open data. In this regard, the models proposed, of citizen-to-citizen, business-to-business, government-to-government interactions, could be interesting to a wide audience of e-government stakeholders in many nations.Social implicationsThe paper also enters into philosophical debates about societal implications of digital peer-to-peer data-driven communication among people. Recent efforts to digitize almost every part of social life, starting from popularization of solutions for distant work and ending to online access to various public services, incentivize individual members of civil society to communicate in an inherently peer-to-peer way. This fact will definitely increase the demand for related digital services. Social distancing in a digital context will allow to paradoxically emancipate technically savvy and entrepreneurial people in creating new services, including using open data, which could meet the demand.Originality/valueThe research is intrinsically of an empirical character because recent e-government reforms in the public sector in many countries, including in the open data area, provide rich practical knowledge to test the limits of new technologies to advance society in socioeconomic and, more importantly, political development. In this regard, this paper provides the first research in analyzing open data from a unique peer-to-peer perspective with an ultimate goal of the whole investigation to draw the attention of other e-government scholars and initiate debates on the collaborative nature of the phenomena to empower civil society and ensure transparency of government.

The emergence of the Internet fueled euphoric—partially utopian—visions that can be summarized as democratic promises. In most cases, the normative and empirical discussion so far has considered e‑democracy tools and their potential, regardless of the scale of interaction—be it local, national, or transnational—as a one-size-fits-all approach, assuming that what is applicable for the national level will be equally true for the subnational and transnational levels. We argue that the question of whether the Internet and digital tools can fulfill the democratic promises must be confronted in a more differentiated way, examiningunder which spatial conditionse‑democracy is more likely to incentivize citizens to engage and to involve more citizens as well as marginalized citizens in public debates and decision making. The article introduces scale as a new element for a better theoretical understanding of e‑democracy. We establish a conceptual framework that enables us to capture scale as distance in terms of territorial, cognitive, and affective distance. The spatial perspective brings an innovative spin to the somewhat petrified positions on the mobilizing or reinforcing effects of digital tools as well as a new theoretical argument for the debate on e‑democracy in general.

The subject of this research is the generated by economic system positive and negative externalities and possibility of their account on the basis of innovative technologies. Currently, we can observe escalation of problems associated with the need for minimization of negative externalities, which create global risks for the world economic system. Most severe risks relate to ensuring sustainability of financial system, environmental pollution, climatic changes, and outbreak of new deadly diseases. Therefore, there is a need for implementation of the element of circular economy based on non-waste technologies that allow minimizing the negative externalities. The novelty of this study consists in demonstration of the possibility of using blockchain technologies for building a system of accounting positive and negative externalities generated within the economic system. Tokenization on the blockchain platform creates a possibility for formation of the indicated mechanism. The system of tokenization of externalities includes: a) formulation of target behavior of economic agents; b) creation of blockchain platform ensuring emission of tokens; c) determination of the exchange rate of tokens by economic agents for economic incentives; d) performance assessment of economic agents of reduction of negative externalities and increase of positive externalities. The emitted within the framework of blockchain platform of national project tokens would be distributed among the participants of national project, including enterprises, regional and local authorities, activists among the population, initiative groups, thus forming a flexible system of reinforcement of actors. Use of the described model of tokenization of externalities turns these projects transparent for the population and makes them the full-fledged members of an expert community that assesses the level of externalities and their minimization on the basis of tokens economy.

The article reveals the need to introduce information and telecommunication technologies (ICT) in public administration, the development of which causes radical changes in the lives of society and ordinary citizens. It is substantiated that one of the functions of public administration and a necessary prerequisite for sustainable democratic development is to ensure transparency and openness of government at all levels. This is the key to the implementation of an effective policy that can create real civilian control, ensure human and civil rights, strengthen citizens' trust in government. It is studied that the highest form of e-government is e-democracy, which allows ordinary citizens - members of society to participate in the development of management decisions. This happens at all stages of the process - from initiation and development to the adoption and monitoring of performance. E-democracy provides new forms of communication, unhindered access to public information, and promotes citizen participation in the formulation and implementation of public policy. Citizens use e-government tools to interact with public authorities, as well as to interact with each other on policy and self-government issues. It has been proven that the events of recent years demonstrate the community's desire to participate in decisions. The society is set up to more actively use the tools of involvement. We can see this in the example of the introduction of electronic petitions at the level of public authorities and local councils. This tool for the introduction of e-democracy acts as an initiative for participatory democracy and increases the motivation of the community to use e-government in cooperation with the government. In our opinion, the future of e-democracy lies, first of all, in the use of information and information and communication technologies in the already existing sectors of democracy. Keywords : public administration, e-government, e-government tools, e-democracy, e-petitions, participatory democracy.

The aim of the study is the application of multi-criteria evaluation methods for ranking of candidates in e-voting. Due to the potential to enhance the electoral efficiency in e-voting multiple criteria, such as personality traits, activity and reputation in social media, opinion followers on election area and so on for the selection of qualified personnel can be considered. In this case, the number of criteria excesses in the decision-making stage directed us to the use of a multi-criteria decision making model (MCDM). This paper proposes MCDM for weighted ranking of candidates in e-voting. Criteria for the candidates’ ranking and selection are determined and each voter uses the linguistic scales for the ranking of each candidate. Candidates’ ranking is evaluated according to all criteria. In a numerical study, it is provided the candidates’ evaluation on the base of selected criteria and ranked according to the importance of criteria. To assess the importance of the criteria and to evaluate the suitability of the candidates for each of the criteria, the voters use linguistic variables. In practice, the proposed model can use different evaluation scales for the selection of candidates in e-voting. The proposed model allows selecting a candidate with the competencies based on the criteria set out in the e-voting process and making more effective decisions.

Electronic government (e-Government) is a research field that studies the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the public sector. Such initiatives are often associated with prom ...

“MyGov” is an ambitious ICT-based platform of the government of India, where citizens contribute to policy making by engaged in various ways. As the initiative is about to complete 5 years, the res...

This paper aims to corelation among The development of information and communication technology (ICT) encouraging diverse patterns of change including government and public relations in a democracy this research is a library study, a library that contains an in-depth collection of materials for one more subjects. Research libraries usually include primary and secondary sources. In the end we must realize ICT is a tool not a solution for democracy. The main lesson from countries that are able to adopt the principles of e-democracy to improve the quantity and quality of participation of its citizen is a good preparation prior to application in the field.

Nowadays, through ICT supports and their applications, the concept of smart cities has evolved into smart communities, where the collaborative relationship between citizens and public administration generates multi-dimensional impacts: urban sites are living labs and agents of innovation and inclusion. As a first step, this article aims to critically review the state of the art of the assessment methods of these impacts through a set of synthetic indicators; the second step is to elaborate a specific framework to evaluate quality of life through a set of impact indicators for smart communities and inclusive urban processes. According to some referenced authors, cities and communities are smart if they perform well in six smart categories: smart economy; smart people; smart governance; smart mobility; smart environment; and smart living. Considering a recent experiment carried out in Turin (Italy), the authors propose a methodology, whose trial is ongoing, based on a hierarchical multiscale framework defining a set of smart community indicators.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the mechanism of information and analytical support of e-democracy’s development in Ukraine and development of scientifically substantiated practical recommendations to the public authorities in terms of its improvement. The authors assessed its condition, identified the main sources and users of information, the authorities responsible for data collection and processing, the main shortcomings, etc. It is proposed to expand the range of sources of information on the state of development of e-democracy by adding to it public organizations, public associations, independent experts and international organizations, as well as the main users of this information: the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Digital Transformations, public organizations and relevant international organizations. In order to increase the reliability and accuracy of the results of monitoring of e-democracy development, it is proposed to introduce a number of additional procedures: comparison of the results of analysis and assessment of the level of e-democracy at the stage of formation of final indicators; determining the level of difference in results; verification of the results obtained from various subjects of research; involvement of scientific and research institutions in the procedures of development of the methodology for assessing the level of development of e-democracy and analysis of world experience on this issue by specialists of the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Recommendations to the central executive bodies (CEB) on improving the current mechanism of information and analytical support for the development of e-democracy in Ukraine are substantiated. Taking into account the international experience, a method for assessing the state of e-democracy development has been developed, which will increase the level of objectification of information and analytical support for e-democracy development.

The world’s population is forecasted of having 68% to be urban residents by 2050 while urbanization in the world continues to grow. Along with that phenomenon, there is a global trend towards the creation of smart cities in many countries. Looking at the overview of studies and reports on smart cities, it can be seen that the concept of “smart city” is not clearly defined. Information and communication technology have often been being recognized by the vast majority of agencies, authorities and people when thinking about smart city but the meaning of smart city goes beyond that. Smart city concept should come with the emphasizing on the role of social resources and smart urban governance in the management of urban issues. Therefore, the "smart city" label should refer to the capacity of smart people and smart officials who create smart urban governance solutions for urban problems. The autonomy in smart cities allows its members (whether individuals or the community in general) of the city to participate in governance and management of the city and become active users and that is the picture of e-democracy. E-democracy makes it easier for stakeholders to become more involved in government work and fosters effective governance by using the IT platform of smart city. This approach will be discussed more in this paper.

Engaging citizens with digital technology to co-create data, information and knowledge has widely become an important strategy for informing the policy response to COVID-19 and the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation in cyberspace. This move towards digital citizen participation aligns well with the United Nations’ agenda to encourage the use of digital tools to enable data-driven, direct democracy. From data capture to information generation, and knowledge co-creation, every stage of the data lifecycle bears important considerations to inform policy and practice. Drawing on evidence of participatory policy and practice during COVID-19, we outline a framework for citizen ‘e-participation’ in knowledge co-creation across every stage of the policy cycle. We explore how coupling the generation of information with that of social capital can provide opportunities to collectively build trust in institutions, accelerate recovery and facilitate the ‘e-society’. We outline the key aspects of realising this vision of data-driven direct democracy by discussing several examples. Sustaining participatory knowledge co-creation beyond COVID-19 requires that local organisations and institutions (e.g. academia, health and welfare, government, business) incorporate adaptive learning mechanisms into their operational and governance structures, their integrated service models, as well as employing emerging social innovations.

The topic of e-democracy is a steadily growing issue in political science. Political parties exerting a more direct political representation rely on social media use to a great extent. In the present study a comparative analysis of the social media communication is conducted of two Hungarian anti-establishment parties, the Politics Can Be Different (LMP) and Momentum taking as a role model the Italian Movimento Cinque Stelle. The method used for analysis is a mixed approach where quantitative and qualitative aspect are both considered. The scope of the research is 1st March 2018 and 31st December 2019. The analysis is based on contents shared by the examined political parties after identifying their peak periods with respect to the social media use. The studied contents are extracted from the official Twitter profiles of the LMP and Momentum. A filtering process based on the contents’ sentiment score and influence score is performed. Research findings show that the two Hungarian parties rely on the social media to communicate their ideologies and political programs, and both have some potential to further develop towards becoming cyber parties. Momentum focuses on European issues, while exhibiting a more direct, and a more aggressive communication against the current administration of Hungary. LMP reflects more on local issues and use digital tools to promote campaigns related to environmental protection issues. Evaluating their social media communication Momentum has more potentials to develop to a cyber party becoming a role model for Hungary in this recently emerging tendency of anti-establishment political parties.

The purpose of the research. Electronic democracy tools provide many new channels for interaction between the government and the community during the process of social projects implementation. This new factor for Ukraine requires significant communication between the authorities and the public. In this article the problem of power and the public interaction under the conditions of social projects implementation are considered in the context of e-democracy and public administration. Methodology. To aggregate the individual preferences the Hoteling model was used in the article. It allows proposing the new functional model for the interaction between authorities and the public. This model includes such compulsory components like electronic media and a group of experts and analysts. Results. The development of the public through the social projects implementation requires two conditions: a large number of people belonging to the “middle class” (there preferences not differ much from the median voter); all middle class voters should have full and objective information about the consequences of the decision. E-democracy and e-government must comply with these two conditions. In this sense we have to understand the D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson’s thesis about that the political institutions (which are crucial for involving as much as possible the public to making decision) determine successful development of society. Activities of state and regional authorities are carried out under the condition of such projects implementation. Practical meaning. E-democracy requires society involvement at all stages of projects development and implementation. Taking into account this aspect in the proposed model of communication allows not only effectively transmit information from the authorities to the public about social project for analysis and substantiation but effectively influence the decisions of power structures. Prospects for further research. The dominant factor is the combination of experts and analysts, as well as their relationship with the society and power by channels of electronic media communication. It provides for the social group, in which the median voter is located, the obtaining of all needed information to making the optimal choice. The set of feedbacks between the public and the authorities allows for effective management of socio-economic development of society.

Around the world, parliaments, governments, civil society organizations and even individual parliamentarians are taking measures to make the legislative process more participatory. A key instrument of such measures is e-democracy. In the 1980s, a number of pilot projects on electronic voting and online discussions were introduced. However, only since 2000, with the active development of the Internet, has considerable interest in utilizing electronic initiatives to advance democracy emerge. Today, researchers warn that despite all the talk about “e-democracy,” the circle of actual decision makers is likely to remain as small as it has been heretofore. In this article, the author analyzes the pros and cons of electronic initiatives in the BRICS countries, Europe and the Russian Federation, and provides practical information for improvement. The author suggests that the next step needed to improve civil activity in filing legislative initiatives is the application of a regular mechanism to establish the possibility of organizing the process of civil legislative initiative nomination and the collection of signatures in electronic form, in particular via the Internet, with the possible use of crowd sourcing technologies.

This paper makes an empirical contribution to the debate on digital democratization. It surveys online political participation and examines people’s perception of the impact of the Internet on democratic quality. First, a representative national survey of Switzerland indicates that people are partly politically engaged online, but the majority are sceptical regarding the Internet’s positive impact on democracy. Second, an international comparative analysis based on a newly developed ‘Perception of Digital Democratization Index’ confirms the impression of Swiss scepticism and reveals differences in 18 countries. Third, the reasons for pessimistic and optimistic views on digital democratization in Switzerland are explored. Logistic regression reveals that political activity has an explanatory power while sociodemographics and factors related to Internet usage do not play a significant role in the perception of digital democratization. The scepticism is primarily evident among politically inactive population strata while active citizens do believe in the positive effects of the Internet.

Digital media, in particular social media, are often perceived to be changing political participation. In this discourse, the Internet is seen as a new public sphere with promises of increased democratization and access to political information. The younger generation in particular is supposed to have become more politically active thanks to the Web. In this article, the psychological, sociological and technological factors influencing the deliberative participation in virtual communities are being explored to understand some of the reasons for active or passive participation in e-democracy projects based in online groups. Some examples of successful e-democracy activities in Brazil, Germany and Slovakia are also discussed. Finally, the chances for sustainable development of direct democracy projects with the help of new media are presented.

The recent literature on e-democracy reflects a certain disillusionment with the capacity of e-ruling initiatives to generate processes that serve concurrently the goals of democratization and of “good governance”. The main challenge has been to create e-ruling platforms that facilitate a deliberative process that is sufficiently inclusive and also makes a significant contribution to the policy debate. The present article contributes to this debate through the analysis of a wiki-styled system that combined a forum and a collaborative writing tool. This system enhances the opportunities of citizens to influence the policy debate beyond conventional ‘notice-and-comment’ platforms. The experiment sought to test the capacity of this platform to facilitate an epistemically complex dialogue in a setting that closely resembles real regulatory consultation. We also examined the dynamics of the deliberative process, focusing on the influence of differences in social value orientation on participation levels (distinguishing between active participants and lurkers). The analysis is based on a field experiment held at Bar-Ilan University in December 2014. The topic of the experiment was a debate over the Bar-Ilan University Code Concerning Political Activity on Campus. The Code establishes procedures and rules for conducting public and political activities on campus.

The article provides a comparative analysis of the level of resource provision of the communications between the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine committees and the public through the global information network Internet, the use of information and communication technologies in the activity of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine committees and their relatiopnships with a civil society.

The author’s hypothesis investigated in this article is connected with the statement about the imbalance in the practical implementation of the principles and priorities of the concept of open government in Russia and the need to study the institutional causes of this imbalance. The purpose of the study is to develop conceptual proposals, the implementation of which will help to smooth out and eliminate the imbalances noted above in development. The article on the one hand, notes the clear achievements in solving many technical and technological problems that have recently hampered the formation of e — government, edemocracy, open government. These include only a partial solution at the state level of the problem of functioning of a convenient and legally signifcant system of identifcation of citizens in the electronic environment, the rating of the functioning of the elements of the electronic democracy and the lack of real interest of citizens to participate in decision-making by public authorities, often narrowing in practice the principles of the concept of “Open Government” to the task of ensuring the openness of data. The identified successes and problems in the formation and development of open government elements allow the authors to offer and justify their vision of promising directions for the practical implementation of the concept of “Open Government” in the Russian Federation. Among them: the need of developing and implementing mechanisms to ensure the mandatory participation of a significant number of the country’s citizens in the public discussion of issues directly affecting their interests, their mandatory direct impact on the adoption of socially significant decisions; the expansion of the use of crowdsourcing as an effective, economic and socially effective tool for involving citizens in socially aware decision-making.

The implantation of Remote Electronic Voting (REV) systems to Electoral Processes is happening at a slower pace than anticipated. One of the relevant factors explaining that reality is the lack of studies about the Cryptographic Schemes and Primitives applied to the existing REV solutions. In this paper, the authors review the main cryptographic schemes applied to date, as well as the most relevant Post Quantum research in the field. The aim is twofold: contribute to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of each scheme as well as expose the remaining challenges, as a necessary step towards a broader introduction of REV solutions in binding elections.

Iceland’s 2011 draft constitution is reputed to be the world’s first crowdsourced constitution. Careful study of this case can therefore inform our understanding of how public participation in lawmaking may be supported by new technology. This article seeks to measure and explain the impact that comments and proposals from the Icelandic public had on the development of the draft constitution. The analysis shows that almost 10 percent of the proposals submitted by the public generated a change in the draft text, with public participation having a particular impact in the area of rights. This remarkably high impact is likely explained by the unique, apolitical context in which the constitution was drafted. Although on the face of it an example of successful public crowdsourcing, the new constitution drafted through this process ultimately failed to be ratified by the parliament. Iceland’s experiment with participatory constitution drafting thus demonstrates both the possibility of impactful online public engagement, and the potential pitfalls of such a politically disconnected process.

Information and Communication Technologies have the potential to transform the political landscape by engaging citizens in the governance process. Whether citizens find value in utilizing these technologies is contentious. This article examines the capabilities affecting citizen’s opportunities to achieve value through e-Participation in order to establish a framework that can foster these conditions. Previous e-Participation models have failed to capture this quintessence ideal, instead opting to take an access based approach to socially inclusive governance. The Philippines was selected for investigation based on its aggressive push to improve information and communication infrastructure, e-Government services and most notably, e-Participation. The main findings of this article show that Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook have proven to be strong civic technologies for fostering e-Democracy but the government’s effort to deepen democracy through e-Participation has yet to materialize into value to the common citizen. This is due to inadequately written policies and paper freedoms not translating into real ones. This article breaks way from the traditional access based model for e-Participation by presenting a normative framework which draws on the existential capabilities of citizens. Cultivating e-Participation in such a way can empower citizens and strengthen the state through a deepening of democracy.

The article describes the concept of e-democracy and analyzes the prospects and ob- stacles to its realization. In the article stated that the development of communication technologies contributed to the formation of global information space, which includes political, economic, social and cultural institutions and as media plays a significant role in the restructuring of socio-political reality, the e-democracy is definitely the subject that should be analyzed. The relevance of the article is to study the phenomenon of e-democ- racy, its forms, as well as the prospects and constraints that exist on the way of its realiza-tion. In the text there are named different multiple prerequisites for e-democracy imple- mentation. Among some of them are: the lack of qualified management decisions and as a result the necessity to adopt new ways of decision-making; increasing levels of political participation as nowadays a significant power relies not only on state authorities, but also on civil society (as a result, in order to increase the activity of citizens in social and po- litical life of the country it is necessary to introduce new mechanisms of policy-making); the opportunity for the citizens to make real actions at different levels as e-democracy is not confined to voting via the Internet. Also in the article there is a given classification of e-democracy (open-source democ- racy, e-government, semi-direct democracy, e-consultations, computer lobbying) and its features (publicity, collectivity, assessment by the population the quality of work of the authorities). The article indicates the stages of development of informational and com- municational cooperation between the authorities and the population. Moreover, the problems of implementation of e-democracy are also analyzed. Among named are: legal regulation problems (while implementing e-democracy, the question of Internet control by authorities arises), necessity of political and moral problems solution (there is definitely the risk of «black» technologies usage), technical problems (unfortunately, not every citi- zen of our country has a possibility to find Internet access). In the conclusion, it is stated thate-democracy promotes transparency of activities of public authorities through the usage of modern technologies and providing citizens access to information. It is said that e-democracy is a tool supporting the political activities and ensuring greater transparency and accountability of politicians to the electorate. Finally, it is stated that e-democracy is a tool to improve the quality of high-rank decisions relating to how each individual and society as a whole participate in the political process.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the promising potential of open data in Kazakhstan to boost public sector innovations and trace the emergence of the related civic engagement initiatives in order to understand how it affects the democratization of political communication processes in a typical developing country. Design/methodology/approach This is a case study research which begins with a brief history of the official open data project and then investigates various political and socioeconomic drivers, corresponding regulatory acts, the leading role of the key stakeholders and policy entrepreneurs in the diffusion of the open data movement as well as the main challenges associated with the advance of the open government concept in Kazakhstan, while various independent open data-driven projects provide a rich empirical basis for the analysis. Findings Open data provides new opportunities to promote civic engagement and e-participation but does not affect the fundamentals of the political system nor advances democratic institutions in a typical developing country. The traditional directives could paradoxically be effective in advancing open data even in a less collaborative political culture. The unitary administrative context is conducive for the development of the ICT-driven public sector initiatives as a single platform. The existence of independent developers is crucial in promoting various open data-driven projects and sharing related expertise. The open data movement creates a favorable atmosphere for the participation of the non-governmental sector in the sphere. Research limitations/implications This case study is primarily focused on the analysis of the open data movement at the national level of government, taking into account the unitary structure of the public administration system existing in Kazakhstan, which apparently has a crucial fundamental effect on the realization of any e-government system in this country. In this respect, the main limitation of the research is that the possible existence of various open data-driven projects at the local levels that hypothetically may have a different set of political and socioeconomic drivers and challenges was excluded from the final equation, which provides a new window for the future research in the area. Practical implications The results of the research could be used by e-government practitioners and policymakers in evaluating and improving the operation of the open data-driven projects in many developing countries. Social implications The author of the paper tried to develop a universal framework of the case study research that could be used in investigating the open data phenomenon not only in Kazakhstan but also in the context of other developing and transitional countries, especially in analyzing the apparitional emergence of the unique networking activities among the key stakeholders of the open data movement, i.e. policymakers, NGOs, businesses, developers, mass media and citizens. In addition, the results of the analysis could be used in testing the political and socioeconomic implications of the highly centralized e-government approach in the realization of the open data concept in a number of other typical unitary states. Originality/value In scientific works, the open data phenomenon is usually analyzed in the context of the most developed and democratic countries of the world with a vast majority of case studies being focused only on North America and Europe, forgetting that it is a global trend. In contrast to the traditional trends in the academic literature, the author of the paper studies the realization of the concept in an unusual context, resorting to the case study of a typical emerging and post-totalitarian nation such as Kazakhstan and focusing on the analysis of the key drivers and challenges in the diffusion of the open data concept in an attempt to answer the ultimate question: whether it is really harnessed by the members of civil society to promote civic engagement and e-participation.

This paper aims to critically analyse the Estonian People’s Assembly (EPA), a crowdsourcing initiative carried out from 2013 to 2014. During the project, citizens could participate in decision-making and make proposals for laws and policies on a dedicated web-platform. Additionally, some people were invited for a traditional off-line debate. In that way, the project combined virtual communication tools with traditional discussion to apply the principles of collaborative e-democracy, in which governmental stakeholders and non-governmental stakeholders (such as local communities) join in a deliberative debate. The purpose of this paper is to observe, both, gains and problems of this crowdsourcing initiative. The analysis considered the design of the online space, if people had equal access to it, and the kind of issues proposed. It also applied critical discourse analysis (following Fairclough, 1995) and the index Quality of Understanding (Klinger & Russmann, 2015). As a conclusion, the paper suggests that virtual platforms can increase the quality of deliberative decision-making. However, they can also be seen as regulated “top-down” initiatives (Pellizzoni, 2012). In a wider perspective, the paper aims to contribute to knowledge on, both, positive and negative stances of deliberative crowdsource initiatives in a post-web society. peerReviewed

In the second decade of the 21st century, blockchain definitely became one of the most trending computational technologies. This research aims to question the feasibility and suitability of using blockchain technology within e-voting systems, regarding both technical and non-technical aspects. In today's world, although the course of this spreading is considerably slow, several countries already use means of e-voting due to many social and economic reasons, which we further investigated. Nevertheless, the number of countries offering various e-government solutions, apart from e-voting, is significantly high. E-voting systems, naturally, require much more attention and assurance regarding potential security and anonymity issues, since voting is one of the few extremely critical governmental processes. Nevertheless, e-voting is not purely a governmental service, but many companies and nonprofit organizations would benefit the cost-efficiency, scalability, remote accessibility, and ease of use that it provides. Blockchain technology is claimed to be able to address some, obviously not all, important security concerns, including anonymity, confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. The analysis results presented in this article mostly confirm these claims

In this paper we report evidence from a collective deliberation experiment in which the supporters of a political party were asked to debate online about ways to reform the electoral law. We compared a forum with an argumentation platform, an online collaboration tool that supports the construction of a collective map representing the debate in terms of issues, proposals, pros and cons. We analyze the structural proprieties of the reply networks generated in the two conditions. Our findings show that forum generated more redundant ideas and highly central speakers, whereas the argumentation platform tested in this study favored viewing and rating of others’ posts, produced more arguments per idea, and promoted brokerage between users belonging to different subgroups.

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) aim to increase voters’ political competence by providing them with the closest political party according to their preferences. To do this, VAAs usually compare and aggregate the positions of users and political parties on a set of policy issues by defining a conceptual space and some distance metric on it. In this paper, we argue that the main method for performing the comparison adapts to users’ preferences unsatisfactorily because 1) they use unjustified a priori decisions for weighting policy issues and 2) they employ the same issue-voting space on all policy issues. Some exceptional cases address these issues by providing a community-based recommendation, but often come with lack of interpretability. To fill these gaps, we propose an adaptive algorithm that learns the configuration of the conceptual space from users’ answers. We employ a hybrid VAA that uses expert coding for the party positions and users’ data to adjust the calculation of the distance between users and parties. This new matching method, the Learning VAA, innovates by adjusting the saliency and issue-voting space for every policy issue. We argue and empirically demonstrate that our model fits better the users’ preferences while providing a higher degree of interpretability.

Almost all religions, philosophers, existential thinkers, feminists, psychologists and writers have also explored the idea of living well and have attributed happiness to factors such as living with purpose, freedom among others. These factors being mostly intangible often neglected or overlooked as they don’t easily fit in the tool kit of urban planner. Smart city is a knowledge-based city that develops extra ordinary capabilities to be self-aware. It assimilates data from the entire functioning of the city and becomes self-aware, and it selectively communicates to the citizens with information to improve their way of life in real time. This chapter explored the present way of living, attempts to identify the aspirations and issues faced by its citizens. The capabilities of smart technologies were explored, and a framework is proposed to harness these capabilities for improving the way of life in Kozhikode Metropolitan Area (KMA). The study is centred on the following three key steps. The first step in the study is to empirically identify health related issues of KMA and available mechanisms of related institutions and determine more effective interventions by smart communities in conjunction with others based on the knowledge base of the respective domains. Health care has got a curative dimension, preventive dimension and promotive dimension. This chapter therefore is a blue print for curative, preventive and promotive aspects of total KMA health care for implementation by smart communities. The chapter analyses data from the KMA, to see what are the major health issues faced by its population under the four pillars of health. It further explores the various information required to improve the health conditions, and proses a system of sensors to gather the required information. The proposals also include a broad sketch of the algorithm to process the collected data and convert that to actionable information by the individual, smart community or other implementation agencies. The chapter concludes by consolidating all the issues analysed, and corresponding smart solutions for them under four pillars of health.

Purpose: The development of e-government raises the question how to provide e-services oriented to the personal needs of individuals and collective interests in a civil society. In this sense, the various forms of e-democracy are becoming the tool of direct communication between consumers and suppliers of public services.

E-voting implantation has been facing important challenges in recent years. Several incidents, together with a lack of evaluation methodologies social and cultural customs hinder a broader application. In this work, the authors aim to contribute to a safer introduction of e-voting tools by applying a practical evaluation framework strongly based on the security requirements issued by the Council of Europe (CoE) in 2017 to nvotes, a system that has been utilized to cast over 2 million votes over the last 6 years.

The paper describes theoretical peculiarities of e-government technology introduction in suburbanized areas in the medical care of the population. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the causes, factors, characteristics and conditions of the introduction of e-government technologies in the suburban areas. The distinctive features in the needs of the population of urbanized areas of their behavioral attitudes when accessing e-government services. The study is based on the example of medical services provided to the population in the framework of the public health system in Russia.

The work analyzes the mechanism of legal support of e-democracy development in Ukraine and European Union in a part of formation and implementation of its tools. A position of central executive authorities in Ukraine in the context of e-democracy development is considered. The Ukrainian legislative base of formation and realization of e-democracy tools have been studied, and ones, considered priority in the aspect of their legal support and implementation level, have been separated. These e-democracy tools in Ukraine include: e-consulting, e-petitions, e-appeals, participation budgets (public budgets). The analysis of e-democracy tools, offered and implemented in the EU countries allowed to establish a series of them, needed additional attention from both state authorities of Ukraine and Ukrainian publicity. These tools include: e-voting, e-referendum, e-plebiscites, and e-election process totally. Based on comparison analysis of using e-democracy tools in Ukraine and EU, there have been separated obstacles on the way of potential improvement of the national legal mechanism of e-democracy development as to its tools usage at the national, regional and local levels. The main ones are: imperfection of resource provision of the development legal mechanism; absence of an integral idea of the development strategy of e-democracy as an institution in the state; predominance of e-services automation development over development of tools of active involvement of citizens in participation in the public-political life of the country. Recommendations for public authorities as to improvement of the existent legal mechanism of implementation, use and development of e-democracy tools in a part of development of a series of strategic documents that must fix the priority of e-democracy development, its resource support; comprehensive support to public initiatives as to implementation and development of e-democracy and e-participation tools and so on, have been substantiated.

An increasing number of governments are using e-governance as a new form of communication with residents, information exchange, and accessibility with the goal of offering improved electronic services, improving quality of services, increased transparency, and cost reduction as traditional public services in today’s society do not meet citizen’s demands. E-governance is the use of information and communication technologies in the public sector to increase the public’s and interested parties’ interaction. Governmental websites are one of the key determents for public organizations to increase this interaction. Although there are enough explored conceptual access, technological innovation, to evaluate e-provision of services and the introduction of e-government, e-management of determinants is not yet understood. This chapter addresses the problems that arise when applying new public management at local self-government institutions. The actual situation and the options are compared.

We describe the innovative application of the free official EU web platform for surveys, adopted by our institution to improve ethic, eco-friendly and crime-fighting lawmaking process of our Regional Parliament. Our initiative in designing and delivering of DPS (Digital Public Services) is compliant with GDPR and the 8 principles of the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment (EU2017.EE), based on user-centricity and eIDAS (electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services). Input data are personally entered into an intelligent control checked platform by trusted public officials resident in 90 Municipalities between Naples and Caserta (“Land of Fires”): the outcomes are certified Open Data with legal value, shareable on standard interoperable cloud and GIS platforms of other Public Administrations, Police and Law enforcement.

The chapter starts with an outline of outstanding recent contributions to the discussion of the EU democratic deficit and the so-called “no demos” problem and the debate about European citizenship and European identity—mainly in the light of insights from the EU crisis. This is followed by reflections on the recent discussion on the state of the mass media-based European public sphere. Finally, the author discusses the state of research on the Internet’s capacity to support the emergence of a (renewed) public sphere, with a focus on options for political actors to use the Internet for communication and campaigning, on the related establishment of segmented issue-related publics as well as on social media and its two-faced character as an enabler as well as a distorting factor of the public sphere. The author is sceptic about the capacities of Internet-based political communication to develop into a supranational (European) public sphere. It rather establishes a network of a multitude of discursive processes aimed at opinion formation at various levels and on various issues. The potential of online communication to increase the responsiveness of political institutions so far is set into practice insufficiently. Online media are increasingly used in a vertical and scarcely in a horizontal or interactive manner of communication.

Lindner and Aichholzer provide an introductory overview of the theoretical and conceptual foundations of electronic democracy, thereby providing analytical insights on the interplay between Internet-based communication and democratic processes. To this end, different normative views, aims and approaches of e-democracy are presented and systematically related to the central tenets of the main models of democracy. As e-participation plays an essential role in most conceptions of e-democracy, a typology of Internet-based citizen involvement is developed, thereby structuring the diversity of e-participation practices. Given the growing relevance of Web 2.0 and social media, the chapter discusses to which degree they are able to support core democratic functions of public communication—namely public critique, legitimation, and integration—by exploring the effects of social media usage on the quality of deliberation, political activism and political behaviour. In view of phenomena such as “personalised politics”, echo chambers and deliberate misinformation, the authors call for effective political, educational and regulatory responses to the democratic challenges social media increasingly pose.

One well-known characteristic of participatory websites is that the distribution of contribution levels is highly skewed: most people who make use of the service contribute only a little, but a small minority, often known as ‘power users’, contribute a lot. These power users are understudied in the literature on online democratic participation: this article aims to fill this gap. Based on a unique observational dataset of hundreds of thousands of users of an electronic petitioning platform, we show that having more free time is an important determinant of becoming a power user, as is having a positive initial experience with the site. We also show that power users are both more effective than regular users and that their interests differ substantially from ‘normal’ users: meaning that these small groups have a powerful (and distorting) influence on overall outcomes for the site., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published