Municipal Websites: Linking Democratic Theory and Citizen Participation

摘要

In this paper the authors draw on Scott's (2006) work on e-government and democratic theories to examine how governments engage their citizens online. The three theories they focus - representative, pluralist, and direct -are the most prominent in the democratic theory literature. Using data from the 200 American local governments, they examine two research questions: What factors drive governments to employ each theory? Which theory predominates in the implementation of e-government? Our assumption is that providing answers to these two questions will help set the stage for future research linking e-government and democratic theory.