Organizing e‐participation: Challenges stemming from the multiplicity of actors
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Author | Tiina Randma‐Liiv |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12788 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Organizing e-participation: Challenges stemming
from the multiplicity of actors
Tiina Randma-Liiv
Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and
Governance, Tallinn University of Technology,
Tallinn, Estonia
Correspondence
Tiina Randma-Liiv, Ragnar Nurkse
Department of Innovation and Governance,
Tallinn University of Technology, Akadeemia
tee 3, Tallinn 12618, Estonia.
Email: tiina.randma-liiv@taltech.ee
Funding information
European Union
Abstract
Multiple actors involved in the provision of e-participation
initiatives add to the complexity of organizational design
and blur accountability and ownership relations. This study
addresses the following research questions: How are differ-
ent organizations and their units involved in the supply of
e-participation initiatives? How does the multiplicity of
actors affect cross-boundary collaboration, ownership,
and accountability relations in the implementation of
e-participation initiatives? The empirical analysis is based on
comparative case studies on e-participation platforms in
seven European countries. The case studies indicate that
cross-organizational issues—ownership and accountability,
in particular—have often been insufficiently addressed
during the development of e-participation initiatives.Ambig-
uous ownership and diffused accountability are particularly
challenging in the cases of multilevel governance and in
“bottom-up”e-participation initiatives. The “distance”
between the unit responsible for the administration of an
e-participation initiative and the decision-makers appears to
be a critical factor for the functioning of the platforms.
1|INTRODUCTION
Citizen engagement through e-participation is expected to inform government decision-making and enhance demo-
cratic processes as well as contribute to the values of openness, innovation, and collaboration (Macintosh, 2004).
Received: 11 October 2020 Revised: 14 September 2021 Accepted: 21 September 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12788
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2021 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Public Admin. 2022;100:1037–1053. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm 1037
However, the proofof the democratizing and legitimizing effects of e-participation initiativeshas remained scarce, with
technology oftenfailing to deliver the transformational changes toward new formsof participation (Norris, 2010). The
general criticism toward e-participation studieshas been attributed to an overlytechno-centric focus,in which politico-
administrative and organizational realities areunderestimated (Porwol etal., 2013). Despite the variety of opportunities
for engagementoffered by new technology, studies refer to a general weakness of e-participation initiatives to deliver
expected outcomes (Prosser, 2012;Toots, 2019), mobilize a sufficient number of activeusers (Epstein et al., 2014),and
fulfill the democratic promise of engaging the disengaged segments of society (Karlsson, 2012; Lidén, 2013). Such
drawbacks are argued to relate to societal, administrative, and organizational factors rather than technical aspects
(Steinbachet al., 2019;Zhengetal.,2014),thus highlighting the importance of such “nontechnical”aspects.
When considering the “nontechnical”side of e-participation research, there are many studies on the “demand
side”of e-participation. For instance, studies show that demands associated with the number of Internet users
(Åström et al., 2012), digital divide (Van Deursen & Helsper, 2015), trust in e-participation (Scherer &
Wimmer, 2014), and the socio-economic background of the population (Medaglia, 2007a; Williams et al., 2013) are
related to the adoption of e-participation. A recent study by Pirannejad et al. (2019) rightly argues that the character-
istics of the “society side”should be given more prominence in the development of e-participation indexes.
This article takes a different starting point by addressing the “supply side”of e-participation (Krishnan
et al., 2012), more specifically, government as a mediator of e-participation initiatives. In the analysis of such a “sup-
ply side”of e-participation, both political and administrative factors are important. Although it is not possible to draw
an explicit line between political and administrative aspects, the focus of this study is on the administration of e-
participation platforms rather than on political factors. The organizational design is explored assuming that there is
political interest in e-participation and the government is willing to engage citizens in the policy-making process.
Public administrations play a key role in the development of e-participation (Medaglia, 2012;Steinbach
et al., 2019) becausethey are usually responsiblefor organizing and administering online communication channelswith
which citizens canengage in the political arena. However, insufficient attention to the empirical relationship between
the dominant normative approach in e-participation literature (Lutz & Hoffmann, 2017) and the actual politico-
administrative and organizational context in whiche-participation initiatives unfold has hindered the possibilityof draw-
ing broader conclusions on the organization of e-participation platforms. A thoroughliterature review on e-participation
(Steinbach et al.,2019) concludes that more research is needed to open the institutional “blackbox”(Chadwick, 2011,
p. 24) because thereis little empirical research that systematically addresses how e-participatory policy-makingis actu-
ally organizedin order to facilitate collaboration between decision-makers and citizens.
The present research differs from existing studies in two aspects. First, most empirical studies on the organiza-
tion of e-participation have taken a micro-level focus on one organization or unit as a supplier of e-participation ini-
tiatives (see, e.g., Chadwick, 2011; Reddick & Norris, 2013; Royo et al., 2013; Zheng et al., 2014). This study,
however, assumes that e-participation initiatives are provided through the collaboration of several organizations/
units. Second, there are several multi-country studies on e-participation (see, e.g., Medaglia, 2007b; Panopoulou
et al., 2014; Reddick & Norris, 2013; Royo et al., 2013). However, as the systematic organizational analysis assumes
in-depth (qualitative) research, the limited number of such thorough studies on the organization of e-participation
tend to base their conclusions on the examination of one single e-participation initiative (see, e.g., Chadwick, 2011;
Toots, 2019). In order to contribute to existing knowledge, this study draws on a variety of organizational contexts
and characteristics across seven European government-to-citizen e-participation platforms, with a particular focus
on different actors and their collaboration in mediating e-participation, in order to elaborate upon more general organi-
zational patterns and challenges surrounding e-participation.
2|ANALYTICAL BACKGROUND
In most previous studies, actors involved in the supply of e-participation platforms have been seen as individuals
(politicians, civil servants, “champions,”experts, business or civil society leaders) rather than institutions. For
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