Electronic Democracy and Public Participation in Portugal: An exploratory analysis

Filipe Montargil

Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa, Departamento de Ciência Polâtica, e Escola Superior de ComunicaÙão Social, Departamento de Jornalismo, Email: fjmm@lis.ulusiada.pt


One of the central features of the reflection on the general theme "Public Participation and Information Technologies" is the impact of information technologies on the democratic process. Concepts like electronic democracy, teledemocracy or cyberdemocracy have been used to describe the possible outcome of the use of information technologies in democratic systems. This paper describes a research work where the impact of recent portuguese experiences of electronic democracy on public participation is analysed. The study is theoretically based in a preliminary discussion and definition of the concepts of electronic democracy and public participation. The analysis is limited to, a) the 71 measures proposed in the Green Book for the Information Society in Portugal, b) the electronic vote experiences carried in the local elections of 1997, in the PSD (Social-Democrat) convention in April 1998, and the PS (Socialist) convention of February 1999, and c) two experiences carried out by the media ("Forum", a program by TSF,a national radio, and "Em Leg’tima Defesa", a broadcast by TVI, a national TV station). Some of the preliminary conclusions of the analysis of empirical data tend to indicate a still very limited impact of electronic democracy experiences on the traditional structure and organization of public participation.




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