Abstract
eParticipation is seen as particularly important for participation of citizens in distant decision-making, i.e. where the decision-making body is at quite a distance to the constituency such as in European legislation on consumer protection. In addition to general challenges regional and local projects in eParticipation have to cope with, further difficulties have to be overcome in distant decision-making such as motivating citizen participation. This chapter investigates such challenges in a systematic way. It proposes a regional participation model to engage citizens in distant decision-making. As such, a model itself cannot automatically ensure the success of an eParticipation project. A framework for a regional model for eParticipation is proposed consisting of a procedure to implement a regional model for eParticipation, extensive marketing methods, an eParticipation platform and a serious game. Based on this framework, experiences from VoicE and VoiceS projects are presented, and recommendations are given.
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Notes
- 1.
VoicE—Giving European people a voice in EU legislation. http://www.give-your-voice.eu. Accessed 15 Sep 2011.
- 2.
Baden-Württemberg, Germany (http://www.bw-voice.eu) and Valencia, Spain (http://www.voice.gva.es). Platform functionalities described in Scherer et al. (2009b).
- 3.
VoiceS—integrating semantics, social software and serious games into eParticipation. http://www.eu-voices.eu. Accessed 15 Sep 2011.
- 4.
Gov2SDemOSS. http://www.gov2u.org/gov2DemOSS. Accessed 15 Sep 2011.
- 5.
The VoiceS serious game is available online under http://www.give-your-voice.eu/indexphp?option=com_content&task=view&id=111&Itemid=278. Accessed 15 Sep 2011.
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Acknowledgement
The projects VoicE ‘Giving People a Voice in European Legislation’ and VoiceS ‘Integrating Semantics, Social Software and Serious Games into eParticipation’ were co-funded by the European Commission under the eParticipation Preparatory Action. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. We thank all VoicE and VoiceS projects partners for collaboration in the projects and making them a success.
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Scherer, S., Wimmer, M.A., Schepers, J. (2012). Regional Participation Model to Engage Citizens in Distant Decision-Making. In: Charalabidis, Y., Koussouris, S. (eds) Empowering Open and Collaborative Governance. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27219-6_8
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