Europeans and their online engagement in policy-makinghave governments managed to foster citizens involvement thanks to the internet?

Resumo

In the last years governments have implemented several initiatives in order to take advantage of the potential of the internet to actively engage citizens in the process of policy-making and, thus, to overcome the traditional barriers observed in the offline context, those being, that the most advantaged socioeconomic groups are the most likely to get involved. This paper addresses whether these online initiatives have been successful in reaching the aforementioned goals. Results show that digital skills and online networks are key elements to explain citizens use of the aforementioned governments tools for participative policymaking. Nonetheless, public initiatives seem to have been little successful till now in engaging citizens through the internet since the participation patterns online mirror the divides observed in the offline context. Interestingly enough, there is some evidence that points out that citizens might be using these online tools to express their disappointment with public policies and authorities.