Abstract
How information and communication technologies (ICTs) shape the conditions for the creation of an electronic democracy (e-democracy) is the subject matter of a rising field. However, prior studies are both inconsistent with regard to findings and have drawbacks in the operationalization of the concept at a global level. This chapter addresses voids in previous research by looking at an established measurement of e-democracy and making a refinement of this very measurement. This is done through assessing a data set that spans both time and space and includes all countries of the world. The findings, relating to e-democracy on a global scale, show the positive influence of technology and population size but also emphasize the need for more theoretical groundwork that future research can benefit from.
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Notes
- 1.
Existing alternatives are for example Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net and the Open Net Initiative. The basic shortcoming of these measurements is that a considerable proportion of the countries of the world are excluded.
- 2.
FHP is based on average score between Freedom House’s two indexes and Polity IV with imputed data for countries from which data is missing. The index has been scaled down, ranging from 0.0 (low democracy) to 1.0 (high democracy). Values are imputed for countries for which data on Polity IV is missing. This is done by regressing Polity IV on the average Freedom House measure.
- 3.
This excludes South Sudan since the country joined the UN in 2011.
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Lidén, G. (2018). Progress in Global Assessments of E-Democracy: Refined Measurements and New Findings. In: Alcaide Muñoz, L., RodrÃguez BolÃvar, M. (eds) International E-Government Development . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63284-1_9
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