Nowadays politic in general is faced with two problematic tendencies of development. On the one hand there is an increasing disenchantment with politics and also a declining preparedness of citizens to get involved with policy making processes. A sure indicator for this trend is the low turnout at elections and the decreasing party memberships. On the other hand the public administration uses almost exclusively obsolete technologies to communicate with the citizens. Against the background of the age of the Internet and the desire of the people to coordinate their activities online, the government should not be closed to this new form of information and communication technologies (ICT).
“E-government” projects are a possible solution to remedy these tendencies, which can redesign the administrative processes between government and citizens with the help of ICT. A particular form of the e-government is the “e-participation”, which is a web-based method to allow the participation of the citizens in the policy making process and enables to encrust the structural top-down rigidities and creates finally a transparent and collaborative politic system.
This paper focuses on the question whether this electronic form of participation is adapted for the general public in the context of the Internet consumption and interest in politics. First of all we need a basic understanding of the “e-participation” including its forms and tools. After that, the potentials and risks of “e- participation” are discussed under the regard of the Internet consumption and interest in politics. To show an implementation of this concept, relevant “e-participation” initiatives of the European Union are analyzed to identify the challenges and make improvement suggestions.
Lisa Klug
The focus of the paper as well as the proceeding is clearly formulated. Would be informative whether any ideas have been realized yet and if so, how do you think about their implementation.
Your structure is very clear and the topic is very interesting! It could be interesting as well to get to know if some other countries already put e-participation to practice successfully or if the European Union is a pioneer in that topic.
Your synopsis is well structured, starting with the importance and introduction of your selected issue. Your topic, as you write yourself, is very up-to-date. . Still, I miss the reference to where your assumptions come from. Do you write about a certain country, like Germany, or is it a tendency every democratic nation faces nowadays? The same goes with e-government. Does that trend or idea exist only in the EU? So it might be interesting to do research on a specific country, as what impact from e-participation or e-governance could be expected.
As my colleagues already mentioned your synopsis is well structured and I can see the high relevance of this topic nowadays.
It might also be interesting to discover which forms of e-participation are the most successful ones and which one the least. So it might be interesting to present one successful “e-participation” initiative of the EU and one not successful. You then maybe describe why you think the initiative worked/not worked and give improvement suggestions or give some tips how the next initiative should be undertaken to make it successful in the end.
Great. Again, avoid too long introductions and overviews to focus on the topic of your paper. You may find Chris May’s Information Society book helpful together with more politics and participation oriented literature. Also, try to make a distinction between problems (what is wrong) and challenges (what is difficult to achieve).