Diffusion of e‐government and e‐participation in Democracies and Autocracies
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12372 |
Diffusion of e-government and e-participation
in Democracies and Autocracies
Marianne Kneuer
Hildesheim University
Sebastian Harnisch
Heidelberg University
Abstract
Internet based technology constitutes one of the most important policy innovations in the last decades. Its diffusion has been
rapid, widespread and sustained. The increase has raised questions about its drivers. The article focuses on an aspect of this
dynamic that has been neglected so far: the variance between and among democracies and autocracies and their respective
subtypes. Moreover, the majority of studies tackles the diffusion of e-government techniques, excluding the important array of
e-participation. Our analysis thus offers a broader and more differentiated account of the adoption of online tools by govern-
ments. The findings indicate that the adoption of e-government and e-participation techniques varies substantially between
and among democratic and autocratic regime types as well as over time and in kind.
Introduction
Internet based technology constitutes one of the most
important policy innovations in the last decades. Its diffu-
sion has been rapid, wide spread and sustained. This is
reflected, for example, in the extraordinary growth rate of
internet users that expanded from less than one per cent in
1995 to almost the half of the world population in 2015.
Although substantial numbers of citizens remain excluded
from this trend, the broad penetration of Web 1.0 and Web
2.0 technology is undisputable. The technical characteristics
(ubiquity, real time communication, multimodality) and func-
tional logics, especially of social media (interactivity), exert
an important influence on political communication. Digital
media opens up new opportunities for interaction between
representatives and represented as well as between political,
economic and societal actors. As a consequence govern-
ments across the globe became rapidly aware of the new
opportunities and challenges to interact with their citizens
through various online channels.
Since the mid-1990s, e-government and e-participation
have thus become central tools of public administration and
political interaction. E-government, defined here as ‘the use
by government agencies of information technologies (...)
that have the ability to transform relations with citizens,
businesses, and other arms of government’(World Bank,
2016) reduces transaction costs and increases administra-
tive efficiency and governmental performance. In contrast,
e-participation, defined as ‘a relationship based on partner-
ship with government in which citizens actively engage in
defining process and content of policy making’, (OECD,
2001), centers on improving participation, dialogue, trans-
parency and accountability.
The increased diffusion of e-government has raised ques-
tion about respective driving factors. Somewhat unsurpris-
ingly, the literature found that economic development plays
a key role (see e.g. Norris, 2001) followed closely by the
level of human and technological development (Helbig et al.
2009; Kim, 2007). Other studies identify additional drivers for
e-government adoption, such as the character of political
institutions and rules of national governance (Azad et al.,
2010; Wilson, 2004), and public sector effectiveness (Kim,
2007, Williams et al., 2013).
In this article we address two aspects that have been
neglected in the literature thus far, namely ‘how’and ‘why’
governments adopt e-government and e-participation tools
(but see Lee et al., 2011). Following Rogers (1995) we define
diffusion as the adoption of innovation through communica-
tion channels within a social system. Policy diffusion does
(or does not) happen because the receiving actor needs to
take a deliberate decision of taking up a concrete innova-
tion. ‘Pure transmission’of an innovation is not sufficient. To
take hold the diffused patterns have to be appropriated by
an actor through a diffusion mechanism, such as formal
adoption, copying, a hybrid model generation or synthesis.
In our case, diffusion consists of the adoption and imple-
mentation of e-government or e-participation tools in a
country. To account for variance in diffusion we focus on
the magnitude (numeral distribution) and distribution over
time (temporal diffusion).
The understanding of the political process for the adop-
tion of online tools remains limited. On the one hand,
©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2016) 7:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12372
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 4 . November 2016
548
Special Section Article
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