Online participation in Estonia
Meelis Kitsing · 2011
This paper discusses online participation in Estonia. Even though Estonia's e-government initiatives are often presented as examples for other countries to be followed, this analysis finds high degree of variation in the outcomes. The availability of innovative platforms for online political participation has led to increasing use of internet voting in the last five elections, while they have consistently failed to engage public in the legislative process. Furthermore, the internet voting can be seen as transactional. It has not made substantial contribution to online democratic participation other than making voting more convenient for certain segments of society. The government portal for encouraging citizens to express their views about new laws suffers from both unwillingness of citizens to participate and most ministries to make new laws available.