ICTs and political life

Abstract

IntroductionDemocracy is the generative, liberating, and animating force for participation, citizenship, and political activity in the public sphere. Politics is essential to the fabric of social life, a means for individuals and groups to pursue and mobilize the interests of self and collectivity. Active citizen involvement in governance leads to better policy decisions, encourages people to believe that decisions are more legitimate, improves the value of people's lives, contributes to tolerating diverse and conflicting views, makes government institutions accountable, and creates greater support for the political system. These ideals and aspirations of normative political theory are central to a discourse on democratic governance that promotes information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a means of creating an authentic public sphere for deliberation; transforming political cultures, political institutions, and political identities; improving government's relations with citizens; invigorating voluntary associations in the civil society; and engaging citizens in collective action that results in institutional change.To what extent does the reality of the political world mirror or deviate from normative political theory? This chapter reviews theoretical conceptions and empirical evidence on e-government, e-governance, and 41 1 412 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology e-democracy and assesses the status of knowledge about the contribution that ICTs make to political life. Our goal is to identify robust empirical evidence that will allow readers to distinguish between hype and reality and between simplistic and more realistic assessments of how ICTs are linked to political culture, institutions, and behavior.We extend earlier examinations by M I S T that explored various facets of the contributions of technology and information to society, economy, government, and public policy. For example, authors have discussed the processes and problems of formulating international and national information and technology policies (). Other chapters have been devoted to the problematics of information and communication as they relate to self, organizational life, society, and the polis. These chapters include reviews of the relationship between individual and group identity and communication and information (Davenport & Hall, 2002;Herring, 2002;Palmquist, 1992). Sawyer and Eschenfelder (2002) and Kling and Callahan (2003) examined the indeterminacy of outcomes of technological innovation in social and organizational contexts. Kochen's (1983) impressive M I S T chapter on the use of information and knowledge to solve social problems was followed ten and twenty years later, respectively, with reviews by Doctor (1992) and Lievrouw and Farb (2003) of the relationships between democracy, social equity (justice), and information access and use.This prior work contributes to our focus on political arrangements and technology. Specifically, we want to understand how political theorists have approached claims that...

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