The Impact of Digital Participation on Democratic Urban Governance

Abstract

This concluding chapter examines the effect on democracy of different approaches to the digitalization of citizen participation. We investigate how well different e-participation models perform on the dimensions of inclusiveness, deliberation and popular control, the models examined being the online direct democracy model in Madrid, the digital crowdsourcing model in Melbourne and the e-bricolage model in Oslo. Digital technologies can, compared with analogue participation, enable cities to reach out to a larger number of people and strengthen the role of citizens in decision-making. The limitations of digital participation are revealed or confirmed by this study. Digital technologies can mobilize more citizens, but at the same time reinforce existing inequalities. High-quality deliberation is also difficult to achieve through online platforms. This study shows that the approach applied by cities to digitalization impacts the level of democracy achieved. This should be useful to practitioners designing systems of citizen participation in other cities.