E-consultations in Croatian central government

So far citizen consultations and participation in policy-making has been mostly the feature of local governments and local administrations. This paper aims to explore the usage of public participation in policy making via e-consultations with interested public in central government, namely in two Croatian ministries - Ministry of Science, Education and Sport (MoSES) and MInistry of Culture. This topic is mainly related to the problems of accountability and transparency, but also citizen cynicism and digital divide. Moving beyond this general approach, there is an underlying issue of defining and measuring accountability and establishing the role of e-consultations in the strengthening of accountability principle and framework within governmental organisations. The main problems analysed are the creation of curricula in elementary and secondary school in MoSES and policy-making concerning mainly the distribution of subsidies (establishment of public cultural needs), theaters, and electronic media in the Ministry of Culture. The paper explores the type of comment left on the web sites of those ministries, their quality and general tone, by the means of content analysis, but also the type of organisation and/or inndividual leaving the comment in order to assess the motivation and impact of the coment. On the other hand, it explores and analyses the structures enabling accountability and transparency in those ministries in order to establish the role and potential of e-consultations in strengthening them and possible improvements of e-consultation methodology and practice.