IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/10195.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Haves and the Have Nots : Civic Technologies and the Pathways to Government Responsiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Mellon,Jonathan
  • Peixoto,Tiago Carneiro
  • Sjoberg,Fredrik Matias

Abstract

As civic life has moved online scholars have questioned whether this will exacerbatepolitical inequalities due to differences in access to technology. However, this concern typically assumes thatunequal participation inevitably leads to unequal outcomes: if online participants are unrepresentative of thepopulation, then participation outcomes will benefit groups who participate and disadvantage those who do not. Thispaper combines the results from eight previous studies on civic technology platforms. It conducts new analysis totrace inequality throughout the participation chain, from (1) the existing digital divide, to (2) the profile ofparticipants, to (3) the types of demands made through the platform, and, finally, to (4) policy outcomes. The paperexamines four civic technology models: online voting for participatory budgeting in Brazil, online local problemreporting in the United Kingdom, crowdsourced constitution drafting in Iceland, and online petitioning across 132countries. In every case, the assumed links in the participation chain broke down because of the platform’sinstitutional features and the surrounding political process. These results show that understanding howinequality is created requires examination of all stages of participation, as well as the resulting policy response. Theassumption that inequalities in participation will always lead to the same inequalities in outcomes is not borne outin practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Mellon,Jonathan & Peixoto,Tiago Carneiro & Sjoberg,Fredrik Matias, 2022. "The Haves and the Have Nots : Civic Technologies and the Pathways to Government Responsiveness," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10195, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10195
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099343109282218192/pdf/IDU0348c81df0b38e044840b3770b94dced6276f.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amy Antonio & David Tuffley, 2014. "The Gender Digital Divide in Developing Countries," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-15, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhandari, Aarushi & Burroway, Rebekah, 2023. "Hold the phone! A cross-national analysis of Women's education, mobile phones, and HIV infections in low- and middle-income countries, 1990–2018," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 334(C).
    2. Robert Ferritto, 2024. "Will policy help close the digital gender divide? An intersectional feminist policy analysis of Ethiopia's national digital policy," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 42(2), March.
    3. Erica L. Gallindo & Hobson A. Cruz & Mário W. L. Moreira, 2021. "Critical Examination Using Business Intelligence on the Gender Gap in Information Technology in Brazil," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(15), pages 1-9, August.
    4. Holden, Stein T. & Tilahun, Mesfin, 2021. "Mobile phones, leadership and gender in rural business groups," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    5. Shiferaw, Yegnanew A., 2024. "A spatial analysis of the digital gender gap in South Africa: Are there any fundamental differences?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    6. Muhammad Imran & Umair Qazi & Ferda Ofli, 2022. "TBCOV: Two Billion Multilingual COVID-19 Tweets with Sentiment, Entity, Geo, and Gender Labels," Data, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-27, January.
    7. Taron, Avinandan & Drechsel, Pay & Gebrezgabher, Solomie, 2021. "Gender dimensions of solid and liquid waste management for reuse in agriculture in Asia and Africa," Resource Recovery and Reuse Series H050720, International Water Management Institute.
    8. Pedro Malo-Perisé & José Merseguer, 2022. "The “Socialized Architecture”: A Software Engineering Approach for a New Cloud," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-20, February.
    9. Costa, Helia & Pisu, Mauro & Shreeti, Vatsala, 2022. "Short Term Cost of Cash and Mobile Financial Services: Evidence from a natural experiment in India," TSE Working Papers 22-1351, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    10. David Tuffley & Amy Antonio, 2015. "Enhancing Educational Opportunities with Computer-Mediated Assessment Feedback," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-13, August.
    11. García-Suaza, A & Rodríguez-González, D & Sarango, A & Mayorga, J. D & Pretel, A & Husain-Talero, S & Zarama, L & Urbano, J. C., Girón, D., Medina, N, 2022. "Los impactos de la inclusión financiera en los micronegocios: factores que explican aumentos en los ingresos y crecimiento de los negocios," Documentos de Trabajo 20418, Universidad del Rosario.
    12. Waqas Shair & Tatheer Zahra & Muhammad Tayyab & Neelam Kubra, 2022. "The Impact of the Digital Divide on Wage Gaps among Individuals in Pakistan," Journal of Policy Research (JPR), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 8(4), pages 97-107, December.
    13. López-Martínez María & García-Luque Olga & Rodríguez-Pasquín Myriam, 2021. "Digital Gender Divide and Convergence in the European Union Countries," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 115-128, January.
    14. Hina Amber & Bezawit Beyene Chichaibelu, 2023. "Narrowing the gender digital divide in Pakistan: Mobile phone ownership and female labor force participation," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 1354-1382, August.
    15. Romero-Martínez, Ana M. & García-Muiña, Fernando E., 2021. "Digitalization level, corruptive practices, and location choice in the hotel industry," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 176-185.
    16. Paul Kwaku Larbi Anderson & Johannes Schädler & Lars Wissenbach, 2022. "Information and Communication Technology in Rural Healthcare and Social Welfare Service Provision in Ghana – Prospects in the Face of Social Inequalities," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 6(12), pages 08-15, December.
    17. Anca Elena-Bucea & Frederico Cruz-Jesus & Tiago Oliveira & Pedro Simões Coelho, 2021. "Assessing the Role of Age, Education, Gender and Income on the Digital Divide: Evidence for the European Union," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 1007-1021, August.
    18. Shao, KaiChao & Ma, Ruixue & Kamber, Joseph, 2023. "An in-depth analysis of the entrepreneurship of rural Chinese mothers and the digital inclusive finance," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(7).

    More about this item

    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:wbk:wbrwps:10195. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.