IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-00-42.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Electronic Democracy and Environmental Governance: A Survey of the States

Author

Listed:
  • Beierle, Thomas
  • Cahill, Sarah

Abstract

Just as information technology is rapidly changing how we work, shop, and play, it is changing how we practice democracy. This paper focuses on one area where the Internet is broadening public participation in governance: the administration of environmental laws and regulations. It describes a survey of how each of the 50 states is using the Internet to provide citizens with environmental information, gather public input on agency decisions, and foster networks of interested citizens. As "laboratories for democracy," the states may be the source of ideas and experience that anticipate how environmental governance at all levels of government will change over the next decade. The survey results suggest that electronic democracy in state-level environmental decisionmaking is in an early and experimental phase. All state environmental agencies have Web sites and most provide substantial amounts of information on-line. However, opportunities for active on-line interaction between citizens and government, as well as among citizens themselves, are quite limited. Relatively few states, for example, allow citizens to comment on proposed rules electronically. Overall, the survey suggests that it is a good time for states to learn from each other as more innovative states push the envelope of what technology allows and more cautious states continue to adopt basic features as decision-makers become convinced of their efficacy.

Suggested Citation

  • Beierle, Thomas & Cahill, Sarah, 2000. "Electronic Democracy and Environmental Governance: A Survey of the States," RFF Working Paper Series dp-00-42, Resources for the Future.
  • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-00-42
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-00-42.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joon Hyoung Lim & Eungkyoon Lee, 2012. "Information technologies, community characteristics and environmental outcomes: evidence from South Korea," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(3), pages 271-296, May.
    2. Ann Bostrom & Ragnar E. Löfstedt, 2003. "Communicating Risk: Wireless and Hardwired," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(2), pages 241-248, April.
    3. Beierle, Thomas, 2003. "Discussing the Rules: Electronic Rulemaking and Democratic Deliberation," RFF Working Paper Series dp-03-22, Resources for the Future.
    4. Beierle, Thomas C., 2003. "Discussing the Rules: Electronic Rulemaking and Democratic Deliberation," Discussion Papers 10681, Resources for the Future.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-00-42. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.