Euripidis Loukis - E-Participation in Southern Europe and the Balkans: Issues of Democracy and Participation via Electronic Media

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E-Participation in Southern Europe and the Balkans

The rapid development and the growing penetration of information and communication technologies (ICT) provide tremendous opportunities for a wide and cost effective application of the ideas of participative democracy and public participation in government decision and policy making. ICT can drive dramatic transformations in the quantity and quality of communication and interaction of government organizations with citizens, revitalizing and strengthening the modern representative democracy which currently faces big problems of reduced citizens trust and involvement.

This book deals with the application of these e-participation ideas in the special and difficult, and at the same time highly interesting, national context of Southern Europe and the Balkans. The first chapter provides an overview of e-participation concepts and practices whilst the following chapters analyse pilot applications of e-participation concepts in eight different Southern European and Balkan countries (Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Albania, Greece, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)). They cover both the classical e-participation paradigm, based on official e-participation spaces created, operated and controlled by government organizations as well as emerging new e-participation paradigms including e-participation based on web 2.0 social media, and scientific-level e-participation, based on opening government data to the scientific community.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies .

Euripidis Loukis is Associate Professor of Information and Decision Support Systems at the University of Aegean, Greece, and also teaches at the National Academy of Public Administration. He has previously been Information Systems Advisor at the Ministry to the Presidency of Government, and Representative of Greece at the European Union in several e-government/e-participation committees.

Ann Macintosh is Professor of Digital Governance and Co-director of the Centre of Digital Citizenship at the University of Leeds, UK. She has acted as a specialist advisor for the OECD, the UN and the Commonwealth Secretariat. In 2009 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from rebro University, Sweden, for recognition of her work in eParticipation.

Yannis Charalabidis is Assistant Professor of e-Governance Information Systems at the Universityof Aegean, Greece and also leads eGovernment & eBusiness Research in the Decision Support Systems Laboratory of National Technical University of Athens. In 2008 he received the Best Paper Award in the Electronic Government Electronic Participation International Conference.

E-Participation in Southern Europe and the Balkans

Issues of Democracy and Participation Via Electronic Media

Edited by
Euripidis Loukis, Ann Macintosh and Yannis Charalabidis

First published 2013

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon,Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 Taylor & Francis

This book is a reproduction of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies , vol. 13, issue 1. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN13: 978-0-415-62359-9

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Taylor & Francis Books

Publishers Note

The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book may be referred to as articles as they are identical to the articles published in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.

Contents

Euripidis Loukis, Ann Macintosh and Yannis Charalabidis

Euripidis Loukis

Sotirios Koussouris, Yannis Charalabidis, Loukas Kipenis, Dimitrios Askounis and Odetta Stavri

Andrea Resca

Eleni Panopoulou, Efthimios Tambouris, Elena Sanchez-Nielsen, Maria Zotou and Konstantinos Tarabanis

Beniamino Murgante, Lucia Tilio, Viviana Lanza and Francesco Scorza

Clelia Colombo, Mateja Kunstelj, Francesco Molinari and Ljupco Todorovski

EURIPIDIS LOUKIS, ANN MACINTOSH and YANNIS CHARALABIDIS

There has been a growing interest of public sector researchers and practitioners in the last 25 years in the involvement of citizens in government decision-making and policy development. This is seen as a complement and reinforcement of representative democracy where citizens not only elect their representatives, who take responsibility for government decisions and policies, but also provide their feedback to them on a continuous and systematic basis. A sound theoretical foundation for these ideas has been developed, which has been followed by practical application in many countries all over the world. Barber (1984) combining work of previous researchers, defines an emergent new model of democracy, which he termed as 'participatory democracy'. A key principle of this model is that:

the equal right to self-development can only be achieved in a participatory society, a society which fosters a sense of political efficacy, nurtures a concern for collective problems and contributes to the formation of a knowledgeable citizenry capable of taking a sustained interest in the governing process.

In a subsequent work Held (1996)which should complement 'elite' deliberation by elected representatives. He states that 'A major part of the problem of democratic reform is how to promote mass deliberationhow to bring people into the process under conditions where they can be engaged to think seriously and fully about public issues.'

Another research stream focuses on understanding the nature of public policy problems and the methodology of finding solutions for them, and concludes that they gradually become less well defined and more complex, and for this reason extensive public participation is required for defining and solving them. Rittel and Weber (1973) which support structured deliberation among the stakeholders of the problem.

Based on the above theoretical foundations the concept of public participation has been gradually formulated. The OECDpublic in the agenda-setting, decision-making and policy forming activities of organizations or institutions responsible for policy development'. They view it as a move away from an 'elitist model', in which public sector managers and experts are the basic source of public policies, to a new model, in which citizens have a more active role and voice. However, it is made clear that the objective of such a participatory democracy is not to replace representative democracy and establish a new order, but to improve and strengthen it, and contribute to overcoming the existing 'democratic deficits' and the growing abstention and disengagement of citizens from politics.

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