Organizing e-participation: Challenges stemming from the multiplicity of actors

Abstract

Multiple actors involved in the provision of e-participation initiatives add to the complexity of organizational design and blur accountability and ownership relations. This study addresses the following research questions: How are different organizations and their units involved in the supply of e-participation initiatives? How does the multiplicity of actors affect cross-boundary collaboration, ownership, and accountability relations in the implementation of e-participation initiatives? The empirical analysis is based on comparative case studies on e-participation platforms in seven European countries. The case studies indicate that cross-organizational issues—ownership and accountability, in particular—have often been insufficiently addressed during the development of e-participation initiatives. Ambiguous ownership and diffused accountability are particularly challenging in the cases of multilevel governance and in “bottom-up” e-participation initiatives. The “distance” between the unit responsible for the administration of an e-participation initiative and the decision-makers appears to be a critical factor for the functioning of the platforms.