skip to main content
10.1145/2072069.2072072acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicegovConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Citizen empowerment and participation in e-democracy: Indian context

Published: 26 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Present paper examines whether citizens' empowered status influences their online democratic participation. The paper put forward two stages of citizen empowerment in the virtual space. In the first stage, citizens are enabled for e-democracy participation and in the second stage citizens are part of the decision making process. On the basis of review of literature, a research model was delineated and tested with quantitative data collected through a survey. Regression results indicate that empowerment elements do influence the participation in e-democracy. The study also reveals that participation in partisan networks influences by cohesive empowerment. Citizen participation through electronic voting machines is influenced by the network actor's empowerment status. And citizens' technical empowerment is found to influence participation through mobile phones.

References

[1]
Banducci, S. A., Donovan, T., and Karp, J. A. 2004. Minority representation, empowerment, and participation. The Journal of Politics 66, 2, 534--556.
[2]
Beck, A. T. 1983. Cognitive therapy of depression: New perspectives. In P. J. Clayton, & J. E. Barnett (eds.), Treatment of depression: Old Controversies and New Approaches, 265--290. New York: Raven Press.
[3]
Beetham, D. 2002. The State of Democracy: Democracy Assessments in Eight Nations. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Kluwer Law International. ISBN: 90-411-1931-0.
[4]
Bellamy, C. D., and Mowbray, C. T. 1999. Supported education as an empowerment intervention for people with mental illness. Journal of Community Psychology 26, 5, 401--413.
[5]
Bowler, S. and Donovan, T. 2002. Institutions and attitudes about citizen influence on government. British Journal of Political Science 32, 2, 371--390.
[6]
Cabri, G., Ferrari, L., and Leonardi, L. 2005. A role-based mobile-agent approach to support e-democracy. Applied Soft Computing 6, 85--99.
[7]
Caldeira, G. A., Patterson, S. C., and Markko, G. A. 1985. The mobilization of voters in congressional elections. The Journal of Politics 47, 2, 490--509.
[8]
Cruickshank, P., Edelmann, N., and Smith, C. 2010. Signing an e-petition as a transition from lurking to participation. In Chappellet, J., Glassey, O., Janssen, M., Macintosh, A., Scholl, J., Tambouris, E., and Wimmer, M. (eds.): Electronic Government and Electronic Participation 275--282.
[9]
Csetenyi, A. 2000. Electronic government: Perspectives from e-Commerce. Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, IEEE, 294--298.
[10]
Cullen, R. and Sommer, L. 2011. Participatory democracy and the value of online community networks: An exploration of online and offline communities engaged in civil society and political activity. Government Information Quarterly 28, 148--154.
[11]
D'udekem-Gevers, M. and Poullet, Y. 2001. Internet content regulation. concerns from a European user empowerment perspective about internet content regulation: An analysis of some recent statements, Part I. Computer Law & Security Report 17, 6.
[12]
Dahl, R. A. and Tufte, E. R. 1973. Size and Democracy. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
[13]
Ergazakis, K., Metaxiotis, E., and Tsitsanis, T. 2011. A state-of-the-art review of applied forms and areas, tools and technologies for e-participation. International Journal of Electronic Government Research 7, 1 (January-March 2011), 1--19.
[14]
Forester, J. F. 1989. Planning in the Face of Power. Berkeley, University of California Press.
[15]
Gowda, R. and Hemangini. G. H. 2010. Tracking and explaining e-participation in India. Tambouris, E., Macintosh, A., and Glassey O. (eds.): ePart2010, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6229, 66--81.
[16]
Griffiths, M. 2004. e-Citizens: blogging as democratic practice. Electronic Journal of e-Government 2, 3,155--166.
[17]
Gupta, M. P. 2010. Tracking the evolution of e-governance in India. International Journal of Electronic Government Research 6,1, (January-March 2010), 46--58.
[18]
Gurin, P., Hatchett, S., and Jackson, J. S. 1989. Hope and Independence: Blacks' Response to Electoral and Party Politics. New York: Russell Sage.
[19]
Howard, P. N. 2010.The lasting impact of digital media on civil society. eJournalUSA 15, 1, 10--12. www.america.gov/publications/ejournalusa.html.
[20]
Hurwitz, A. 1999. Who needs politics? Who needs people? The ironies of democracy in cyberspace. Contemporary Sociology 28, 6, 655--661.
[21]
Jayal, N. G. 2001. Democracy in India. New York: Oxford University Press.
[22]
Lambrecht, L. 2009. On the Need for and Importance of Empowerment to Strengthen Democracy. Perspectives on Empowerment, Social Cohesion and Democracy: An International Anthology. Part 1, 11--25.
[23]
Lin, M. J., Hung, S. W., and Chen, C. J. 2009. Fostering the determinants of knowledge sharing in professional virtual communities. Computers in Human Behavior 25, 929--939.
[24]
Lord, J. and Hutchison, P. 1993. The process of empowerment: Implications for theory and practice. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health 12, 1, 5--22.
[25]
Lupu, P. and Stokes, S. 2010. Democracy, interrupted: regime change and partisanship in twentieth-century Argentina. Electoral Studies 29, 92, 91--104.
[26]
Macintosh, A., Coleman, S., and Lalljee, M. 2005. e-Methods for public engagement. Bristol, UK: Bristol City Council.
[27]
Macintosh, A., Gordon, T. F., and Renton, A. 2009. Providing argument support for e-participation. Journal of Information Technology & Politics 6, 43--59.
[28]
McClelland, D. C. 1975. Power: The inner experience. New York: Irvington Press.
[29]
Mercado-Kierkegaard, S. 2006. Blogging -- emerging legal liabilities. Blogs, lies and the doocing: The next hotbed of litigation?. Computer law & Security Report 22, 127--136.
[30]
Morell, M. 1999. Citizens' evaluations of participatory democratic procedures: Normative theory meets empirical science. Political Research Quarterly 52, 293--322.
[31]
Moscovitch, A. and Drover, G. 1981. Inequality: Essays on the political economy of social welfare. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
[32]
Munck, G. L. and Verkuilen, J. 2002. Measuring democracy: evaluating alternate indices. Comparative Political Studies 35, 1, 5--57.
[33]
Norris, D. F. 2010. E-government...not e-governance...not-e-democracy: Not now! Not ever? In Tomsz Janowski and Jim Davies (eds.): Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance 25--28, October, 2010, Beijing, China.
[34]
OECD. 2001. Engaging citizens in policy-making: Information, consultation and public participation. PUMA Policy Brief No. 10.
[35]
Pateman, C. 1970. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge University Press.
[36]
Przeworski, A. 2004. Democracy and economic development. 2004. In Edward D. Mansfield and Richard Sisson (eds.), The Evolution of Political Knowledge. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
[37]
Ramakantan, N. 2009. Democratic decentralization and empowerment of local government associations in Kerala. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance 2, 128--136.
[38]
Reddick, C. G. 2011. Citizen interaction and e-government. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy 5, 2, 167--184.
[39]
Savini, F. 2010. The endowment of community participation: Institutional settings in two urban regeneration projects. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 1--20.
[40]
Shareef, M. A., Kumar, V., Kumar, U., and Dwivedi, Y. K. 2011. e-Government Adoption Model (GAM): Differing service maturity levels. Government Information Quarterly 28, 17--35.
[41]
Smith, D. A. and Tolbert, C. 2001. The initiative to party: Partisanship and ballot initiatives in California. Party Politics 7, 781--99.
[42]
Smith, E., Macintosh, A., and Whyte, A. 2006. Organised use of e-democracy tools for young people. In Wimmer, M., Scholl, H., Gronlund, A., and Anderson, K. (eds.): Electronic Government: Communications of the Fifth International EGOV Conference, 2006, 260--267. Berlin, Germany.
[43]
Sorensen, E. and Torfing, J. 2009. Making governance networks effective and democratic through metagovernance. Public Administration 87,2, 234--258.
[44]
Stallman, R. 1995. Are computer property rights absolute? In: Johnson, D. G. and Nissenbaum, H. (eds.) Computers, Ethics & Social Values Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 115--119.
[45]
Subramanian, R. 2005/2006. Nationhood, technology and the roots of computer-assisted governance in India, 1880--1980, International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society 1, 1, 50--61.
[46]
Tate, K. 1991. Black political participation in the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections. American Political Science Review 85, 4, 1159--76.
[47]
Tero, P and Øystein, S. 2006. Models of e-democracy. Communications of the Association for Information Systems 17, 37, 818--84.
[48]
Thomas, J. J., and Parayil, G. 2010. Bridging the social and digital divides in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala: A capabilities approach. Development and Change 39, 3, 409--435.
[49]
United Nations E-Government Survey. 2010. Leveraging e-governance at the time of financial and economic crisis, www2.unpan.org/egovkb/global_reports/10report.htm.
[50]
Vanhanen, T. 2000. A New dataset for measuring democracy, 1810--1998. Journal of Peace Research 37, 2, 251--265.
[51]
Vecchione, M. and Caprara, G. V. 2009. Personality determinants of political participation: The contribution of traits and self-efficacy beliefs. Personality and Individual Differences 46, 487--492.
[52]
Whyte, A. and Macintosh, A. 2002. Analysis and evaluation of e-consultations. e-Service Journal 2, 1, 9--34.
[53]
Witschge, T. 2002. Online deliberation: Possibilities of the internet for deliberative democracy. Paper presented at the Euricom Colloquium: Electronic Networks and Democratic Engagement, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
[54]
Zelic, B. and Stahl, B. C. 2005. Does ontology influence technological projects? The case of Irish electronic voting. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3782, 657--667.

Cited By

View all

Index Terms

  1. Citizen empowerment and participation in e-democracy: Indian context

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Other conferences
    ICEGOV '11: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
    September 2011
    400 pages
    ISBN:9781450307468
    DOI:10.1145/2072069
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 26 September 2011

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. India
    2. digital democracy
    3. e-participation
    4. empowerment
    5. web-based interaction

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    ICEGOV '11

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 350 of 865 submissions, 40%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)24
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
    Reflects downloads up to 06 Jan 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media