The Web of governance and democratic accountability

Developments in e-government are resulting in fundamental reorganizations of the ways in which democratic governments operate as well as in the ways in which citizens relate to their own and other governments and to each other. Of special relevance here are the manners in which institutions and citizens are becoming interconnected into a complex 'Web of governance' via largely uncoordinated information networks. This paper examines how this Web of governance is simultaneously producing changes in individual citizen's senses of identity and challenges to conventional notions of accountability in liberal democratic systems. Together, it is argued, these suggest moving focus from e-government (the institutions of government) to e-governance (the larger Web of formal and informal institutions, organizations, norms, traditions, authority structures, groups and behaviors within which individuals and groups live their lives). Such a refocusing holds the promise of developing citizen capacity and identity in balance with formal governmental transformations. Specific illustrative examples are provided including Seoul Metropolitan Government's OPEN System.

[1]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial , 1970 .

[2]  Robert D. Putnam,et al.  Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community , 2000, CSCW '00.

[3]  Gerard F. Yates.  Which Way Democracy , 1940 .

[4]  B. Wellman.  Computer Networks As Social Networks , 2001, Science.

[5]  Westone,et al.  Home Page , 2004, 2022 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Cybernetics Technology & Applications (ICICyTA).

[6]  J. Horrigan.  Online communities: Networks that nurture long-distance relationships and local ties , 2001 .

[7]  Henk Sol,et al.  Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences , 1997, HICSS 2015.

[8]  Lee Rainie,et al.  The Commons of the Tragedy: How the Internet Was Used by Millions after the Terror Attacks To Grieve, Console, Share News, and Debate the Country's Response. , 2001 .

[9]  Clarence J. Ryan.  Which Way, Democracy? , 1940 .

[10]  Barry Wellman,et al.  Designing the Internet for a networked society , 2002, CACM.

[11]  Roxane Spitzer,et al.  One nation, indivisible , 2004 .

[12]  Matthew A. Baum,et al.  Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television? , 1999, American Political Science Review.

[13]  L. Hurwicz.  On informationally decentralized systems , 1977 .

[14]  Ralph Hambrick,et al.  Rethinking Democratic Accountability , 2002 .

[15]  Jeffrey Ayres,et al.  From the Streets to the Internet: The Cyber-Diffusion of Contention , 1999 .

[16]  R. Radner,et al.  Decision and Organization. A Volume in Honor of Jacob Marschak. Edited by C.B. Mc Guire and Roy Radner. Studies in Mathematical and Managerial Economics, volume 12. Amsterdam, London, North-Holland Publishing Company, 1972 X p. 361 p., fl. 63.00. , 1973, Recherches économiques de Louvain.

[17]  W. Stegner.  One Nation , 1945 .

[18]  Keith N. Hampton,et al.  Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital? , 2001 .