E-Participation in Network Political Era: Background, Features and Functions

Citizen political participation in future will inevitably show a lot of revolutionary features of digit and network. The rise of e-participation is closely related to the rapid development of social economy and network technology. The political background of e-participation is mainly composed of the crisis of representative democracy and the trend of direct democracy. Moreover, the new ideas of service-oriented government based on civil society will further promote the development of e-participation. There are a range of new characteristics in e-participation, such as reducing the cost of political participation, broadening its channels, and making direct democracy possible. E-participation has a positive impact on the democratic development. First, it may reduce the sense of people´s political apathy and increase their enthusiasm for political participation. Second, it may cultivate citizens´ democratic consciousness and political responsibility. Third, network consensus supervision might become the most extensive and representative one in the whole society. Fourth, the e-participation also contributes to the reforms of governments´ management, which is mainly reflected as follows: the power structure changes from the centralization model to the decentralized one; decision-making structure changes from the vertical model to the interactive model; networks will weaken the functions of governments´ regulations, enhance the communication and contact between governments and the public, and highlight the governments´ service functions.