Title: Anti-apathy approaches in representative democracies: e-governance and web 2.0 – facilitating citizen involvement?

Authors: Bardo Fraunholz, Chandana Unnithan

Addresses: Faculty of Business and Law, School of Information Systems, Deakin University, 70, Elgar Road, Burwood, Melbourne, Victoria 3125, Australia. ' Faculty of Business and Law, School of Information Systems, Deakin University, 70, Elgar Road, Burwood, Melbourne, Victoria 3125, Australia

Abstract: Apathetic citizens disenchanted with conventional channels of participation in democratic processes are a predicament for mature representative democracies, as it reflects in the depleting voter turnouts in elections and participation in community associations. Recognising the reverberations of this apathy on governance, economies ostensibly search for anti apathy approaches. Recently E-governance using the pervasive power of the internet/Web 2.0, during the election has been instrumental for democratic engagement. We considered Australia and France, applying a historiographical view exploring the pre-election scenarios, attempting to evaluate the use of the Internet/Web 2.0 as valid benchmarking anti-apathy approaches of e-governance, to facilitate citizen participation.

Keywords: e-governance; representative democracy; Australia; France; elections; e-voting; e-democracy; electronic democracy; electronic governance; online voting; apathy; web 2.0; internet; citizen participation; e-participation; anti-apathy approaches; electronic voting.

DOI: 10.1504/IJED.2008.021278

International Journal of Electronic Democracy, 2008 Vol.1 No.1, pp.51 - 84

Published online: 16 Nov 2008 *