Citizen e-participation and public value in Tunisian municipalities. Exploratory study 2011–2021[E-participation citoyenne et valeur publique dans les municipalités tunisiennes. Étude exploratoire 2011-2021]

Since the work of Moore in the nineties, generating public value from the initiatives of government institutions (specifically those based on digital technology) has become an academic and practical concern. This article addresses this question by specifically exploring the impact of citizen e-participation initiatives on public value in Tunisian municipalities. First and starting from an examination of the debates, ambiguities, and controversies around the theme under study, we develop a theoretical framework allowing us to approach the field for identifying the types of public value created in governmental institutions and the mechanisms of their generation. Then, we justify the choice of a qualitative exploratory approach of multiple case study in the context of Tunisian municipalities (government institutions subject to strong political and social authorities). Finally, the triangulation of data sources (responsible for citizen e-participation in municipalities and representatives of associations working on local governance) allows us to validate the following results: (1) citizen e-participation amplifies and creates four public value generating mechanisms (effectiveness, efficiency, intrinsic improvement and interactivity/reactivity); (2) with the digital technology currently exploited in the context of Tunisian governmental institutions (operating at the dawn of a participatory democracy), citizen e-participation essentially generates public value of an economic type and (3) in order to be able to generate other types of public value (political, social, etc.), it is necessary to have a rigorous conception of citizen e-participation initiatives, on the one hand, and to have the predisposition and commitment of the first line personnel, on the other hand.