Can  e-­‐participation  tools  help  localities  address  the  crisis  of  democratic  legitimacy?  

   

Dr.  Lynne  L.  Bernier  Associate  Professor  of  Political  Science  and  Global  Studies  

Carroll  University  Waukesha,  WI  53186  U.S.A.  

Fulbright  Research  Scholar  in  France,  2012-­‐2013*                                          Paper  prepared  for  presentation  at  the  7th  Annual  Conference  of  the  European  Council  for  Political  Research  in  Bordeaux,  France,  September  4-­‐7,  2013.    *  I  would  like  to  thank  the  Franco-­‐American  Commission  in  Paris  and  the  Fulbright  Commission  in  Washington,  D.C.  for  their  support  of  this  project.      

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For  almost  two  decades  now,  the  Internet  and  related  technologies  (New  Information  and  Communication  Technologies  [NICTs])1  have  changed  dramatically  the  way  people  live,  work,  socialize,  even  oust  their  rulers.    Can  NICTs  also  alter  how  citizens  in  democracies  participate  in  the  public  sphere  closest  to  home,  thus  strengthening  local  governments’  legitimacy?    Do  elected  and  appointed  officials  utilize  NICTs’  transformative  potential  to  alter  their  relationships  with  local  citizens?  This  empirical  research  paper,  framed  by  theoretical  conceptions  of  democratic  participation  and  political  representation  found  in  classical  (e.g.,  Burke,  Mill,  and  Tocqueville)  and  contemporary  (e.g.,  Arnstein,  Blondiaux,  Habermas,  Pateman,  Wolin)  work,  presents  qualitative  data  gathered  in  a  series  of  semi-­‐structured  interviews  with  political  and  administrative  professionals  in  local  governments  in  one  region  of  France.2    The  presentation  of  findings  is  structured  by  a  tri-­‐partite  typology  of  “legitimation”  actions  attributable  to  public  sector  actors.    Undertaken  with  the  support  of  a  year-­‐long  Fulbright  research  grant,  this  study  investigates  how  local  governments  use  digital  tools  to  involve  more  and  different  citizens  than  before  in  participatory  policy-­‐making  processes  (or  not),  as  well  as  the  factors  that  shape  public  actors’  choices.  Local  governments  in  France  clearly  experience  challenges  to  their  Standard  Operating  Procedures  when  they  implement  NICTs,  particularly  with  the  advent  of  interactive  Web  2.0  tools.    For  many,  the  technology  is  a  double-­‐edged  sword  that  brings  with  it  both  promise  of  more  communication  with  citizens  and  potential  for  a  significant  threat  to  their  legitimacy  given  what  citizens  can  know  and  can  expect.    The  paper  concludes  with  an  examination  of  the  rising  “digital  natives,”  the  NetGen,  young  people  whose  view  of  the  world  is  profoundly  shaped  by  NICTs  and  who  will  doubtless  have  fundamentally  different  expectations  of  government  responsiveness  and  public  sector  operations  than  previous  generations  did.  The  emergence  of  the  technology-­‐enabled  “sharing  economy”  mindsets  and  practices  that  bypass  top-­‐down  official  channels  and  cast  governments  in  a  supportive,  facilitative  role  rather  than  that  of  hierarchical  authority  will  also  challenge  public  sector  actors  to  adapt  their  legitimation  strategies.        

For  the  last  twenty  years,  researchers  in  many  disciplines  (political  science,  sociology,  communication,  technology,  and  others)  have  been  studying  NICTs’  effects  on  political  life  and  citizen  participation.    At  the  beginning  of  this  revolutionary  era,  some  predicted  the  emergence  of  a  “virtual  agora”  prompting  the  development  (at  last)  of    “real”  participatory  democracy,  starting  at  the  local  level.3    However,  empirical  studies  conducted  in  a  variety  of  Western  democracies  during  the  first  decade  of  the  21st  century  revealed  that  local  governments  made  very  little  use  of  digital  capabilities  to  promote  and  enlarge  citizen  participation  in  decision-­‐making  processes  (at  least  via  their  institutional  websites  using  tools  such  as  discussion  forums,  blogs,  chats,  on-­‐line                                                                                                                  1  There  is  some  dispute  about  whether  the  “N”  belongs  in  the  designation  of  these  technologies,  since  the  Internet  is  hardly  new.    Of  course,  with  new  software  and  applications  appearing  every  day,  uses  are  changing  constantly.    I  retained  the  designation  “New”  to  align  with  the  title  of  the  panel.      2  The  interviews  were  conducted  over  a  period  of  nine  months  with  a  total  of  approximately  fifty  local  government  officials  in  cities  and  other  local  government  units.    Interviews  also  involved  officials  in  non-­‐profit  and  public/private  organizations  connected  to  public  sector  digital  initiatives.  3  See,  for  example,  Dominique  Wolton’s  introduction  to  a  special  edition  of  Hermès  dedicated  to  local  e-­‐democracy  (2000.)  See  Barber  (1984)  and  Lane  and  Lee  (2001)  for  early  examples  of  cyber-­‐optimism  and  Margolis  and  Morena-­‐Riano  (2009)  for  a  more  recent  assessment.    Of  course,  we  have  to  bear  in  mind  that  every  time  an  NICT  came  on  the  scene,  optimists  predicted  that  it  would  revolutionize  the  relationship  between  the  government  and  citizens  (e.g.,  radio  or  television).      

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surveys,  wikis).4    As  Web  2.0  and  even  Web  3.0  emerge,  some  predict  that  cities  will  make  greater  use  of  interactive  technologies  to  involve  citizens  in  public  life.    In  a  cogent  and  synthetic  overview  of  contemporary  local  government  e-­‐participatory  practices,  Baldersheim  and  Kersting  (2012,  603)  caution:      

Visions  of  more  participatory  politics,  however,  are  realized  only  intermittently.    Scattered  experiments  in  electronic  participation  can  be  observed,  but  experiences  so  far  suggest  that  many  hurdles  must  be  overcome  before  they  can  be  sustainable  practices  in  cities.    The  interaction  between  standard,  representative  democracy  and  participatory  democracy  electronically  sustained  is  an  uneasy  one.    What  is  emerging  in  wired  cities  is  a  blended  democracy  –  representative  democracy  as  we  have  traditionally  known  it,  digitally  enriched  with  strands  of  participatory  democracy.    Consequently,  a  gap  in  terms  of  democratic  development  is  opening  up  between  cities  that  grasp  the  new  technologies  and  cities  that  do  not  do  so.    

In  this  paper,  I  examine  how  a  number  of  French  cities  use  NICTs  to  bolster  their  legitimacy  among  residents.    What  explains  differences  in  local  governments’  approaches?    While  an  analysis  of  cities’  websites  tells  us  something  about  what  local  governments  are  doing,  it  does  not  reveal  anything  about  the  “why’s”  and  “wherefore’s”  behind  their  actions,  or  how  political  and  administrative  leaders  actually  experience  the  impact  of  technology  on  their  relationship  to  citizens.    To  investigate  these  phenomena,  it  is  essential  to  conduct  fieldwork  in  local  governments,  to  enter  into  the  “black  box”  of  decision-­‐making  and  to  attempt  to  parse  through  the  motivations  of  local  officials  as  well  as  the  constraints  they  experience.5      This  study  focuses  on  what  I  call  the  “political  offer”  (“supply  side”)  at  the  local  level  through  the  lens  of  officials’  perspectives.    It  does  not  empirically  examine  the  “demand  side”  of  the  equation  (citizens’  point  of  view).6      

Theoretical  and  Empirical  Context  

The  model  of  “ideal”  citizen  participation  often  evokes  references  to  the  Greek  notions  of  democracy  as  practiced  in  the  polis  and  the  agora.    Here,  at  a  small  scale,  citizens  of  the  city-­‐state  (not  females,  not  slaves,  not  resident  foreigners),  men  who  were  expected  to  serve  in  the  military  to  defend  its  territory,  had  the  right  to  discuss  public  matters  and  to  make  authoritative  decisions  for  the  collective.    This  model,  which  came  forward  into  the  modern  age  and  is  best  known  in  America’s  New  England  “town  hall  meetings,”  rests  upon  the  ideal  of  a  group  of  well-­‐informed,  reasonable,  and  public-­‐spirited  citizens                                                                                                                  4  Many  scholars  have  analyzed  local  government  websites  in  their  countries,  producing  a  number  of  large-­‐N  studies,  few  of  which  are  overtly  comparative.    The  primary  finding  of  all  of  these  studies  spanning  a  decade  is  that  overall,  local  authorities  did  not  utilize  digital  technologies  to  enhance  citizen  participation  in  decision-­‐making  in  any  significant  ways    (see,  for  instance,  Criado  and  Ramilo’s  work  on  Spanish  cities  [2003],  Loiseau’s  work  on  French  cities  [2000  and  2011],  Medaglia’s  analysis  of  Italian  local  government  websites  [2007],  and  Scott’s  examination  of  local  government  sites  and  public  involvement  in  the  U.S.  [2006].  Wohlers  [2009]  explicitly  compares  local  government  websites  in  the  U.S.  and  Germany.)      5  An  excellent  example  of  this  behind-­‐the-­‐scenes  (behind-­‐the-­‐website)  approach  is  Andrew  Chadwick’s  (2011)  examination  of  the  institutional  variables  that  explain  the  failure  of  an  attempt  to  engage  citizens  on-­‐line  in  one  American  city.      6  The  potential  weakness  in  this  methodology  that  relies  on  interviews  with  officials  is  that  the  “data”  are  official  discourses  in  which  interviewees  put  the  best  face  on  their  experiences  and  motives.    But  as  will  become  evident,  the  emergent  picture  is  not  all  that  positive;  most  of  those  questioned  conveyed  concern  for  a  balance  between  helpful  citizen  input  and  leadership  responsibility  exercised  by  elected  politicians.  

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who  deliberate  together  and  come  to  decisions  that  represent  a  consensus  or  a  compromise.    Former  U.S.  Vice  President  Al  Gore  made  reference  to  the  relationship  between  emerging  NICTs  and  this  ideal  very  briefly  in  an  often-­‐cited  phrase  pronounced  in  a  speech  at  the  1994  International  Telecommunications  Union  meeting  on  the  subject  of  global  information  infrastructure:  “I  see  a  new  era  of  Athenian  democracy.”    The  idea  was  at  the  heart  of  a  school  of  techno-­‐optimists  who  believed  that  citizen  participation  in  electronic  democracy  would  rejuvenate  flagging  interest  in  government,  thus  strengthening  democratic  legitimacy.    

Political  theorists  and  empirical  researchers  have  long  been  preoccupied  with  the  question  of  the  role  citizens  should  play  in  representative  democracies  between  elections,  in  other  words  what  influence  they  should  have  on  policy  decisions  once  they  have  chosen  the  decision-­‐makers.    Even  prior  to  the  practice  of  widespread  suffrage,  classical  theorists  argued  in  favor  of  active  citizen  participation  because  of  the  benefits  it  brings  to  participants  (Rousseau),  while  others  (Burke,  Tocqueville,  Mill)  favored  a  balance  between  citizen  expression  of  their  policy  preferences  and  officials’  ultimate  responsibility  for  substantive  decisions  and  their  outcomes.    More  contemporary  Anglo-­‐Saxon  theoretical  work  dating  from  the  1960s    (Berelson,  Dahl,  Huntington,  Eckstein)  treated  citizen  participation  from  a  “Schumpeterian”  perspective,  downplaying  citizens’  interest  and  capability  to  take  informed  decisions  about  policy  matters  and  stressing  the  role  and  legitimacy  of  duly-­‐elected  leaders.    Carole  Pateman,  in  her  seminal  work,  Participation  and  Democratic  Theory  (1970),  rejected  these  arguments  based  on  Rousseau’s  reasoning  as  well  as  the  experiences  emanating  from  experiments  with  worker  management  in  industry.    Contemporary  discussion  of  citizen  participation  is  framed  by  the  opportunities  governments  provide  for  citizen  input.    Beginning  with  Arnstein’s  brief  and  seminal  identification  of  the  rungs  on  the  “ladder  of  citizen  participation,”  (1969),  generally  researchers  have  found  that  institutional  participatory  processes  have  not  attracted  much  interest  from  citizens  (Blondiaux,  2011).    In  France,  even  when  there  is  a  lot  of  “buzz”  and  a  lot  of  participatory  venues,  research  has  not  uncovered    much  evidence  that  it  has  any  significant  impact  on  decision-­‐makers.    As  Blondiaux  points  out,  this  is  in  and  of  itself  a  fairly  significant  finding,  though  not  the  one  that  many  social  scientists  would  prefer.      

 

What  constitutes  democratic  legitimacy  at  the  local  level?    

Political  scientists  concerned  with  democratic  legitimacy  focus  most  often  on  the  nation-­‐state,  not  on  local  governments.  In  the  simplest  of  terms,  legitimacy  refers  to  the  citizens’  perception  that  a  government  has  rightful  authority  to  rule  over  them.    Thus,  legitimacy  exists  in  the  minds  of  citizens  and  can  only  really  be  measured  by  asking  them  about  their  perceptions,  attitudes,  and  beliefs.    When  a  majority  of  citizens  no  longer  perceive  a  government  as  legitimate,  we  have  a  legitimacy  “crisis.”  Advanced  democracies  have  been  in  crisis  for  at  least  fifty  years.  Outward  indicators  of  this  crisis  include:  citizen  protests  that  turn  attitudes  into  action;  declining  participation  in  

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“conventional”  political  activities  like  joining  a  political  party  or  voting  in  an  election;  and  declining  trust  in  political  institutions  and  leaders.7    

How  do  we  know  if  citizens  regard  their  local  governments  as  legitimate?  We  don’t  often  see  people  demonstrating  in  the  streets  over  strictly  local  political  concerns.    At  the  present  time,  we  have  some  scattered  evidence  of  citizen  attitudes  toward  local  governments  and  leaders  based  on  survey  data  from  cities  in  a  few  countries,  but  we  have  no  equivalent  to  the  cross-­‐national  opinion  surveys  based  on  large  random  samples  such  as  those  that  Verba  and  his  colleagues  or  Dalton  utilized.  I  would  contend,  however,  that  peoples’  sense  of  their  local  governments’  legitimacy  is  rooted  not  in  vague  ideas  and  impressions  of  government  policy  or  actors,  as  might  be  the  case  with  the  national  level,  but  in  tangible  local  experiences  and  the  results  of  particular  local  government  actions.  What  do  citizens  expect  of  local  authorities  that  would  make  them  “legitimate?”    Expectations  are  concrete,  and  government  responsiveness  (or  lack  thereof)  is  visible  in  both  the  short-­‐  and  long-­‐term.    Are  potholes  in  the  streets  repaired  quickly?    Are  services  delivered  effectively?    Do  citizens  have  the  sense  that  elected  and  appointed  officials  listen  to  their  concerns  and  respond  to  their  complaints?    Can  they  find  out  easily  what  city  government  is  doing  and/or  planning?    Can  they  readily  access  the  information  they  need  and/or  want  with  respect  to  community  life?    Do  people  experience  a  good  “quality  of  life”  in  their  local  area?  Do  residents  feel  secure  as  they  go  about  their  daily  lives  in  their  communities?  While  some  citizens  are  no  doubt  also  concerned  about  officials’  larger-­‐scale  and  longer-­‐term  visions  for  their  communities,  I  do  not  believe  these  are  the  top  priority  for  any  but  a  few  public-­‐spirited  local  activists.    The  criteria  that  citizens  use  to  evaluate  the  legitimacy  of  local  governments,  in  short,  are  not  necessarily  the  same  as  those  they  apply  to  their  judgments  of  national  governments.  However,  in  an  era  of  shrinking  local  government  budgets  and  increased  interdependence  with  forces  outside  of  the  immediate  area,  localities  have  a  hard  time  maintaining  their  legitimacy  in  the  citizens’  eyes,  as  do  national  governments.  Since  legitimacy  is  essential  to  the  ability  to  govern  at  any  level,  local  officials  are  anxious  to  maintain  their  claim  to  it,  and  thus  must  act  to  create  or  reinforce  positive  citizen  attitudes  and  beliefs.        

Recent  work  by  Roos  and  Lindstrom  on  Swedish  localities  draws  a  distinction  between  legitimacy  (citizen  attitudes  toward  government)  and  legitimation  (government  actions  directed  to  enhance  or  increase  legitimacy).8    In  other  words,  legitimacy  is  a  “demand-­‐side”  concept  and  legitimation,  a  “supply-­‐side”  concept.  Building  on  Scharpf  (1999)  and  Haus  and  Heinelt  (2005),  Roos  and  Lindstrom  create  a  typology  that  divides  government  actions  into  three  categories;  the  typology  is  useful  for  analyzing  the  interview  data  gathered  in  French  localities.    This  study  focuses  on  the  supply  side  and  looks  at  local  governments’  digital  strategies  for  enhancing  their  legitimacy  in  the  eyes  of  their  publics.  E-­‐democracy  and  e-­‐participation  tools  available  to  local  governments  today  provide  them  with  enhanced  or  alternative  means  to  pursue  all  three  types  of  legitimation  actions.  

                                                                                                               7  Classic  works  on  these  topics  include  Robert  Putnam  (2000)  and  Russell  Dalton  (2004).    For  a  recent  report  on  2013  protests  in  cities  across  the  democratic  world,  see  The  Economist,  June  29-­‐July  5,  2013,  “The  March  of  Protest.  “  8  At:    http://gu.se/digitalAssets/1350/1350022_citizens-­‐and-­‐local-­‐government-­‐katarinaroos_anderslidstr-­‐-­‐m.pdf  (last  accessed  6/12/2013).  

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Input  legitimation  refers  to  government  actions  meant  to  produce  a  belief  among  citizens  that  they  have  the  possibility  to  influence  local  decision-­‐making.    Governments  provide  real  opportunities  for  citizen  participation;  citizen  voices  are  heard  and  taken  into  consideration  by  local  officials  during  the  public  policy-­‐making  process.    Local  governments  all  over  the  world  have  moved  beyond  elections  as  the  sole  form  of  citizen  participation  to  include  such  mechanisms  as  neighborhood  councils,  citizen  audits  and  panels,  participatory  budgeting.    In  addition  to  these  in-­‐person  venues,  e-­‐participation  tools  provide  local  governments  with  the  potential  to  bring  more  and  different  citizens  into  the  policy  conversation,  and  also,  if  conducted  effectively,  to  improve  peoples’  perception  that  their  opinions  matter  and  that  their  expertise  as  users  informs  the  policy  process.    A  number  of  localities  whose  officials  I  interviewed,  for  example,  establish  on-­‐line  platforms  for  citizen  expression/participation  concerning  local  public  projects.    

Output  legitimation  refers  to  evidence  that  public  institutions  deliver  effective  policy  that  responds  to  citizens’  needs.    Do  citizens  experience  these  effective  outcomes  as  part  of  their  daily  lives  in  the  community?    This  kind  of  legitimation  action  has  of  course  long  been  a  part  of  local  politics  and  administration  (probably  most  marked  in  the  New  Public  Management  movement  that  began  in  the  1970s  and  continued  with  the  Reinventing  Government  movement  in  the  1990s),  and  constitutes  what  is  commonly  called  “good  government.”      The  hallmark  of  output  legitimation  is  a  market-­‐oriented  sense  of  service  production  that  aims  to  increase  efficiency  and,  correspondingly,  citizen  satisfaction.  On  the  local  level,  digital  tools  that  allow  citizens  to  complete  administrative  procedures  on-­‐line  are  now  standard.  NICTs  that  allow  citizens  to  register  complaints  about  local  infrastructure  or  other  public  sector  dysfunctions  using  their  Smartphones  (along  the  lines  of  the  British  system  “Fix  My  Street”)  are  increasingly  common.    As  we  will  see  below,  improved  service  delivery  is  a  primary  aim  for  the  local  officials  interviewed,  but  on-­‐line  complaint  systems  also  carry  a  risk  for  local  governments  because  they  open  up  the  floodgates  of  immediate  citizen  input  and  expectations  for  immediate  local  government  response.  Digital  tools  related  to  service  delivery  clearly  raise  the  threshold  for  local  government  output  legitimation.      

Throughput  legitimation  refers  to  government  actions  to  increase  institutional  and  procedural  transparency  so  that  citizen  trust  increases.    Again,  government  efforts  in  this  area  are  not  new;  open  meetings  and  open  information  legislation  existed  long  before  the  Internet.    But,  by  definition,  NICTs  can  vastly  increase  government  transparency.    Most  cities  of  any  size  have  an  official  website  where  they  post  minutes  if  not  videos  of  every  city  council  meeting,  along  with  most  documents  relating  to  particular  local  projects  and  reports  on  public  action.  The  latest  development  in  terms  of  transparency  is  the  world-­‐wide  Open  Data  movement,  requiring  local  governments  (and  others)  to  take  most  of  the  data  they  use  for  operational  purposes  and  make  it  publically  available.    

Based  on  the  data  gathered  in  interviews,  which  warrants  further  exploration  through  larger-­‐scale  studies,  I  would  conclude  that  in  France  at  least,  local  governments  prioritize  improved  service  delivery  and  more  transparent  operations  using  NICTs  over  expanded  or  enhanced  public  participation  utilizing  e-­‐participation  tools.    The  

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interviews  confirm  that  scattered  experiments  using  digital  tools  to  enhance  input  legitimation  are  taking  place,  and  are  successful  where  they  are  embedded  in  local  political  cultures  that  value  citizen  input  and  participation.    However,  as  we  will  see  below,  these  “conventional”  e-­‐participation  mechanisms  (on-­‐line  participation  platforms,  for  example)  are  already  giving  way  to  alternative  approaches  that  use  NICTs  to  gather  information  on  public  opinion.    

 

Input  legitimation    

There  are  reasons  to  believe  that  local  government  officials  are  better  able  to  increase  their  legitimacy  than  their  national-­‐level  counterparts  by  providing  more  citizens  with  the  potential  for  input  on  policy  decisions.  In  many  ways,  the  city  is  the  ideal  unit  in  which  participatory  democracy  can  function  well  (Dahl,  1967).    In  cities  that  are  not  too  large,  or  in  sizeable  cities  that  are  divided  into  neighborhoods  or  districts  each  with  its  own  citizen  councils  or  meetings,  there  can  be  real  interaction  among  citizens  and  with  officials  concerning  questions  of  importance.    There  can  be  debate  on  subjects  familiar  to  citizens,  subjects  that  affect  their  quality  of  life  such  as  housing,  transportation,  and  public  health,  for  instance.    A  larger  percentage  of  citizens  might  be  willing  to  engage  in  “continuous  democracy”  through  connections  to  local  decision-­‐makers  when  public  actions  have  an  immediate  and  discernible  impact  on  their  daily  lives.      

At  the  same  time,  it  would  be  unwise  to  exaggerate  the  hope  for  large-­‐scale  citizen  participation  at  the  local  level.    As  many  of  my  interviewees  stated,  participation  rates  at  public  meetings  are  low,  and  authorities  often  see  the  same  people  over  and  over  again  (older  people  with  time,  interest,  and  a  stake  in  policy  outcomes).  There  are  a  number  of  explanations  for  this  rather  disappointing  state  of  affairs,  and  NICTs  might  address  at  least  four  of  them:      

1.    Citizens  feel  they  lack  information  or  that  they  are  unable  to  grasp  the  technical  details  of  projects  or  public  policies;  NICTs  facilitate  information  diffusion.  

2.    Citizens  feel  they  lack  the  “cultural  capital”  allowing  them  to  speak  easily  in  public;  they  hesitate  to  stand  up  in  a  public  meeting  to  confront  institutional  authorities  or  even  other  citizens  who  they  think  are  better  informed  and  more  competent  than  they.    On-­‐line  discussions,  forums,  and  exchanges  may  ease  citizens’  apprehensions  about  expressing  themselves  “in  front”  of  others.  

3.    Citizens  are  preoccupied  with  their  personal  lives;  even  if  they  have  an  interest  in  the  “public  good”  or  they  have  a  particular  private  interest  to  defend,  public  meetings  occur  at  times  and  in  places  that  are  not  particularly  convenient  for  them;  NICTs  make  possible  asynchronous  participation  or  synchronous  participation  from  a  distance.      

4.    Young  people  are  generally  indifferent  to  institutionalized  politics;  they  might  be  attracted  to  participate  through  Web  2.0  tools  that  they  frequently  use  in  their  private  lives.      

Local  authorities  in  the  region  studied  are  experimenting  with  e-­‐participation  tools  to  overcome  challenges  and  to  try  to  draw  more  citizens  into  the  public  discussion,  but  

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overall,  officials’  past  experiences  lead  them  to  be  skeptical  that  NICTs  are  some  kind  of  “magic  bullet.”  As  the  director  of  one  mayor’s  cabinet  in  a  suburban  community  said,  “you  can’t  decree  participation.”    Another  cabinet  director  stated,  “NITCs  are  not  the  key  that  will  bring  more  people  into  the  political  world.”    Moreover,  several  officials  pointed  out  that  the  citizens’  appetite  for  participation  on-­‐line  is  much  more  limited  than  the  “experts”  would  like  to  think.  

One  of  the  best  and  simultaneously  most  practical  reasons  for  officials  to  solicit  citizen  input  into  public  policy-­‐making  is  that  residents  bring  their  expertise  as  users,  and  what  they  contribute  actually  makes  decisions  better.    In  French  communities,  this  expertise  is  particularly  relevant  in  processes  of  urban  planning  and  infrastructure  projects.      

It’s  also  a  sign  of  humility  among  elected  officials  to  recognize  that  the  citizens  have  a  certain  kind  of  expertise,  because  they  are  the  ones  who  live  in  the  neighborhood  and  we  need  to  take  their  daily  lives  into  account  when  we  make  decisions.    It’s  not  just  the  experts  and  the  politicians  who  know,  but  that  citizens  have  a  certain  kind  of  knowledge  about  the  area.  

City  Manager  in  a  suburb  of  a  large  city,  population  15,000  

This  does  not  mean  that  officials  are  anxious  to  open  up  decisions  to  full  public  participation  on  all  issues.  Those  I  interviewed  stressed  that  to  be  constructive  and  helpful  to  decision-­‐makers,  the  more  narrow  and  specific  the  input,  the  better.  

When  we  are  thinking  about  renovations  of  public  spaces,  and  we’re  doing  this  with  some  success  with  the  city  park  service,  we’re  working  with  a  department  that  is  very  technical,  but  where  the  agents  realize  that  the  spaces  are  very  positive  for  the  population  (better  than  a  city  dump!)  and  that  you  can  really  work  on  questions  of  how  people  utilize  the  space.    People  don’t  have  to  have  technical  expertise  to  give  useful  feedback  on  how  they  would  use  the  space.    They  can  give  us  lots  of  useful  information  about  what  to  include  in  a  park,  when  to  have  it  open,  tolerance  for  noise  in  the  neighborhood,  etc.    On  these  kinds  of  questions,  people  can  have  a  meaningful  impact  on  projects  through  their  participation.    Concertation  in  this  case  is  also  positive  because  it  creates  more  positive  conditions  for  after  the  project  is  completed.    Director  of  the  Office  of  Local  Democracy  and  Citizen  Participation  in  a  city,  population  750,000    

And,  in  the  view  of  one  official,  these  are  the  kind  of  opportunities  for  contribution  that  citizens  appreciate  most.    

…if  you  held  a  meeting  on  the  future  of  a  neighborhood,  on  questions  like:  should  we  put  up  a  playground,  should  we  build  a  parking  lot,  should  we  make  this  street  one-­‐way,  should  we  fence  in  private  property,  there  you  would  have  attendees.    It  touches  their  daily  life,  it  touches  their  way  of  life,  it  touches  their  immediate  environment.    Director  of  Mayor’s  Cabinet  in  a  suburb,  population  20,000  

 

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How  do  local  governments  use  e-­‐participation  tools  to  gather  input  from  citizens  on  the  subjects  regarding  which  they  have  expertise?  The  answer  in  the  localities  I  visited  varied  considerably,  ranging  from  “not  at  all”  through  “occasionally”  to  “consistently  but  not  very  effectively.”        While  all  of  the  cities  have  institutional  websites,  of  the  fourteen  localities  visited,  only  one  had  never  tried  and  did  not  seem  inclined  to  experiment  with  e-­‐participation  tools.  To  quote  the  same  Cabinet  Director  in  this  outlier:        

The  term  “physical”  is  very  important  in  the  context  of  French  cities.    The  mayor  is  someone  who  talks  to  people.    People  see  him,  people  talk  to  him,  people  exchange  with  him.    You  don’t  “chat”  with  the  mayor  via  the  Internet  about  the  city’s  problems.    You  make  an  appointment  to  see  him,  you  talk  to  him  in  a  public  meeting,  and  you  express  yourself.      

Other  interviewees  mentioned  that  some  politicians  were  hesitant  to  “dehumanize”  the  relationship  between  the  government  and  the  governed  by  moving  interactions  on-­‐line.      Though  all  the  others  had  experimented  with  on-­‐line  participation  tools,  none  of  them  were  satisfied  that  they  had  as  yet  institutionalized  regular  means  for  NITC-­‐aided  citizen  input  into  public  decision-­‐making.        

It’s  true  that  currently,  institutional  sites  do  not  make  much  room  for  debate.    But  I  think  that’s  changing.    You’re  seeing  more  local  governments,  especially  cities,  opening  their  Facebook  page.    I  think  we’re  going  to  see  a  gradual  shift  in  that  direction.    I  think  it’s  also  possible  that  cities  will  create  their  own  networks  for  local  debates  and  exchange.    But  I  think  it  will  take  awhile.    There  have  been  some  experiments  with  local  wikis  that  have  been  really  interesting.  It  allows  citizens  to  participate  in  the  sharing  of  local  history.    Right  now,  there  is  very  little  on  institutional  sites  for  citizen  contributions,  but  that  will  come.    Director  of  a  Departmental  Agency  that  assists  local  governments  with  NICT  projects    

Like  websites  in  Gov.  1.0,  most  cities  now  have  their  own  Facebook  page,  but  they  use  it    primarily  to  announce  events  and  communicate  information  to  the  public;  Facebook  is  not  the  tool  for  interactivity  between  authorities  and  citizens  that  it  is  in  the  private  sector  Web  2.0  universe.    In  cities  I  visited,  officials  have  adopted  the  tool,  but  do  not  seem  to  have  given  a  lot  of  thought  as  to  its  appropriate,  effective,  and  even  innovative  use,  assuming  those  exist  for  localities.    For  example,  as  one  city  official  stated:  “We  respond  to  all  the  messages  we  receive  on  Facebook,  but  we  have  not  yet  integrated  this  platform  into  our  processes  of  exchange  with  citizens.”    As  will  become  evident  below,  one  of  the  major  issues  for  localities  is  adapting  their  human  resources  and  organizational  structures  to  the  requirements  of  on-­‐line  interaction;  only  a  few  have  created  positions  for  community  managers  of  their  social  networks,  for  instance.        Previous  research  on  a  random  sample  of  French  cities’  websites  confirmed  very  few  instances  of  on-­‐line  discussions,  forums,  chats,  or  surveys.    However,  the  interviews  revealed  that  localities  use  NITCs  in  ways  that  do  not  necessarily  appear  on  the  website  and  thus  elude  the  researcher  who  collects  data  strictly  from  the  sites.    Quantitative  studies  do  not  bring  to  light  those  NITCs  that  take  a  form  other  than  “talking  on-­‐line.”  For  instance,  the  use  of  three-­‐dimensional  computer  modeling  in  a  number  of  cities  and  

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metropolitan  areas  has  already  contributed  to  enhancing  the  quality  and  quantity  of  citizen  participation  in  urban  planning  processes.    This  technology  substantially  improves  the  information  available  to  residents  and  reduces  the  level  of  technical  jargon  involved  in  public  consultation  processes,  thus  allowing  non-­‐specialists  to  understand  and  comment  on  projects  that  urban  planners  and  architects  put  forward.    Further,  3-­‐D  modeling  permits  citizens  themselves  to  come  up  with  proposals  for  urban  renovation.  Citizens  can  study  various  proposals  prior  to  public  meetings,  and  even  manipulate  parameters  themselves.  Officials  interviewed  who  had  experience  with  3-­‐D  modeling  in  the  urban  planning  process  observed  that  the  technology  allowed  citizens  who  before  felt  incapable  of  questioning  the  experts  to  raise  questions  in  public  meetings,  to  get  a  firm  grasp  on  the  implications  of  various  options,  and  to  continue  the  discussion  at  home  or  with  friends  after  the  physical  meetings.    In  localities,  where  a  large  proportion  of  public  policy  decisions  concern  physical  planning,  3-­‐D  modeling  is  an  essential  NICT  that  facilities  meaningful  citizen  input,  but  it  is  often  invisible  on  the  website.        Another  use  of  NICTs  that  might  not  appear  in  a  one-­‐time  examination  of  local  government  websites  is  the  “occasional”  survey  instrument,  say  for  example  in  the  suburb  that  used  such  an  on-­‐line  questionnaire  to  consult  citizens  on  future  directions  at  the  beginning  of  each  mayoral  term.    Except  for  the  two  months  when  the  survey  appeared  on  the  site,  there  was  no  trace  of  this  important  e-­‐participation  instrument  for  researchers  to  find.    However,  according  to  the  Director  of  the  Mayor’s  Cabinet,  the  results  of  the  survey  were  widely  distributed  and  formed  the  basis  for  specific  policy  decisions  by  the  mayor  and  city  council.    The  mayor  was  particularly  interested  in  the  survey  results,  which  were  published  on  the  city’s  website  and  in  the  city’s  magazine,  because  respondents  tended  to  be  different  from  the  people  who  “often”  participate  in  public  meetings.        Finally,  even  though  most  cities  visited  used  their  Facebook  page  for  official  announcements,  several  of  the  city  councilors  interviewed  use  their  individual  Facebook  pages  to  communicate  and  dialogue  constantly  with  city  residents  on  a  variety  of  subjects,  and  in  order  to  build  various  communities  of  interest.    They  said  that  this  practice  is  particularly  useful  with  younger  residents,  and  predicted  that  younger  local  politicians,  who  are  comfortable  with  on-­‐line  social  networks,  will  increasingly  use  them  professionally.        In  sum,  analysis  of  local  government  websites  does  not  fully  reveal  the  range  of  digital  activities  that  aim  to  involve  citizens  in  public  decision-­‐making.    Interviews  suggest  that  it  is  necessary  to  expand  the  definition  of  NICTs,  as  well  as  the  scope  of  research,  to  take  into  account  all  the  tools  that  facilitate  public  participation,  including  those  that  do  not  appear  on  the  institutional  website.    This  is  increasingly  the  case  as  localities  expand  their  activities  into  Gov  2.0.    It  is  not  surprising  that  localities  use  their  institutional  sites  to  provide  information  and  electronic  services,  or  as  a  portal  with  links  to  services  at  other  levels  of  government  (specifically  those  of  the  central  state  in  the  French  case),  and  that  e-­‐participation  occurs  elsewhere.        To  return  to  more  “conventional”  on-­‐line  participation  venues,  perhaps  the  most  systematic  and  consistent  platform  for  citizen  commentary  on  public  projects  exists  on  the  website  of  the  region’s  biggest  metropolitan  area.    Not  surprisingly,  it  is  the  local  

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government  units  of  a  larger  scale  that  have  the  wherewithal  to  create  and  sustain  such  electronic  venues.    In  2008,  at  the  behest  of  a  politically-­‐ambitious  and  digitally-­‐connected  leader  who  aims  to  make  the  metropolitan  area  an  “e-­‐participation  pioneer,”  it  created  a  website  that  includes  information  and  an  on-­‐line  participatory  platform  for  all  its  major  policy  initiatives.    As  soon  as  a  project  is  launched,  all  relevant  documents  are  posted,  information  on  in-­‐person  meetings  and  the  minutes  of  these  meetings  are  available,  and  there  is  an  on-­‐line  space  for  citizen  commentary  on  any  and  all  aspects  of  each  project.      But  even  in  this  case,      

Unfortunately,  on  our  platform  today,  you  don’t  really  have  dialogues;  you  have  a  series  of  monologues.    We’re  getting  a  little  bit  of  response  and  interaction,  but  it’s  still  pretty  egotistical,  with  people  finding  another  venue  for  expressing  what  they  think.    To  get  past  that  stage,  we’re  going  to  need  to  have  more  moderation  of  the  platform.    Director,  Council  on  Sustainable  Development,  metropolitan  area    

At  the  end  of  the  public  consultation  period,  metro  area  agents  summarize  on-­‐line  input,  along  with  that  gathered  in  public  meetings,  and  report  the  results  to  decision-­‐makers.    Whether  or  not  the  input  has  any  effect  on  the  final  decision  is  unknown.    Unfortunately,  this  exercise,  which  represents  one  of  the  most  systematized  examples  of  e-­‐participation  in  the  region,  is  not  particularly  innovative  or  high-­‐tech.    As  an  official  in  the  Citizen  Participation  Unit  of  the  metropolitan  area  said,  “(W)e’re  really  in  the  infancy  of  what  we’re  doing  in  terms  of  e-­‐participation.”    The  question  is  whether  or  not  they  will  move  beyond  infancy;  the  chances  are  improved  by  the  fact  that  the  metropolitan  area  has  invested  resources  and  personnel  in  the  effort,  and  has  created  an  organizational  link  between  the  Information  Technology  Department  and  the  Participation  Unit  to  devise  more  e-­‐participation  projects.        In  2010,  the  largest  city  in  the  metropolitan  area  initiated  an  on-­‐line  participatory  platform  that  was  thematically-­‐oriented  rather  than  project-­‐oriented,  and  at  first  occasionally  queried  those  who  registered  for  the  platform  regarding  issues  such  as  public  transportation,  education,  cultural  life  and  leisure  activities.    Persons  interviewed  suggested  that  the  platform  was  not  very  well-­‐conceived  at  its  outset,  and  originally  had  more  “communications”  value  than  any  substantive  input  legitimation  value.    In  other  words,  it  seemed  important  to  be  able  to  say  that  the  city  had  launched  the  electronic  participation  platform,  but  the  launch  was  not  backed  up  by  a  real  desire  to  gather  and  utilize  citizen  input  through  this  digital  means.    Additionally,  no  single  office  or  individual  within  city  government  was  responsible  for  the  platform,  and  it  was  not  used  to  gather  citizen  input  on  specific,  concrete  policy  proposals.    Participants  received  no  feedback  on  whether  or  not  their  views  had  an  impact  on  elected  or  appointed  officials,  or  even  what  became  of  their  input.    Two  years  later,  local  political  leaders  seemed  ready  to  invest  in  a  more  serious  e-­‐participation  exercise.    In  2012,  the  city  created  a  new  office  of  Local  Democracy  and  Citizen  Participation,  and  assigned  responsibility  for  the  on-­‐line  platform  to  its  director.    In  our  interview,  he  offered  the  following  assessment  of  e-­‐participation  tools:  

 If  digital  consultation  is  just  a  gadget  or  a  toy,  it  can  work  one  time,  or  maybe  not,  but  if  we  want  it  to  be  a  permanent  fixture  that  contributes  to  enlarging  the  

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number  of  participants,  it  has  to  be  something  regular,  even  systematic,  in  the  framework  of  a  precise  strategy,  with  very  precise  questions,  and  an  established  calendar.    We  don’t  have  that  instinct  yet.    Director  of  the  Office  of  Local  Democracy  and  Citizen  Participation,  city  with  population  750,000  

 In  the  meantime,  the  director  cited  an  example  of  an  effective  use  of  NICTs  in  what  I  would  label  a  “hybrid”  context,  that  is,  in  combination  with  physical  meetings.      

 We  also  used  the  platform  when  we  were  renovating  a  small  street  and  we  asked  people  what  they  would  like  to  see…more  vegetation,  more  lighting,  some  cultural  features,  etc.    We  had  about  20  people  at  a  meeting,  and  we  had  about  30  contributors  prior  to  the  meeting  through  the  platform,  and  in  effect,  the  consultation  on-­‐line  was  really  a  good  preparation  for  the  physical  meeting.    And  it  was  interesting  because  for  the  first  time,  the  councilmember  came  to  the  meeting  in  a  different  position.    Before,  when  he  came  to  the  first  meeting,  it  was  to  explain  the  project.    This  time,  he  could  say,  here’s  the  project,  and  here’s  what  30  citizens  have  already  said  about  it.    This  slightly  changes  things,  including  the  official’s  position,  because  he  has  some  preliminary  feedback  and  he  can  say  to  people,  “here’s  what  other  citizens  think.”    It’s  not  what  he  thinks,  it’s  not  what  the  city  departments  think,  and  this  permits  a  richer  debate.      

 Officials  in  smaller  communities,  with  the  one  exception  cited  above,  spoke  of  on-­‐line  participation  experiments  in  one  form  or  another  occurring  over  the  last  5-­‐7  years.    Several  mentioned  using  different  tools  because  they  were  “in  vogue”  among  French  cities  at  the  time  (blogs,  on-­‐line  chats  or  discussion  forums,  for  instance).    All  interviewees  observed  that  unless  the  participants  were  in  some  way  “prepared”  to  participate  –  by  studying  documents  or  attending  preparatory  meetings,  for  example  –  unless  the  subject  of  the  on-­‐line  input  was  narrow  and  precise,  and  unless  the  exchange,  usually  among  citizens,  was  carefully  moderated,  the  experience  usually  did  not  produce  fruitful  results  for  either  citizens  or  officials.    And,  most  of  those  who  had  tried  these  experiments  cited  most  local  elected  officials’  hesitancy  to  get  involved  in  them  by  recording  their  responses/comments  on-­‐line  for  posterity.    Reflecting  on  the  attitudes  of  her  peers,  one  young  city  councilwoman  observed:      

(P)oliticians  have  the  tendency  to  portray  themselves  as  all-­‐powerful  and  to  say  that  they  know  all.      This  is  not  possible  in  the  digital  world.    You  can’t  say  you  are  the  sole  authority.    “I  know,  I  say,  I  write,  I  do.”    And  then  if  three  months  later,  everyone  can  see  that  whatever  you  said  is  not  the  way  you  acted  subsequently,  this  creates  a  problem  for  you.  

City  Council  Member,  city  with  population  750,000  

Digital  tools  tend  to  introduce  a  degree  of  “horizontality”  in  political  expression  and  political  life  that  does  not  meld  easily  with  representative  democracy,  in  which  elected  officials  ultimately  take  responsibility  for  the  decisions  they  make.    One  very  young  city  councilman  who  uses  NICTs  extensively  both  personally  and  professionally  commented  on  the  relationship  between  these  technologies  and  local  political  practice,  expressing  

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an  appreciation  of  the  technology’s  potential  while  at  the  same  time  recognizing  the  complexities  surrounding  their  use:  

I  think  it’s  an  ambivalent  relationship,  a  necessary  relationship  that  is  both  interesting  and  dangerous.    Necessary  because,  given  the  size  of  cities  (I  have  30,000  constituents  in  my  district),  you  cannot  simply  communicate  face-­‐to-­‐face  or  through  the  mail.    Elected  officials  have  to  ask  where  the  constituents  are,  and  they  are  on  Internet.    So  we  have  to  be  there,  and  in  that  sense,  it  is  necessary.    And  it’s  interesting  because  it’s  a  way  of  getting  in  touch  with  the  young,  who  you  can’t  reach  through  other  means.    It’s  also  another  way  of  having  an  exchange  or  a  debate.    It’s  true  that  when  I  post  a  bit  of  a  controversial  statement  on  Facebook,  we  often  have  a  debate.    It’s  a  qualitative  debate,  not  a  quantitative  debate,  meaning  that  I  can  get  a  sense  of  what  ten  people  are  thinking,  but  it  is  in  no  way  representative  of  my  district.    It’s  not  like  a  survey  or  like  an  election,  but  it  is  a  way  of  having  a  debate.    I  think  it’s  dangerous  because  it  can  cut  us  off  from  the  part  of  the  population  that  does  not  use  social  networks,  and  it  can  bias  our  perception  of  reality,  since  the  audience  of  users  is  not  necessarily  representative.    It’s  also  dangerous  because  it  emphasizes  the  immediacy  of  exchanges,  which  can  be  harmful  to  a  politician  if  s/he  needs  to  be  able  to  get  a  perspective  on  issues  in  order  to  make  fair  and  appropriate  decisions.    City  Council  Member,  city  with  population  750,000    

 

Output  legitimation    

Output  legitimation  refers  to  actions  governments  take  to  improve  their  legitimacy  by  delivering  public  policy  “products”  that  satisfy  citizens.  This  is  the  “managerial”  aspect  of  the  relationship  between  government  and  citizens  that  is  more  often  the  subject  of  public  administration  than  political  science,  and,  in  terms  of  NICTs,  is  frequently  termed  “e-­‐government”  as  opposed  to  “e-­‐democracy.”9  Localities  visited  use  NICTs  in  two  ways  to  improve  their  output  legitimacy  by:  1)  putting  more  administrative  services  on-­‐line  through  their  websites,  and  2)  creating  digital  systems  for  reporting  problems  in  public  infrastructure  and  services  using  the  geolocalization  capability  of  the  Smartphone.      Officials  interviewed  unanimously  stated  that  using  NICTs  to  improve  service  delivery  was  a  top  priority;  they  are  driven  in  this  direction  both  by  central  government  imperatives  and  by  citizens’  expectations  that  arise  from  their  experiences  as  customers  in  the  private  sector  (e-­‐commerce  and  e-­‐banking,  for  instance).      Officials  interviewed  talked  about  this  imperative  from  a  variety  of  perspectives.  

The  point  was  not  to  be  first,  but  it  was  to  respond  to  peoples’  needs.    If  you  do  all  kinds  of  things  that  are  way  out  there,  but  they  don’t  serve  peoples’  needs,  we’re  wasting  our  time.    We  are  like  a  business  in  that  way;  we  have  to  respond  to  peoples’  needs  and  we’re  obligated  to  do  that  because  we  are  financed  with  tax  money.  

                                                                                                               9  The  French  use  the  term  “administré”  interchangeably  with  the  word  for  citizen  at  the  local  level,  suggesting  that  the  relationship  between  governors  and  governed  has  a  heavy  administrative  component  in  localities.        

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City  Manager  of  an  ex-­‐urban  community,  population  27,000  

For  the  most  digitally-­‐minded  local  politicians,  providing  e-­‐services  is  a  must.  For  example,  in  a  suburb  of  a  large  metropolitan  area,  a  politically-­‐ambitious  young  mayor  pushed  his  city  forward  early  and  quickly:  

When  the  previous  mayor  came  into  office  (2001),  he  had  a  VERY  precise  vision  of  how  he  wanted  to  see  digital  services  develop.    And  very  quickly,  one  of  our  first  missions  was  to  work  on  digital  services  for  the  city’s  residents.    We  were  among  the  first  cities  to  work  closely  with  the  provider  and  to  have  a  dynamic  digital  policy  directed  toward  the  citizens,  not  only  in  terms  of  providing  infrastructure,  but  also  providing  the  services  at  the  same  time  that  would  allow  the  citizens  to  be  in  contact  with  city  hall…(T)hat  was  really  the  first  effort,  but  in  the  last  ten  years,  the  leitmotif  of  the  city’s  digital  policy  has  been  to  enhance  the  daily  lives  of  citizens.      

  Director  of  Digital  Services  in  a  suburb,  population  15,000  

Tracing  the  evolution  of  the  goals  of  his  city’s  website,  one  official  emphasized  the  relationship  between  what  people  want  and  what  the  city  provides.    The  specific,  concrete,  and  one  might  say  “mundane”  services  predominate  at  the  local  level:  

Historically,  it  was  to  provide  information  through  a  kind  of  “store  window.”    But  now,  it’s  much  more  focused  on  interaction  and  service  provision.    People  want  to  get  answers  from  the  city  departments  without  having  to  come  to  city  hall.    They  want  to  pay  the  fees  for  school  lunches,  for  parks  and  leisure,  to  get  information  on  the  school  lunch  menu,  to  know  what  cultural  events  are  on  if  they  want  to  go  out  this  evening,  when  their  books  are  due  at  the  public  library.    We’re  really  focused  on  practical  service  provision.    Communication  Director  in  a  suburb,  population  66,000    

Several  of  those  interviewed  referred  to  their  efforts  to  develop  a  “virtual  city  hall,”  where  people  could  access  information  and  city  services  from  a  distance.    In  one  suburb  that  had  committed  significant  resources  to  providing  Internet  access  to  their  whole  population  in  the  early  2000s  by  establishing  cyber-­‐bases  at  various  locations  (in  line  with  central  state  priorities  and  financial  support),  priorities  have  changed:    

We  in  the  municipalities  are  no  longer  focused  as  much  on  addressing  the  digital  divide  as  we  are  on  providing  on-­‐line  services  to  a  wide  variety  of  people  whose  needs  we  are  identifying,  and  which  are  pretty  similar  to  those  services  offered  off-­‐line.  We  have  different  objectives  now.    Those  of  us  who  are  professionals  in  public  communication  know  that  we  need  to  maintain  sites  that  provide  information,  but  we  also  know  that  people  are  coming  to  the  site  for  services  and  for  applications  that  allow  them  to  interact  with  the  city  government.    We  know  that  our  site  has  to  provide  information  that  is  useful  to  very  diverse  audiences.    But  our  statistics  tell  us  that  people  come  to  the  site  to  get  services  or  very  practical,  specific  information.    Communication  Director  in  a  suburb,  population  23,000  

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 Many  cities  in  France  in  the  past  developed  physical  city  hall  annex  locations  where  some  service  departments  stationed  agents  and  where  political  leaders  held  neighborhood  meetings.    Those  annexes,  whose  purpose  is  to  provide  a  physical  location  for  direct  government/resident  interactions,  are  being  replaced  or  supplemented  by  the  services  offered  on  the  website:  

 Now,  the  city  website  is  an  annex.    It’s  a  place  where  citizens  can  find  all  city  services  in  electronic  form  so  they  don’t  have  to  leave  home  to  access  them.    So,  we’ve  turned  the  city  hall  into  a  virtual  city  hall,  and  we  also  emphasize  information  flashes  that  give  people  information  as  they  need  it  or  ask  for  it.  People  dealt  with  this  before,  but  cities  are  trying  to  put  themselves  more  at  the  citizens’  disposition.    Director  of  Mayor’s  Cabinet  a  suburb,  population  20,000    

One  city  official  referred  specifically  to  the  link  between  on-­‐line  service  provision  and  local  government’s  legitimacy  in  citizens’  eyes,  suggesting  that  pressure  to  innovate  comes  not  only  from  residents’  experiences  in  the  private  sector,  but  from  what  they  know  about  or  experience  in  other  localities  as  well:        

And  for  city  hall,  the  goal  in  my  mind  is  for  the  website  to  become  a  virtual  city  hall,  meaning  that  we  offer  those  services  that  we  now  offer  in  a  physical  location  during  limited  hours  24/7.    People  want  that  ability.    We  have  to  offer  these  services  on-­‐line  to  continue  to  justify  our  status  as  public  servants.    People  will  start  to  question  what  we  as  public  employees  are  doing  (emphasis  added).  They  know  that  other  cities  make  these  services  available  on-­‐line,  and  they  expect  the  same  from  us.    Communication  Director  in  a  suburb,  population  23,000    

Based  on  these  interviews,  it  would  seem  that  currently,  local  governments  in  France  feel  more  pressure  to  respond  to  “citizen  consumers”  than  to  “citizen  participants.”    From  the  authorities’  perspective,  a  large  proportion  of  residents  have  rising  expectations  for  the  availability  and  efficiency  of  on-­‐line  services,  while  only  a  small  minority  are  politically  aware  or  active  and  simultaneously  desire  on-­‐line  participative  platforms.10    

 Increasingly,  French  localities  are  also  implementing  NITCs  that  allow  residents  to  report  infrastructure  problems  or  service  dysfunctions  using  their  Smartphones  to  take  a  photo  of  the  pothole,  the  broken  streetlight,  etc.,  and  to  send  it  to  the  appropriate  city  service  department  along  with  a  geolocalization.    Cities  also  provide  the  ability  for  the  resident  to  track  both  complaint  and  response  on-­‐line.    This  technology  gives  localities  the  opportunity  to  increase  their  output  legitimation  by  responding  to  very  precise                                                                                                                  10  For  example,  based  on  a  survey  of  residents  in  the  Aquitaine  region,  Aquitaine  Europe  Communication  (AEC,  2013)  reported  that  only  23%  of  the  respondents  who  regularly  use  Internet  said  they  wished  to  be  consulted  and  to  participate  in  public  debate  using  digital  tools  (such  as  the  creation  of  a  citizens’  participatory  platform),  while  74%  were  not  in  favor  of  such  a  possibility  (3%  gave  no  response).    This  finding  is  significant  for  e-­‐participation  researchers  interested  in  the  demand  side  of  the  subject.    

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information  about  the  nature  and  location  of  a  problem  thus,  in  principle,  increasing  citizen  satisfaction  with  local  government  (legitimacy).    Local  officials  interviewed  who  were  contemplating  such  systems  said  that  they,  and  personnel  in  city  departments,  worried  that  the  ease  of  reporting  issues  would  create  a  demand-­‐side  expectation  for  immediate  response;  clearly,  the  mechanisms  of  accountability  change  if  a  service  request  is  continuously  trackable  on-­‐line  as  opposed  to  being  lost  in  a  bureaucracy  once  submitted  by  phone  or  letter.    However,  in  the  suburban  community  that  initiated  such  a  system  in  2012,  officials  reported  that  departments  had  not  been  overwhelmed  with  notifications  and  were  working  to  manage  citizen  expectations  regarding  response  time.    In  summer  of  2013,  the  largest  city  in  the  region  announced  the  launch  of  a  similar  system.11  

 Do  these  e-­‐mechanisms  for  output  legitimation  facilitate  citizen  participation  at  the  local  level?  Most  political  scientists  would  be  reluctant  to  call  going  to  a  website  to  complete  a  procedure  or  reporting  a  public  service  dysfunction  “citizen  participation”  because  it  is  more  administrative  than  it  is  political,  it  is  tied  to  very  specific,  concrete  circumstances,  and  it  is  self-­‐centered  rather  than  community-­‐centered.    On  the  other  hand,  both  are  forms  of  citizen  interaction  with  government,  and  at  least  the  latter  is  destined  to  improve  public  policy  outputs.    One  interviewee  stated  the  link  between  these  kinds  of  actions  and  democracy  more  generally  as  follows:      

I  think  that  democracy  is  anchored  in  the  services  the  public  gets  from  governments.    The  first  step  in  democracy  is  to  have  access  to  one’s  rights  and  to  know  what  procedures  one  needs  to  follow  to  get  something  done.    

  Director  of  an  NGO  focused  on  NITCs  in  French  localities  

If  we  grant  that  local  government  legitimacy  is  rooted  in  large  part  in  citizens’  everyday  experiences  in  the  public  sector,  NITCs  that  allow  them  to  communicate  problems  with  service  outputs  to  authorities  might  be  considered  a  mechanism  for  input  legitimacy.    Clearly,  local  officials  I  interviewed,  both  elected  and  appointed,  see  them  that  way.    And  citizens,  who  experience  local  governments  primarily  as  service  providers,  are  participating  in  public  policy  implementation  if  not  formulation  when  they  report  problems  or  inefficiencies  through  these  systems.    As  on-­‐line  service  delivery  and  evaluation  systems  become  more  common,  it  would  be  interesting  to  ask  residents  whether  or  not  THEY  perceive  their  use  as  a  form  of  participation  or  engagement  in  local  politics  and  public  life.    

 

Throughput  legitimation    

Roos  and  Lindstrom  define  throughput  legitimation  as  those  governmental  actions  that  create  institutional  and  procedural  transparency.    In  the  last  few  years,  French  localities  have  used  NICTs  to  improve  their  throughput  legitimacy  in  two  ways,  by:    

                                                                                                               11  The  sense  of  “immediacy”  that  NICTs  create  both  among  the  public  and  the  authorities  came  up  in  many  of  the  interviews.    Officials  also  decried  the  ease  of  “massification”  of  citizens’  negative  experiences  with  local  services,  specifically  via  social  networks  like  Facebook.      

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1)  communicating  information  about  the  municipality  and  its  actions  via  their  websites,  and,  2)  joining  the  Open  Data  movement  to  make  city  hall’s  operational  data  available  to  the  public.  

French  cities  of  all  sizes  use  their  institutional  websites  to  inform  the  visitor  about  how  they  are  structured,  how  they  function,  who  the  political  and  administrative  authorities  are  and  what  they  do.    This  researcher  has  visited  the  websites  of  over  five  hundred  randomly-­‐selected  websites  in  French  cities  small  and  large.    The  first  impression  each  and  every  one  of  them  gives  is:  “this  city  is  a  great  place  to  live  and  has  an  activist  local  government  that  encourages  resident  involvement  in  local  life!”    Most  middle-­‐sized  and  large  French  municipalities  created  their  first  websites  in  the  mid-­‐1990s  and  have  been  through  several  versions  since;  the  first  were  primarily  “picture  windows”  that  provided  information  on  the  city,  its  government,  economic  and  business  opportunities,  and  tourism.    Most  sites  have  evolved  considerably  to  become  portals,  with  greatly  elaborated  and  constantly  updated  information  on  cultural  events  and  activities  in  the  city,  documents,  videos,  and  links  on  municipal  government  (both  political  and  administrative  aspects),  services  for  residents,  links  to  association  sites,  and  much  more.    It  is  standard  to  find  the  minutes  of  all  city  council  meetings  on  municipal  websites,  and  sometimes  videos  of  the  sessions  as  well.    Institutional  websites  are  the  place  where  officials  can  publicize  their  actions  and  enhance  their  legitimacy,  which  explains  why  most  municipalities  put  their  communication  departments  in  charge  of  their  websites.  As  we  know,  residents  often  go  the  city’s  site  to  get  precise  practical  information  or  to  accomplish  a  specific  administrative  task,  but  on  their  way  to  these,  on  the  homepage,  they  can  learn  all  about  city  hall’s  latest  actions.  Local  governments  commit  significant  human  resources  to  maintaining  and  improving  their  websites.  The  website  is  becoming  the  cities’  most  important  a  communication  tool,  with  citizens  as  their  primary  audience;  communication  tends  to  be  one-­‐way  (from  the  top-­‐down)  rather  than  interactive  between  residents  and  public  authorities.        

However,  many  of  those  officials  interviewed  stressed  the  websites’  informational  wealth  as  an  essential  pre-­‐condition  for  more  and  better  citizen  participation  in  local  affairs,  both  off-­‐  and  on-­‐line.  

One  of  the  main  principles  underlying  digital  dialogue  is  that  the  citizens  have  the  same  level  of  information  as  the  elected  officials.    If  they  don’t,  it’s  a  dialogue  among  unequal  partners  because  the  elected  officials  have  knowledge  that  the  citizens  don’t.    Digital  tools  allow  us  to  make  up  some  of  that  difference;  before  we  could  only  do  so  with  written  communication.    We  have  to  first  provide  information  via  the  Web  before  we  can  have  a  dialogue.    The  first  priority  is  to  provide  information;  without  it,  you  can’t  have  real  dialogue.    I  think  that  the  digital  tools  have  an  element  of  citizen  education  that  didn’t  exist  strictly  with  written  communication.    With  written  communication,  you  might  circulate  a  document,  but  it  dies  after  it  is  delivered.    Very  few  people  still  have  a  document  that  we  sent  out  in  2009.    But  the  Internet  allows  us  to  preserve  the  documents  and  make  them  available  on  a  permanent  basis.    Mayor  of  an  ex-­‐urban  community,  population  4,000    

A  metropolitan  area  official  also  stressed  the  primary  importance  of  the  participatory  platform’s  information  content  as  a  precursor  to  consultation  and  participation:    

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 I  think  that  there  was  a  desire  to  have  interaction  on  the  metropolitan  area’s  participatory  platform,  but  the  first  priority  was  to  give  citizens  power  by  giving  them  access  to  information.    We  could  require  consultation  and  concertation,  but  if  people  don’t  have  information,  they  don’t  have  the  resources  to  contribute.    That’s  a  primary  mission  of  the  platform:  we  are  obliged  to  provide  information  that  can  feed  into  a  real  participatory  exercise,  rather  than  a  situation  in  which  we  ask  them  to  make  a  decision  without  giving  them  information,  in  which  case  they  don’t  really  have  any  power.    Behind  the  platform  there  was  a  real  political  will  to  open  up  information  and  create  accountability.    Director  of  the  Metropolitan  Area’s  Council  on  Sustainable  Development  

 As  in  most  public  sector  organizations,  it  is  now  standard  procedure  for  French  municipalities  to  put  documents  relating  to  public  policy  up  on  the  Web,  whereas  in  the  past,  citizens  would  have  to  go  to  city  hall  to  request  access  to  such  documents.    This  is  an  example  of  how  NICTs  convert  information  from  a  semi-­‐private  good  into  a  public  good.    Even  if  few  citizens  consult  this  information  on-­‐line,  we  should  not  underestimate  the  significance  of  this  NICT-­‐enabled  change  for  local  government  transparency.        Since  2011,  increased  local  government  transparency  in  France  has  taken  a  quantitative  and  qualitative  leap  with  the  advent  of  the  Open  Data  movement,  which  is  the  latest  “trend”  sweeping  French  localities,  promoting  open  access  to  governments’  operational  data  in  digital  form  that  public  users  can  exploit  for  their  own  purposes.12    Open  Data  is  based  on  a  philosophy  that  says  that  since  public  sector  data  is  produced  using  taxpayers’  money,  it  should  be  free  and  available  to  people  outside  government  who  want  to  consult  it  or  use  it,  whether  for  private,  social,  or  even  commercial  purposes.  French  cities  are  currently  in  the  process  of  laying  the  groundwork  for  a  systematic  release  of  data  they  generate  internally;  most  still  need  to  decide  what  data  to  make  available  and  in  what  format.13    Many  are  in  the  second  or  third  “season”  of  soliciting  project  proposals  from  the  public  to  exploit  local  government  data.        At  this  stage,  it  is  primarily  software  developers  who  are  coming  up  with  applications  that  process  the  data  and  convert  them  into  a  form  that  is  useful  to  citizens,  consumers,  businesses,  or  even  governments  themselves.    Not  much  of  what  is  being  developed  currently  would  enhance  citizen  participation  in  policy-­‐making  in  the  short-­‐term,  even  if  the  potential  is  there.      

I  think  the  big  thing  that  was  missing  from  the  first  “season”  of  Open  Data  is  the  citizen.    In  one  French  department14  with  a  very  left-­‐leaning  political  leadership,  they  made  financial  information  available.    What  did  people  download?    Postcards  of  the  area  that  had  been  digitized.    Where  it  is  working,  it’s  where  

                                                                                                               12  The  French  use  the  English  term,  and  also  refer  to  “la  libération  des  données,”  (freeing  of  data).      13  A  recent  report  based  on  a  survey  of  French  local  officials  indicates  that  one  half  of  them  either  have  or  plan  to  develop  a  strategy  around  Open  Data  by  2014;  1/6  envision  such  a  strategy,  but  in  the  longer  term;  1/3  have  no  plan  concerning  Open  Data  at  the  present  time.    See:  http://blog.administrationnumerique.markess.com/2012/10/open-­‐data-­‐quelles-­‐perspectives-­‐delargissement-­‐du-­‐mouvement-­‐au-­‐sein-­‐des-­‐collectivites-­‐locales-­‐dici-­‐2014/  (last  accessed  7/27/2013).  14  Administrative  unit  roughly  equivalent  to  an  American  county.      

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there  are  strong  civil  society  organizations  that  are  involved,  that  really  emphasized  the  importance  of  the  data.    The  average  citizen  has  no  idea  what  Open  Data  is  about.    It’s  not  part  of  her/his  daily  life.    I  just  don’t  think  that  the  average  citizen  is  going  to  go  digging  around  the  budget  data  for  her/his  city.    First  of  all,  the  citizen  needs  to  be  interested,  and  next  the  citizen  needs  to  be  able  to  read  and  understand  the  budget  data.    There  are  very  few  citizens  who  can  do  that.    Research  Director,  semi-­‐public  organization  that  works  with  localities  on  NICTs    

Even  so,  it  is  clear  that  by  its  very  definition,  the  existence  of  the  Internet,  the  change  in  citizens’  expectations  about  the  availability  of  information,  and  their  ability  to  seek  out  and  demand  that  information,  is  altering  local  government  operations.    In  the  end,  this  can  only  be  positive  for  transparency  in  local  political  systems,  even  if  it  creates  discomfort  for  some  political  leaders  and  administrative  personnel.        

When  we  talk  about  a  “digital  revolution,”  I  think  this  is  a  true  rupture  of  the  old  model  that  is  absolutely  radical.    There  are  a  number  of  politicians  in  power  who  simply  cannot  deal  with  this.    This  creates  roadblocks  to  e-­‐democracy  because  these  people  are  not  used  to  having  this  transparency.    I  don’t  think  this  is  generational…there  are  young  people  who  would  like  politics  to  remain  opaque.    Digital  tools  create  transparency  that  makes  organizations  and  networks  more  visible,  which  is  disturbing  to  those  in  power.    Citizens  are  no  longer  dupes  because  they  too  see  what  is  happening  inside  government.    And  unfortunately,  traditionally,  politicians  duped  the  public.  

France  has  the  most  local  government  units  of  any  country  in  the  world.    The  fragmentation  of  a  decentralized  system  that  was  a  weakness  becomes  a  strength  for  democracy  if  you  have  the  tools  to  create  transparent  governance.    That’s  why  I  have  hope  for  this  country’s  democracy.    

  Director  of  an  NGO  focused  on  NITCs  in  French  localities  

 

Discussion  –  Input  Legitimation  and  NICTs  

This  study  affirms  Baldersheim  and  Kerstein’s  observation  that  scattered  experiments  in  e-­‐participation  are  taking  place,  but  none  of  the  localities  visited  had  well-­‐developed  and  consistent  e-­‐participation  strategies  that  use  NICTs  routinely  to  enhance  their  input  legitimation  actions.  In  response  to  the  question  posed  at  the  beginning  of  this  paper,  the  findings  suggest  that  in  these  cities,  NICTs  have  not  transformed  the  way  citizens  participate  in  local  politics.    At  this  point  in  time,  French  local  officials  are  more  likely  to  emphasize  and  invest  in  NICTs  that  facilitate  their  output  and  throughput  rather  than  their  input  legitimation  efforts.    These  are  the  primary  ways  in  which  NICTs  are  altering  city  halls’  relationships  to  local  citizens.15    

                                                                                                               15  See  Norris  and  Reddick  (2013),  who  report  similar  results  based  on  a  nationwide  survey  of  local  governments  in  the  United  States.      

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However,  there  are  a  few  localities  where  there  is  a  political  will  to  increase  NICT  use  to  enhance  and  enlarge  citizen  participation  and  input  into  decision-­‐making.    It  may  be  an  artifact  of  the  research  methodology  (elite  interviews),  but  it  seems  that  the  chief  executive’s  attitudes  toward  participation  on  the  one  hand  and  NICTs  on  the  other  are  key  explanatory  factors  behind  cities’  choices.    Given  the  chief  executive’s  importance  in  French  localities,  her/his  orientations  tend  to  shape  local  political  culture  and  e-­‐participation  initiatives.    

At  one  end  of  the  continuum  of  elite  attitudes  toward  citizen  participation  are  the  Schumpeterian  or  Burkean  leaders,  those  who  believe  they  were  selected  to  carry  out  the  electoral  program  that  brought  their  team  to  power.16    While  they  may  very  well  listen  to  citizens,  these  leaders  are  not  likely  to  seek  out  innovative  means  to  engage  them  in  public  life.    They  prefer  to  communicate  their  visions  and  put  their  electoral  promises  into  practice  rather  than  to  organize  new  forms  of  citizen  participation  between  elections.    For  Schumpeterians,  it  is  at  election  time  that  voters  participate  in  politics  by  judging  the  majority,  its  leader,  and  their  work.  They  are  most  comfortable  in  a  “traditional”  governor/governed  relationship  that  assigns  the  executive  the  leadership  role.  In  the  municipalities  studied  here,  this  orientation  was  relatively  rare,  found  mostly  among  mayors  near  the  end  of  their  political  careers.    In  these  cities,  experiments  in  e-­‐participation  would  have  to  wait  until  the  arrival  of  new  leaders.    At  the  other  end  of  the  continuum  would  be  the  executive  who  listens  carefully  to  the  citizens  and  follows  their  “instructions,”  in  a  situation  that  contemporary  philosopher  Michel  Orfray  calls  “survey  democracy,”  which  could  evolve  into  demagoguery  through  a  constant  pursuit  to  cater  to  public  opinion.    This  sort  of  mayor  was  not  present  in  the  group  of  cities  studied.    Most  executives  are  oriented  in  varying  degrees  toward  a  vision  and  practice  of  citizen  participation  in  “continuous  democracy,”  falling  in  the  middle  of  the  continuum.  Over  and  above  opportunities  for  citizen  participation  required  by  national  law,17  these  local  politicians  create  occasions  for  citizen  input  between  elections.  This  civic  infrastructure  of  local  democracy  might  include  councils  of  the  “wise”  (seniors),  youth  councils,  citizen  juries,  neighborhood  councils,  work  groups,  and  other  public  meetings  of  all  kinds.    These  local  leaders  are  most  likely  to  try  new  forms  of  e-­‐participation.    It  is  clear  that  in  these  localities,  political  leaders  are  involving  citizens  in  decision  processes  beyond  elections,  while  at  the  same  time  assuming  responsibility  for  final  decisions  and  their  implications.    Recognizing  the  new  reality  of  continuous  democracy  at  the  local  level,  one  administrator  observed,  “Before,  we  had  voters;  now  we  have  citizens.    People  want  to  take  their  place  in  the  polis.”      

Local  politicians’  attitudes  and  orientations  toward  NITCs  in  the  communities  studied  also  play  a  role  in  determining  whether  or  not  they  will  encourage  forms  of  e-­‐participation.  These  orientations  often  correlate  to  leaders’  ages,  but  not  exclusively;  they  are  also  a  function  of  individuals’  personal  technology  use.    The  graphic  below  illustrates  the  types  of  NICT  orientations  encountered  among  local  political  officials  (and  administrative  personnel  as  well).  

                                                                                                               16  In  France,  mayors  are  indirectly  elected  to  office  by  the  city  council.      17  National  legislation  in  France  requires  consultation  of  the  public  through  what  is  called  “concertation”  in  cases  of  urban  development  projects  over  a  given  value,  as  well  as  the  creation  of  neighborhood  councils  in  cities  over  a  given  size.  

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Among  the  Refuseniks  are  generally  older  people  who  do  not  have  the  habit  of  using  NICTs,  and  who  claim  that  using  them  in  politics  carries  the  risk  of  “dehumanizing”  the  relationship  between  leaders  and  citizens.    They  feel  threatened  by  massification  and  immediacy.    They  believe  that  digital  communication  is  a  waste  of  time,  that  it  reduces  the  quality  of  the  message,  and  that  it  intrudes  into  peoples’  personal  lives.    These  leaders  have  the  habit  of  communicating  with  citizens  by  snail  mail,  or  through  speeches,  or  during  individual  meetings  in  city  hall  or  on  the  street.    They  place  great  value,  especially  at  the  local  level,  on  the  importance  of  face-­‐to-­‐face  encounters  and  the  physical  presence  of  the  elected  or  appointed  authority,  most  especially  the  mayor,  who  embodies  local  political  power.    It  is  unlikely  that  the  Refuseniks  would  consider  using  innovative  digital  tools  to  encourage  e-­‐participation  in  local  politics.      

Believers  are  those  who  think  that  NICTs  can  enhance  the  relationship  between  local  government  and  citizens,  but  who  are  not  necessarily  familiar  with  how  these  technologies  work.    They  might  charge  their  city  manager  or  councilmembers  to  take  the  lead  and  to  use  them;  an  example  would  be  the  mayor  who  only  works  with  paper  documents  but  whose  city  manager  keeps  a  paperless  office  and  whose  city  council  members  were  all  issued  tablet  computers.    This  particular  mayor  authorized  significant  city  expenditures  to  improve  his  population’s  digital  access,  but  Believers  like  him  are  unlikely  to  take  the  lead  in  seeking  new  forms  of  citizen  participation  using  NICTs.  

Practitioners  use  digital  tools  personally,  they  keep  current  with  technology  developments,  and  they  consider  how  tools  can  be  useful  in  the  public  sector.    Practitioners  use  NICTs  to  communicate  and  they  regularly  rely  on  the  Internet  for  information.  If  they  have  a  creative  spirit  (and  political  ambition),  they  can  pull  city  councilmembers  and  the  administrative  staff  toward  experiments  in  e-­‐participation.  

     

Naturals  are  the  “NetGen”  or  “Digital  Natives”  who,  according  to  one  official,  live  in  an  “alternative  universe”  from  that  of  Refuseniks,  Believers,  and  even  Practitioners.    For  

Refuseniks     Believers   Practitioners   Naturals  

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the  Naturals,  NICTs  are  not  simply  a  tool,  but  represent  an  approach,  a  lifestyle,  a  way  of  communicating  with  and  engaging  in  the  world.    NICTs  encompass  a  way  of  seeing  their  relations  with  the  world,  including  the  political  world.    For  them,  on-­‐line  social  networks  are  natural  places  to  make  connections  and  to  work  on  collaborative  projects  through  crowd-­‐sourcing  that  builds  upon  collective  intelligence.    They  see  Facebook,  for  instance,  as  having  great  democratizing  potential:  it  is  on  such  platforms  that  real  political  exchanges  will  take  place  in  the  future.    Their  model  is  a  world  that  is  horizontal  and  shared;  it  is  the  opposite  of  the  “verticality”  of  traditional  hierarchies  that  underpin  conventional  political  power.    Since  Naturals  generally  are  under  twenty-­‐five  years  of  age,  they  were  rare  among  the  political  and  administrative  authorities  interviewed.    Naturals  are  more  likely  to  be  webmasters  or  community  managers,  which  are  relatively  new  positions  in  local  governments.    They  can  indirectly  influence  local  leaders  to  use  Web  2.0  tools  for  sharing  and  exchange.    Those  leaders,  currently  or  soon-­‐to-­‐be  confronted  with  the  expectations  of  Naturals  among  the  citizenry,  need  to  get  prepared  to  offer  them  the  interactive  tools  for  participation  that  they  expect.      

The  vast  majority  of  those  interviewed,  who  were  between  35-­‐55  years  old,  were  Practitioners  who  spoke  of  NICTs  as  one  tool  among  others  in  local  authorities’  conventional  communication  toolboxes.    They  still  conceive  of  city  hall/citizen  relationships  primarily  from  the  top-­‐down  perspective.    However,  there  were  more  likely  to  have  been  experiments  with  e-­‐participation  when  the  political  and  administrative  leaders  were  favorable  to  some  version  of  continuous  democracy,  and  were  NICT  Practitioners.  As  Naturals  assume  leadership  positions,  one  might  reasonably  expect  them  to  systematize  more  horizontal  citizen/government  interaction  using  digital  technology  (see  below).    Change  will  probably  continue  to  be  incremental  rather  than  radical,  however,  especially  at  the  local  level,  where  proximity  and  face-­‐to-­‐face  interaction  are  a  valued  part  of  the  fabric  of  political  life.  

The  experiments  that  have  taken  place  point  to  some  “best  practices”  in  local  e-­‐participation.    Officials  agreed  that  digital  input,  like  conventional  input  into  local  decisions,  is  most  useful  when  it  concerns  a  small-­‐scale  project  in  a  neighborhood,  virtually  at  the  micro-­‐level.      

It’s  at  the  neighborhood  level  that  we  can  have  concrete  projects  to  work  on  together  and  to  restore  a  relationship  of  confidence  between  citizens  and  their  government…I  think  we  will  do  better  if  we  use  the  platform  for  projects  that  are  more  “concrete,”  even  if  they  are  fairly  small-­‐scale,  because  those  are  the  ones  that  will  affect  peoples’  everyday  lives,  and  where  we  can  benefit  from  their  expertise  as  users.    If  I’m  a  daily  user  of  some  facility,  I  can  try  to  picture  how  changes  will  affect  me  in  the  future,  what  I  would  like  to  see  changed,  to  have  input  on  what  the  planners  did  and  did  not  take  into  account,  etc.    Director  of  the  Office  of    Local  Democracy  and  Citizen  Participation,  city  of  750,000  

 And,  evidence  from  several  experiences  suggests  that  a  “hybrid”  model,  or  “blended  democracy”  is  most  productive.    Combining  documents  and  3-­‐D  computer  models  with  on-­‐line  exchanges  among  residents,  if  not  officials,  before  and  after  in-­‐person  meetings,  maximizes  the  benefits  of  both.    Synchronous  and  asynchronous  formats  for  on-­‐line  participation  in  physical  meetings  are  also  feasible.    One  young  mayor  expressed  the  

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imperative  for  political  leaders  to  be  involved  in  on-­‐line  exchanges,  which  most  politicians  currently  resist:    

Of  course  there  are  neighborhood  meetings  and  concertation  meetings,  but  from  now  on,  you  cannot  launch  a  big  project  in  a  city  like  mine  without  creating  a  project  web  site  on  which  the  mayor  or  some  representative  of  the  city  is  involved  in  the  debate  and  makes  contributions.    If  they  don’t,  they  will  lose  some  big  battles.        Mayor  of  an  ex-­‐urban  city,  population  24,000    

An  administrative  official  suggested  that  again  in  this  respect,  citizen  expectations  may  drive  governments  to  provide  e-­‐participation  venues:    

I  went  to  a  meeting  on  urban  plans  in  one  of  the  metropolitan  area  cities  and  at  the  end,  citizens  were  asking  why  we  had  not  opened  an  Internet  site  around  the  project.    They  remarked  that  they  would  have  been  able  to  learn  about  the  plans  in  advance,  could  have  participated  on-­‐line,  could  have  responded  to  a  survey.    Even  the  public  wondered  if  they  had  to  come  to  a  meeting  to  do  these  things.    Agent,  Metropolitan  Area  Participation  Unit    

He  argued,  however,  that  input  cannot  go  without  response;  participation  in  this  sense  requires  an  exchange.    The  last  best  practice  that  emerged  from  these  interviews  is  not  yet  a  practice,  which  is  perhaps  in  and  of  itself  an  important  explanation  of  why  cities  do  not  initiate  more  e-­‐participation  projects:  they  take  a  great  deal  of  care  and  feeding  to  be  successful.    There  is  an  organizational  and  a  human  resources  constraint  at  work  here:  e-­‐participation  sites  need  diligent  moderation  and  structure  to  keep  a  dialogue  among  citizens  on-­‐track,  and  even  more  authoritative  intervention  if  citizens  are  going  to  exchange  with  officials.    Speaking  of  innovative  efforts  undertaken  in  a  large  city  in  a  northern  region  of  France,  one  moderator  said:    

Some  of  these  projects  never  made  it  because  they  lacked  a  moderator  or  manager.    People  don't  participate  in  these  sites  on  their  own.    You  have  to  create  reasons  for  them  to  come  to  the  site  and  participate.    You  have  to  create  events  and  keep  the  site  dynamic  with  communication;  you  have  to  be  present  so  that  people  don’t  feel  they’re  all  alone  on  the  project.    Web  Project  Manager,  Internet  and  Multimedia  Services  Department  in  a  city,  population  141,000    

This  sort  of  staffing  is  obviously  not  possible  for  smaller  localities;  but  even  for  larger  cities,  these  recently-­‐emerging  professions  require  new  skills,  suggesting  personnel  retraining  or  replacement.    One  regional  agency  is  using  its  financial  support  to  incentivize  localities  to  hire  Naturals  who  have  professional  training  in  these  areas,  but  in  an  era  of  tight  public  budgets,  this  means  reshuffling  the  human  resources  deck,  which  entails  a  battle  against  public  sector  bureaucratic  inertia.    Like  many  other  private  and  public  organizations,  French  localities  rely  increasingly  on  short-­‐term  contracts  to  bring  in  people  with  appropriate  expertise.    

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 When  we  support  a  project,  it  has  to  include  a  webmaster  or  community  manager  or  someone  who  is  going  to  know  how  to  update  information,  how  to  go  out  on  social  networks,  someone  who  is  familiar  with  the  Web  tools.    So  we  are  looking  for  projects  that  involve  developing  those  competencies  in-­‐house,  not  going  outside  to  get  them.    Agent  in  a  region’s  Department  for  Digital  Development    

The  interviews  revealed  that  in  those  localities  that  have  tried  e-­‐participation  as  part  of  their  input  legitimation  strategies,  most  efforts  have  been  “conventional,”  meaning  that  they  transpose  off-­‐line  practices  to  on-­‐line  venues  (discussions,  participatory  platforms,  surveys,  even  the  posting  of  documents).    These  practices  do  not  penetrate,  or  benefit  from,  the  collaborative,  horizontal,  peer-­‐to-­‐peer  digital  culture  that  is  emerging  with  among  the  NetGen.    In  other  words,  while  the  Internet,  particularly  Web  2.0,  continues  to  transform  culture  and  society,  it  has  not  in  any  significant  way  affected  the  input  link  between  citizens  and  decision-­‐makers.    The  “thick  communicative  atmosphere”  in  society  has  not  translated  into  this  sphere;  institutional  channels  are  out  of  sync  with  new  forms  and  patterns  of  exchange  that  the  NetGen  see  as  normal    (Monnoyer-­‐Smith,  2011).    This  is  not  surprising,  given  the  traditional  verticality  of  political  relationships  and  the  fact  that  political  leaders’  most  important,  and  attentive,  constituents  are  not  yet  of  the  NetGen.  But  as  Joël  de  Rosnay  and  Anne  Sophie  Novel  argue  in  a  recent  op-­‐ed  piece,  as  the  information  society  has  replaced  the  industrial  society,  paradigms  are  quickly  shifting  in  every  sector.    All  organizations,  both  public  and  private,  need  to  transform  themselves,  to  become  more  fluid  and  more  horizontal,  to  learn  to  benefit  from  collective  intelligence  rather  than  to  impose  hierarchical  power  arrangements.    They  predict:    

“In  this  new  participatory  and  contributive  context,  we  have  to  rethink  government/citizen  relations  to  invent  a  cyber-­‐democracy  that  entails  a  real  dialogue  between  politicians  and  citizens.    This  is  the  dawning  of  a  real  era  of  counter-­‐power.”18  

de  Rosnay  and  Novel  assert  that  politicians  need  to  develop  and  use  tools  that  will  allow  them  to  process  complicated  patterns  of  inputs  from  citizens  that  are  not  necessarily  hierarchically  or  linearly  organized.    They  must  learn  from  the  NetGen  to  value  “dynamic  instability”  and  to  respond  to  a  sense  of  immediacy.    In  this  way,  they  will  maximize  benefits  from  sharing  and  collaboration  as  opposed  to  the  old  model  of  competition  and  individualism.      

In  at  least  two  of  the  (larger)  localities  visited,  there  is  evidence  that  some  officials  are  starting  to  appreciate  and  respond  to  this  paradigm  shift.    The  region’s  largest  metropolitan  area  is  exploring  projects  that  reconceptualize  input,  and  supplement  approaches  that  rely  on  “active”  citizen  participation  (which  in  all  cases  has  been  very  limited)  with  what  I  would  call  “passive”  participation.    The  projects  use  digital  tools  and  Big  Data  to  tap  into  the  private  sphere  where  people  may  be  expressing  themselves  much  more  and  without  being  structured  by  institutional  actors.    In  effect,  by                                                                                                                  18  Translation  by  author  from  Joël  de  Rosnay  and  Anne-­‐Sophie  Novel,  “Inventons  une  cyberdémocracie  pour  accompagner  la  civilisation  du  numérique,”  Le  Monde,  5  June  2013,  p.  20.      

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“sweeping”  social  networks  and  on-­‐line  media  on  particular  subjects,  local  governments  can  learn  more  about  what  the  public  is  thinking  than  if  they  were  to  conduct  a  survey  or  hold  a  meeting.    This  is  a  method  for  authorities  to  venture  out  into  the  “natural”  on-­‐line  communications  environment  to  gather  input.    A  number  of  issues  arise  immediately.    How  representative  are  the  views  of  those  who  use  social  networks  or  who  comment  on  on-­‐line  media?    Does  this  method  produce  input  that  is  specific  enough  to  affect  policy  decisions?  Is  “passive  participation”  an  oxymoron?    As  more  public  authorities  employ  these  methods,  both  they  and  scholars  will  grapple  with  these  questions.      

A  second  example  comes  from  a  large  northern  French  city,  where  one  local  politician  with  a  background  in  the  telecommunications  industry  and  a  keen  sense  of  the  contemporary  cultural  shift  is  nudging  city  hall  into  a  new  role  as  facilitator  and  catalyst  for  social  innovation,  with  citizens  and  associations  in  the  lead.    This  bottom-­‐up  model  uses  NICTs  such  as  wikis  to  enable  collaboration,  and  to  assist  societal  actors  to  network  and  create  collective  intelligence  that  addresses  community  problems.    As  public  resources  shrink,  the  idea  is  that  civil  society  will  have  a  larger  role  in  solving  collective  (public)  problems.  This  model,  in  opposition  to  the  first  example,  relies  on  a  supremely  “activist”  conception  of  participation  that  taps  into  the  NetGen’s  emerging  sharing  culture.        

Future  empirical  research  on  a  larger  scale  than  undertaken  in  this  project  will  be  required  to  identify  and  explain  developing  public  sector  NICT  strategies  and  to  see  whether  localities  eventually  adopt  transformative  policies  and  approaches  that  mirror  practices  in  society  at  large.19  

 

                                                                                                               19  The  author  is  collaborating  with  Ewa  Krzatala-­‐Jaworska  in  France  and  Tony  Wohlers  in  the  U.S.  to  gather  survey  data  on  local  governments’  use  of  NICTs  generally  and  for  participation  specifically  in  a  large  sample  of  French,  American,  and  German  localities.      

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