Democratic Innovations: Reinforcing or Changing Perceptions of Trust?

Åström, Joachim; Jonsson, Magnus; Karlsson, Martin

doi:10.1080/01900692.2016.1162801

Cited by 20 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The first group has significantly more often contacted politicians and civil servants, discussed politics online, and worked in political parties and NGOs. The majority of the population of Skåne, Sweden's southernmost province where Malmö lies, has not participated in any of these types of activities during the last year, while more than nine out of ten of those participating the Malmö initiative had [20].…”

Section: Motivation and Cultural Attitudesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will e-Participation Bring Critical Citizens Back In?

Åström

Karlsson

2016

Electronic Participation

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Part 2: Critical ReflectionsInternational audienceThis paper sets out to critically examine the mobilizing potential of e-participation. The extent to which citizens beyond the usual suspects are engaged is studied by way of survey data from two novel e-participation case studies: one Swedish, one Finnish. Besides from the traditional socio-demographic variables, the analyses highlights cultural attitudes and ask: Do e-participation processes succeed in mobilizing citizens dissatisfied with the way democracy works? Can e-participation bring critical citizens back in? Certainly, the empirical analysis indicates critical citizens are clearly overrepresented in these two cases

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Section: Motivation and Cultural Attitudesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will e-Participation Bring Critical Citizens Back In?

Åström

Karlsson

2016

Electronic Participation

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“…There are reasons to expect that citizens will draw on their assessments of democratic innovations to make broader inferences about the political system (Åström, Jonsson, & Karlsson, 2017; Carman, 2010; Christensen, Karjalainen, & Lundell, 2016). The participants’ interactions would then serve as cues, as Carman (2010) puts it, from which the participants update previously held beliefs about the trustworthiness of other people as well as the government.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As has been argued elsewhere (Åström, Jonsson, Hinsberg, & Karlsson, 2013), the legitimacy crisis in Estonia was a key factor that enabled the participants of the ECA to challenge powerful elites and institutions, instead of continuing with politics as usual. However, recent insights into contextual covariates indicate that predispositions—that is, general perceptions of how democracy works—mediate the effects of participation on political trust (Åström et al, 2017). The ECA offers a unique opportunity to explore what this means in terms of trust‐building.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If citizens’ experiences with the participation process are generally positive, their political trust usually increases. In a situation where political distrust is particularly strong, however, it is possible that citizens’ intuitive understandings of how well democracy works play a more important role than their evaluations of their own individual experiences (Åström et al, 2017). Moreover, in times of crisis the usual association between social and political trust is often weaker (Newton, 2006), which may also influence the outcome in terms of trust.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a consequence, the assumed causal relationship between process satisfaction and trust could be reversed or bidirectional. Åström et al (2017) have shown that both generalized attitudes towards democracy and process evaluations matter for perceived changes in trust in the context of a Swedish e‐petitioning system. Generalized attitudes are often reinforced by the experience of participating.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Democratic Innovation in Times of Crisis: Exploring Changes in Social and Political Trust

Karlsson¹,

Åström²,

Adenskog³

2020

Policy & Internet

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The Estonian Citizens' Assembly (ECA) was initiated in late 2012 as a direct consequence of a legitimacy crisis of Estonian political parties and representative institutions. The spark igniting this crisis was the unraveling of a scheme of illegal party financing. The response from governmental institutions took the form of a democratic innovation involving public crowd-sourcing and deliberative mini-publics. This study reports on a survey among the participants in the online crowd-sourcing process of the ECA (n = 847). The study examines how this democratic innovation influenced participants' social and political trust as well as the impact of participants' predispositions and level of satisfaction with the ECA on changes in trust. We find that participants that had positive predispositions and who were satisfied with the ECA were more likely to gain trust. Furthermore, we also find that the participants, in general, became more distrustful of political institutions, while their participation fostered increased social trust. This outcome differs from the intentions of the Estonian institutions which organized the ECA and sheds new light on the role of democratic innovations in the context of legitimacy crises. This is an important step forward in the scholarly understanding of the relationship between democratic innovation and trust.

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Experience with Digital Tools in Different Types of e-Participation

Aichholzer

Rose

2019

Studies in Digital Politics and Governance

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The chapter offers a systematic overview of the use of digital tools for various forms of political participation and the experiences made so far, based on an extensive literature review. Discerning three key functions of e-participationmonitoring, agenda-setting and input to decision-making-the authors review a variety of formally institutionalised mechanisms as well as informal expressions of civic engagement, including social media. The examination of digital tool use for monitoring purposes extends from electronic information access and exchange to e-deliberation, while the role for agenda-setting mainly includes uses for e-petitions and e-campaigning, showing a mixed picture of democratic impacts. The review of e-participation providing input for decision-making focusses on e-consultations, e-participative budgeting and e-voting, identifying several persisting problems with the latter instrument. A special section examines e-participation at EU-level, from deliberative citizens' involvement projects and e-consultation to the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) and e-petitions to the European Parliament. Findings show that digital tools enhance direct and participative democracy in many respects; however, exaggerated expectations of new democratic potentials remain unfulfilled: deliberative participative designs lack any impact on decision-making, and the ECI still is rather an instrument for civil society mobilisation than citizen empowerment. 4.1 Three Basic Functions of e-Participation Understanding "e-participation" as the use of digital tools for political participation in the wider sense includes a wide variety of formally institutionalised mechanisms, as well as informal expressions of civic engagement. According to their predominant function in the policy cycle, we can discern three basic functions of participation (we prefer this typology because of the focus on level of impacts):

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Democratic Innovations: Reinforcing or Changing Perceptions of Trust?

Cited by 20 publications

References 31 publications

Will e-Participation Bring Critical Citizens Back In?

Will e-Participation Bring Critical Citizens Back In?

Democratic Innovation in Times of Crisis: Exploring Changes in Social and Political Trust

Experience with Digital Tools in Different Types of e-Participation

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