E-democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, uses information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is credited to digital activist Steven Clift. By using 21st-century ICT, e-democracy seeks to enhance democracy, including aspects like civic technology and E-government. Proponents argue that by promoting transparency in decision-making processes, e-democracy can empower all citizens to observe and understand the proceedings. Also, if they possess overlooked data, perspectives, or opinions, they can contribute meaningfully. This contribution extends beyond mere informal disconnected debate; it facilitates citizen engagement in the proposal, development, and actual creation of a country's laws. In this way, e-democracy has the potential to incorporate crowdsourced analysis more directly into the policy-making process.
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research, combining social and computer science to explore information, communication, and technology. It is an integral part of the University of Oxford's Social Sciences Division in England.
New Public Management (NPM) is an approach to running public service organizations that is used in government and public service institutions and agencies, at both sub-national and national levels. The term was first introduced by academics in the UK and Australia to describe approaches that were developed during the 1980s as part of an effort to make the public service more "businesslike" and to improve its efficiency by using private sector management models.
Andrew Graham is a British political economist. He is currently Executive Chair of the Europaeum and Chair of the Academic Council of the Europaeum, Senior Fellow of the Oxford Internet Institute, Trustee of Reprieve, and an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford and of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Keith Martin Dowding is a Professor of Political Science and Political Philosophy at the Australian National University's School of Politics and International Relations. He was in the Government Department at the London School of Economics in 2006, and has published in the fields of public administration and policy, political theory, and urban political economy. His work is informed by social and rational choice theories. He edited the SAGE Publishing Journal of Theoretical Politics from 1996 to 2012.
Stuart Weir was a British journalist, writer, and Visiting Professor with the Government Department at the University of Essex. He was previously the Director of the Democratic Audit, formerly a research unit of the University of Essex. Weir was a founder of the constitutional reform pressure group Charter 88, and was editor of the weekly political magazine the New Statesman from 1987 to 1991, having previously been deputy editor of New Society, which merged with the New Statesman in 1988. Weir was editor of the Labour Party's monthly magazine New Socialist in the mid-1980s. Weir died on 2 July 2024, at the age of 85.
Patrick John Dunleavy, is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Public Policy within the Government Department of the London School of Economics (LSE). He was also Co-Director of Democratic Audit and Chair of the LSE Public Policy Group. In addition Dunleavy is an ANZSOG Institute for Governance Centenary Chair at the University of Canberra, Australia.
The first idea of a digital administrative law was born in Italy in 1978 by Giovanni Duni and was developed in 1991 with the name teleadministration.
Christopher Cropper Hood is a visiting professor of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Hood was Gladstone Professor of Government at All Souls College, Oxford, from 2001 to 2014, and director of the ESRC Research Programme Public Services: Quality, Performance and Delivery from 2004 to 2010. His books include The Limits of Administration (1976), The Tools of Government (1983), The Art of the State and A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less?. He chaired the Nuffield Council on Bioethics' Working Party on medical profiling and online medicine from 2008 to 2010.
Richard Rose is a political scientist, author, and academic whose comparative studies in social science have significantly influenced political science and public policy in both practice and theory. He is a Professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde (UOS) in Scotland, and is a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
Colin Hay is Professor of Political Sciences at Sciences Po, Paris and Affiliate Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Sheffield, joint editor-in-chief of the journal Comparative European Politics. and Managing Editor of the journal New Political Economy.
John S. Dryzek is a Centenary Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra's Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.
Sonia Livingstone is a leading British scholar on the subjects of children, media and the Internet. She is Professor of Social Psychology and former head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. While Livingstone’s research has evolved since the start of her career in the 1980s, her recent work explores media and communication in relation to society, children and technology. Livingstone has authored or edited twenty-four books and hundreds of academic articles and chapters. She is known for her continued public engagement about her research areas and has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, OECD, ITU and UNICEF, among others, on children’s internet safety and rights in the digital environment. In 2014, Livingstone was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to children and child Internet safety".
Global Policy is a prestigious peer-reviewed academic journal based at the Global Policy Institute, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University and focusing on the "point where ideas and policy meet", published in association with Wiley-Blackwell.
Roderick Arthur William Rhodes, usually cited as R. A. W. Rhodes, is a British professor of political science.
Mariana Francesca Mazzucato is an Italian–American-British economist and academic. She is a professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is best known for her work on dynamics of technological change, the role of the public sector in innovation, and the concept of value in economics. The New Republic have called her one of the "most important thinkers about innovation".
Joni Lovenduski, is Professor Emerita of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London.
Gina Neff is the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Neff was previously Professor of Technology & Society at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. Neff is an organizational sociologist whose research explores the social and organizational impact of new communication technologies, with a focus on innovation, the digital transformation of industries, and how new technologies impact work.
Ann Macintosh is Emeritus Professor of Digital Governance at the University of Leeds.
Karen Bakker was a Canadian author, researcher, and entrepreneur known for her work on digital transformation, environmental governance, and sustainability. A Rhodes Scholar with a DPhil from Oxford, Bakker was a professor at the University of British Columbia. In 2022–2023 she was on sabbatical leave at Harvard, as a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow. She was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stanford University's Annenberg Fellowship in Communication, Canada's "Top 40 Under 40", and a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship.
