Dimensions of e-Participation: Levels of Participation and Citizen Configurations

Abstract

The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG 16) promotes peaceful, just and inclusive societies, where people can influence decisions that affect their lives. As governments are increasingly relying on digital technology to facilitate communication with citizens, we take an interest in the tools and methods used to provide spaces for these communications. More specifically, we aimed to ascertain the characteristics of the digital methods and tools used for participatory processes in national government, and the role of the citizen in the associated participatory spaces. The research was conducted through a survey administered to representatives of Swedish national government agencies. Our study was guided by previous literature on levels of participation, and configuration of citizens. The findings reveal a concentration of participatory activities associated with tokenism, where citizens are commonly referred to as customers and users. Deepened forms of citizen participation were largely absent in the data. These results were used to inform a framework which combines levels of participation with additional dimensions that account for citizen configuration. We argue for the importance, both in research and practice, of distinguishing between different citizen configurations, since the associated activities these configurations entail are vastly diverse. Finally, we propose further research to extend our present framework by including results from additional levels of government and national contexts.