Abstract
Why and how do e-participation policies sometimes flow with politics as usual and sometimes lead to challenging powerful elites and institutions? With the aim of investigating this question, we introduce a framework for comparative research that includes not only systemic but also circumstantial factors. The approach is tested in a comparative case study of three northern European countries–Sweden, Estonia and Iceland–that are all experimenting with e-participation but which are experiencing rather different levels of crisis. The results show that innovation and elite challenging aspirations are very much related to the type and degree of crisis. It is therefore argued that the interplay between institutional constraints and circumstantial catalysts needs further scholarly attention and elaboration.
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We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Vinnova, Nordforsk, the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannis) and Estonian Ministry for Economic Affairs and Communication. The research presented in this article has received funding from Citizen-Centric eGovernment Services Programme
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Åström, J., Hinsberg, H., Jonsson, M.E., Karlsson, M. (2013). Crisis, Innovation and e-Participation: Towards a Framework for Comparative Research. In: Wimmer, M.A., Tambouris, E., Macintosh, A. (eds) Electronic Participation. ePart 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8075. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40346-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40346-0_3
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