Open Government - Retooling Democracy for the 21st Century

This paper aims to identify the most promising theoretical concept on how to integrate the notion of Open Government and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into traditional democratic structures. For this purpose, understanding the concept's key elements and how they correlate is a vantage point from which to engage in further critical analysis. Even more important, however, is to dissect the transformative qualities as well as hindrances of an ICT-driven approach to Open Government within existing democratic structures. In this regard, conventional scientific analysis sometimes suffers from a profound lack of imagination. It either aims to reinvent democracy by embarking upon a journey towards ideal deliberative inclusion of all citizens. Or it almost entirely neglects any transformative potential. This paper will argue that an ICT-driven approach to Open Government can strike a balance between representative and deliberative democracy and thereby unleash its transformative potential in a more organic manner and ultimately "retool" democracy to evolving needs and desires of 21st century citizens.