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Because of growing demands and pressures from citizens, political representatives and institutions of governments are increasingly opting for new forms of participation. In other words, a mix of methods is utilised to complement representative participation and city administration. In Uganda, a number of local political representatives: Councilors, Lower level Mayors and Lord Mayor use online participatory instruments; social media platforms: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter to connect with citizens in Kampala capital city authority. However, critical analysis of online participatory instruments for information giving and citizen engagement seems to be lacking. In this regard, a number of possible research questions to critically interrogate are posed. Is the new invited space a reaction to the invited bottom up participation? What forms of digital participatory spaces does Kampala Capital City Authority use to disclose information on its operations? What is the mix of offline-and online channels (blended participation) do local political representatives use to connect with electorates? Is this more for planning or for monitoring purposes. To answer these questions, both quantitative data (survey) and qualitative interview is used.

In Uganda, corruption, bribery, low-quality services, the exclusion of citizens from managing public expenditure and the mobilisation of revenues triggered tax evasion, tax avoidance and protests for a long time. As a result, the government recently digitalised its systems of revenue extraction in local urban authorities. In fact, this study’s empirical findings show that the idea of digitalising local urban fiscal institutions in Uganda has strengthened not only the formalisation of the informal sector, but also the provision of public services and citizen participation, and has moreover alleviated the avoidance and evasion of taxes and fiscal leakages. Andrew Matsiko is a beneficiary of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) Grant for his PhD research in political science at Münster University. He lectured at Bugema University, Uganda and is a member of IPSA: Research Committee 05: Comparative Studies on Local Government and Research Committee 10: Electronic Democracy. Andrew Matsiko’s research interests include state building and taxation, local comparative and regional politics, comparative research methods, digitalisation and hybrid political participation.

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