E-Participation in Network Political Era: Background, Features and Functions

Citizen political participation in future will inevitably show a lot of revolutionary features of digit and network. The rise of e-participation is closely related to the rapid development of social economy and network technology. The political background of e-participation is mainly composed of the crisis of representative democracy and the trend of direct democracy. Moreover, the new ideas of service-oriented government based on civil society will further promote the development of e-participation. There are a range of new characteristics in e-participation, such as reducing the cost of political participation, broadening its channels, and making direct democracy possible. E-participation has a positive impact on the democratic development. First, it may reduce the sense of people's political apathy and increase their enthusiasm for political participation. Second, it may cultivate citizens' democratic consciousness and political responsibility. Third, network consensus supervision might become the most extensive and representative one in the whole society. Fourth, the e-participation also contributes to the reforms of governments’ management, which is mainly reflected as follows: the power structure changes from the centralization model to the decentralized one; decision-making structure changes from the vertical model to the interactive model; networks will weaken the functions of governments' regulations, enhance the communication and contact between governments and the public, and highlight the governments' service functions.