Evaluating e-Participation

Abstract

Public Administration and Information Technology publishes authored and edited books that examine the application of information systems to common issues and problems in public administration. This series examines both the successes of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption and some of the most important challenges to implementation. The books published in this series will address all areas of public administration, through the use of information technology adoption in the public and nonprofit sectors, and in the private sector where important lessons can be learned for public managers and policy analysts. New and emerging technologies that will have a lasting impact on public administration will be featured in this series. Both developed and developing countries will be examined in this series. The series particularly welcomes books that cover international dimensions of public administration and information technology. The research in this series will be able to bridge both theory and practice to provide relevance to public managers. The series will cover all aspects of e-governance/e-government research, and new and emerging trends and issues in this research. The series publishes edited books, monographs, upper-level textbooks and research handbooks.

Mechanisms for inclusion and exclusion through digital political participation: Evidence from a comparative study of online consultations in three German cities

“…First of all, we were interested in (i) who participates in opportunities for political online participation. Our surveys of the participants of the consultation confirm the findings of biases that were reported from previous research into local participation in general (Einstein et al 2019;Michels and de Graaf 2010) and that are exacerbated when participation moves online (Aichholzer et al 2016;Escher 2013). Therefore, people with a high socioeconomic status were over-represented, in particular men and those aged 45-59 years old.…”

“…Second, while numerous studies do exist that have focused on particular instances of online participation, with rare exceptions (for Germany see Faas et al 2016;Schneider 2018) these have usually only examined those who do take part with little evidence from those who do not, partly because it poses a greater challenge to reach out to those who remain invisible in participation processes (see for example Aichholzer et al 2016;Escher and Riehm 2017;Kim and Lee 2012;Kubicek et al 2011;Marschall and Schultze 2012;Maxhofer 2019). Consequently, we tend to know little about the reasons of those who remain inactive.…”