The evolution of citizen and stakeholder engagement in Canada, from Spicer to #Hashtags

Abstract

Government-led citizen and stakeholder engagement is undertaken with the broad aims of improving government effectiveness and strengthening perceived legitimacy for government action. However, some aspects of the digital era that are challenging and stretching these traditions include changing economics of attention, heightened expectations of citizens and stakeholders, and a reconfiguration of the nature of policymaking discourse. Seven Government of Canada citizen and stakeholder engagement cases, spread over the past 27 years, are reviewed against the emergence of digital technologies within the context of traditional engagement exercises to understand how governments are experimenting with new approaches, and how new models may still be needed to respond to this shifting technology landscape. A future research agenda is sketched that anticipates how expanding technological capabilities, changing expectations on the part of citizens and stakeholders, and new approaches to policy discourse might require a reappraisal of our concepts of citizen and stakeholder engagement.