Governance, cities and new ICTs: e-democracy in European urban contexts

Contemporary society is characterised by circumstances and situations that give rise to profound changes in the different areas of life, whether in the economic sphere or in the political and social sphere. These are transformations that to some extent have an impact on time, on space, on social relationships, and on ways of communicating. Many of these changes manifest themselves in cities. The resulting use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has in fact changed the way political life is organised and the way city government is understood and carried out. These technologies have come to be seen as tools for improvement and for reducing the distance between the actors involved in decision-making processes. This study focuses on the application of new information technologies in the sphere of urban governance processes. In detail, by means of a comparative analysis between different European experiences, the paper tries to describe and analyze the implementation and generation of e-democracy processes in selected urban contexts. The fundamental theoretical approach, which natural distances itself from the model of technological determinism, views technology within the organising context and the specific culture of the macrosystem that produces it. Explicitly drawing upon a non-linear vision of technological development, we assert that a given technology is always the product of a certain form of organisation, and not the other way around. In this vision of a circular process of innovation, technology does not, per se, produce innovative changes; rather it is social processes in evolution that tend to seize upon a given technological tool. In light of these assertions, to define systems of e-democracy as a social innovation implies that the analysis of the process of transformation goes beyond the mere technological phenomenon, because its development is determined by social contexts that are in flux. Therefore the innovative aspect of e-democracy consists in the ways in which it manifests in the interactions among the actors, rather than merely in the use of ICTs. During the field work phase of the research, there were noted some significant variations among the experiences observed, due to cultural and institutional peculiarities, different styles of governance, particular policies applied, and the different ways of implementing the processes.