Understanding E-Government in Europe

Issues and Challenges

Paul G. Nixon, Vassiliki N. Koutrakou, Rajash Rawal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415467995
• eBook ISBN: 9781135245719
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume critically explores the contentions in the emerging debate surrounding new media technologies and the extent to which they are challenging traditional political and government models.

Examining a range of citizen/government interactions which together form e-government in different contexts, this book assesses the potential of new media technologies to facilitate new institutional patterns for governance and participation, as experienced primarily, but not only, across Europe. Analysing a range of challenges spanning from those of a technological and conceptual nature to those of a more political and legal nature, the authors scrutinise the central policies at governmental and organisational levels and consider the following questions:

• Is society driving or responding to e-government and is it ready to cope with it?
• What implications does e-government have for the power/democracy relationship?
• Is the technology right for e-government? What is needed to ensure government services are delivered optimally?
• How is e-government perceived and is it trusted?
• How are the sensitive issues of identity, privacy and social inclusion dealt with?
• How are management and safety dealt with when one considers issues such as activism, cyberterrorism, biometrics, and new implications for international relations?

This comprehensive text will be of interest to students and scholars of public policy, politics, media and communication studies, sociology, law and European studies. It will also offer insights of relevance to practitioners and policy-makers in regional, national, and transnational governance, reform and innovation.

Part I
The fundamentals of E-Government in Europe

1
The Fifth Estate

Democratic social accountability through the emerging network of networks¹

William H. Dutton

Summary

The rise of the press, radio, television and other mass media has enabled the development of an independent institution: the ‘Fourth Estate’. The Fourth Estate is central to pluralist democratic processes. The growing use of the Internet and related digital technologies is creating a space for networking individuals in ways that enable a new source of accountability in government, politics and other sectors. This chapter explains how this emerging ‘Fifth Estate’ is being established and why this could challenge the influence of other, more established bases of institutional authority. It discusses approaches to the governance of this new social and political phenomenon that could nurture the Fifth Estate’s potential for supporting the vitality of liberal democratic societies.

The emergence of a new pluralist democratic institution

The historical conception of feudal societies being divided into estates of the realm, as reflected in France, England and Scotland, can be updated in a way that is useful for understanding developments in contemporary network societies. In prerevolutionary France and England, for example, these estates were identified as the clergy, nobility and commons.² In the eighteenth century, as explained by Thomas Carlyle, Edmund Burke identified the press as a Fourth Estate:

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or witty saying; it is a literal fact – very momentous to us in these times.³

Since then, radio, television and other mass media have been enfolded with the press into the important independent democratic institution of the Fourth Estate. The passing of feudal society has led many to redefine the estates, as in the US, where these have come to be most often linked to the separation of powers in legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. But the press remains identified as a Fourth Estate in many liberal democratic societies.

However, in the twenty-first century, a new institution is emerging with some characteristics similar to the Fourth Estate, but with sufficiently distinctive and important features to warrant its recognition as a new Fifth Estate. This is being built on the growing use of the Internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs) in ways that are enabling ‘networked individuals’⁴ to reconfigure access to alternative sources of information, people and other resources. Such ‘networks of networks’⁵ enable networked individuals to move across, undermine and go beyond the boundaries of existing institutions, thereby opening new ways of increasing the accountability of politicians, press, experts and other loci of power and influence. These are neither personal nor institutional networks, but networked individuals that reflect many attributes of Manuel Castells’s conception of a ‘network society’⁶and which are similar to what have been called ‘Internet-enabled networks’.⁷

This chapter explores the nature and implications of the Fifth Estate, highlighting why it has the potential to be as important in the twenty-first century as the Fourth Estate has been since the eighteenth century. It begins by placing the notion of the Fifth Estate within a wider conception of the societal implications of the Internet. It then sketches more details of its characteristics and uses, as based on evidence across a range of research findings. It concludes by looking at the main threats to the vitality of the new estate and the governance approaches that could help to maintain and enhance its role.

The Internet as distinct from the mass media

Some have argued that computer-based communication systems like the Internet are essentially a new medium, building on traditional media.⁸ This media-centric view has led to the Internet being seen as simply an adjunct of an evolving Fourth Estate. Many of those who acknowledge that some aspects of the Internet compose something distinctive also have a limited notion of new digital media as being essentially a complementary form of news publishing – a blogosphere or online digital add-on to the mass media.⁹

The politics of the Internet in society

The Internet’s broad social roles in government and politics have similarities with those of traditional media. However, the Internet differs from traditional media, particularly in opening up other institutional arenas, from everyday life to science, and to greater social accountability. This needs to be understood in the context of three common views on the political role of the Internet for society at large as irrelevant, deterministic or socially shaped:

1 An emphasis on technical novelty. A view of the Internet as a ‘passing fad’¹⁰ focused on the supposed ephemeral nature of the Internet in comparison with other institutions and previous media. For a time, this included major players in the field of information technology,¹¹ who were slow to recognise the increasing importance of this form of networking. With time, this passing fad thesis has become less credible as Internet use has continued to grow and diversify around the world, but it continues to arise around particular themes, such as the Internet as simply a novelty in political campaigns and elections.

2 Technologies of freedom v. control. One claim is that the Internet tends to democratise access to information and undermine hierarchies. For example, de Sola Pool¹² saw Internet-based networks as inherently democratic ‘technologies of freedom’ through which individuals can network with people, information, services and technologies in ways that follow and reinforce their personal self-interests. In contrast, others (e.g. Schiller¹³) contend that institutions will adopt, design and use the Internet to enhance their control of existing institutional structures and organisational arrangements (e.g. in E-Government initiatives that enhance existing institutional arrangements) or in the dystopian vision of a ‘surveillance society’ based on pervasive networks of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and other digital means of monitoring and controlling citizens’ behaviour (e.g. Surveillance Studies Network¹⁴).

3 The Internet as a ‘network of networks’. This conception moves on from the largely technologically deterministic freedom v. control debate to accept that the Internet can support and reinforce many different forms of network,¹⁵ each shaped by its stakeholders to reinforce or challenge the interests of individuals or organisations that form the Fifth Estate. These networks connect not only in the one-to-many pattern of the mass media, but also one-to-one, many-to-one, many-to-many and so on patterns.

The Fifth Estate: interplay between individual and institutional networks

Enhancing citizens’ communicative power

The view outlined here of the social shaping of ICTs by developers, users and regulators highlights why technologically deterministic thinking that extrapolates the societal implications of a technology from knowing some of its key features has been a major factor contributing to the generally poor track record of many forecasts in this field.¹⁶ However, as explained in this chapter, the social shaping view enables the implications of technical change to be revealed by observing patterns of Internet use and impact over time. For example, networks can be designed to operate as horizontal peer-to-peer communications or for much more hierarchical and centralised structures. Their aims can be to emphasise broad social objectives or to bolster a more individualist viewpoint from which to serve up entertainment for a ‘daily-me’.¹⁷ Networks comprising the Fifth Estate have two key distinctive and important characteristics:

1 The ability to support institutions and individuals to enhance their ‘communicative power’. This is the use of ICTs to form networks that can then lead to real-world power shifts, which, however, does not mean the Internet on its own can give new real power to its users.¹⁸ This enhancement of com...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The fundamentals of E-Government in Europe
• Part II Conceptual challenges
• Part III E-Government in practice
• Part IV Perceptions, subversions and new challenges to E-Government
• Conclusions
• Index