Digitalising City Governance in Russia: The Case of the ‘Active Citizen’ Platform

Abstract

This essay examines the role of civic tech in contemporary Russian governance through a data-driven analysis of the ‘Active Citizen’ platform deployed in Moscow. It shows that the way in which polls are conducted on the platform has various consequences, from serving the city administration’s PR needs to shuffling the power balance in various policy areas and effectively disempowering certain stakeholder groups, as well as helping the administration to increase control over a policy domain. At the same time, some platform uses actually empower citizens by engaging them in decision-making and offering grounds for further mobilisation.