E-Participation and Climate Change: Are Local Governments Actively Promoting Responsible Behaviors and Offering Opportunities for Citizen Involvement?

Citizens are demanding greater transparency and accountability from their governments, and seek to participate in shaping the policies that affect their lives. The diffusion of the Internet has raised expectations that electronic tools may increase citizen participation in government decision-making and stop the decline of trust in political institutions. This paper brings together two relevant topics, e-participation and climate change, analyzing the websites of the environment departments of European local governments that have signed the Aalborg+10 commitments, to establish to what extent European local governments are making use of the Internet to promote e-participation and environmental-friendly behaviors among their citizens. Our results show that the developments on e-participation are higher in those areas just giving information than in the areas related to interactivity. The Internet as a tool to revitalize the public sphere is still limited to those countries with higher levels of transparency and a culture of citizen engagement.

[1]  Vicente Pina,et al.  E-government evolution in EU local governments: a comparative perspective , 2009, Online Inf. Rev..

[2]  Vicente Pina,et al.  Accrual Accounting in EU Local Governments: One Method, Several Approaches , 2009 .

[3]  Janet M. Kelly,et al.  Why We Should take Performance Measurement on Faith (Facts Being Hard to Come by and Not Terribly Important) , 2002 .

[4]  Jonathan G. S. Koppell.  Pathologies of Accountability: ICANN and the Challenge of “Multiple Accountabilities Disorder” , 2005 .

[5]  Sonia Royo,et al.  ARE ICTs IMPROVING TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE EU REGIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS? AN EMPIRICAL STUDY , 2007 .

[6]  Jeremy Rose,et al.  The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area , 2008, Gov. Inf. Q..

[7]  Annette Boaz,et al.  The Modernization and Improvement of Government and Public Services: Public Participation and Citizen-Centred Local Government: Lessons from the Best Value and Better Government for Older People Pilot Programmes , 2000 .

[8]  Jeremy Rose,et al.  eParticipation: Designing and Managing Political Discussion Forums , 2010 .

[9]  J. Edelenbos,et al.  Managing Stakeholder Involvement in Decision Making: A Comparative Analysis of Six Interactive Processes in the Netherlands , 2006 .

[10]  Gloria A. Grizzle.  Performance Measurement and Dysfunction , 2002 .

[11]  L. Torres,et al.  E-Governance Developments in European Union Cities: Reshaping Government’s Relationship with Citizens , 2006 .

[12]  R. Kies,et al.  Online Forums and Deliberative Democracy , 2005 .

[13]  L. Bingham,et al.  The New Governance: Practices and Processes for Stakeholder and Citizen Participation in the Work of Government , 2005 .

[14]  Paul T. Jaeger,et al.  Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies , 2010, Gov. Inf. Q..

[15]  農林水産奨励会農林水産政策情報センター,et al.  米国各州ウェブのポータル機能比較 = State web portals : delivering and financing e-service , 2002 .

[16]  Ivan Koprić,et al.  Citizens as Partners: Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-Making , 2006 .

[17]  Giovanni Valotti,et al.  Public management reform in Italy: explaining the implementation gap , 2008 .

[18]  J. Jensen.  Public Spheres on the Internet: Anarchic or Government‐Sponsored – A Comparison , 2003 .

[19]  Nicholas Gruen.  Engage: getting on with Government 2.0 , 2009 .

[20]  John M. Pfiffner,et al.  Research methods in public administration , 1940 .

[21]  Efthimios Tambouris,et al.  A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools , 2007, 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07).

[22]  Elinor Ostrom,et al.  A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change , 2009 .

[23]  Vicente Pina,et al.  Is E-Government Promoting Convergence Towards More Accountable Local Governments? , 2010 .

[24]  Yvon Henri BRSSD,et al.  BACKGROUND PAPER , 2003 .

[25]  Signy Irene Vabo,et al.  Size and e‐Democracy: Online Participation in Norwegian Local Politics , 2009 .

[26]  Astrid Dannenberg,et al.  The Role of the Government in Adaptation to Climate Change , 2010 .

[27]  Michael Cuthill,et al.  Exploratory research: citizen participation, local government and sustainable development in Australia , 2002 .

[28]  Ana Yetano Sánchez de Muniaín,et al.  What is driving the increasing presence of citizen participation initiatives , 2009 .