Online consultations: an old-new democratic innovation?

Abstract

Online consultations (or e-consultations) are increasingly used by multiple actors at all level of the decision-making process (from the local to the transnational level) on a wide array of topics. Depending on the objectives, they target organized groups, lay citizens or both. They may be used exclusively or in combination with other consultative methods such as survey, mini-publics or public hearings. Finally, they may be more or less interactive as some online consultations promote discursive exchanges while other are limited to a questionnaire or a simple an email address. There is much discussion on how online consultations can follow more deliberative design and principles and thus be productive both for policy makers and citizens in developing their civic skills and in fostering more participatory forms of governance. Probably due to multiple and fast evolving formats online consultations adopt, research still lags behind and tends to be scattered. In this section, we welcome papers that would contribute to fill this gap. A non-exhaustive list of questions that could be covered by the panels are the following: - How diffuse are online consultations? Which (non-) institutional actors tend to use them? - What are the public, political and strategic motivations or expected outcomes behind the introduction of e-consultations? - What formats do e-consultations take and what does explain differences in format? - Who is behind the e-consultations platforms and how are the data treated? - How inclusive, deliberative and effective are e-consultations and which are the critical factors to turn them into e-deliberations? - What can different country experiences bring forth in the discussion and the future implementations of e-consultations? - Analysis of the level of institutionalisation of e-consultations in countries (or the EU)? - How important is the context of each country for the implementation and success of econsultations? - In which topcis of policy-making e-consultations have produced better results? - To what extent are online consultations complementary to offline consultations procedures? - How is the usage of online consultations perceived by the public and (non) institutional actors?

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