The Project
(2007-2009)
E-democracy technologies and the
problem of public trust
Many governments have
seen a decline in trust in the past
decades.
One of the dominant
governmental strategies to restore
public trust is to adopt modern ICTs
to strengthen the relationship between
government and citizens.
The aim of e-democracy
tools is to give people more choice
about how they can participate and to
give them the feeling that their input
makes a real difference, eventually
resulting in more trust in government.
But does this governmental strategy
really work?
I will focus on the
question 'Does e-democracy increase
trust in government, and, if so, under
what conditions?'
The current search
for technological solutions to the
problem of distrust in government
seems to be paradoxical because, to
increase public trust and confidence,
governments will be relying on
information and communication systems
that themselves require a high level
of trust. Information technology is
poorly understood by many people,
which may reduce their trust in the
technology, as well as in governments
that use ICTs. Socio-economic
variations amongst citizens in terms
of age, gender, income, education,
geographic location and other
characteristics are also expected to
influence their level of trust in
ICTs. A second question will therefore
be examined: 'How does trust or
distrust in e-democracy technologies
influence the use of these
technologies and tools?'
In
order to answer the questions, I
will select two
local and
two national e-democracy initiatives (2 in
England, 2 in the Netherlands).
In these case studies I will examine
the role of awareness of governments’
performance and of distance to
government, as these are the
behavioural variables following from
the theory. Furthermore, I will
investigate contextual factors that
influence the use of e-democracy
technologies, and the changes in trust
in technology and in government. The
case studies include interviewing,
observations and I will conduct two
surveys among participants (one in the
beginning, and one at the end) to be
able to generalize the findings.
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