Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/288766 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Politische Vierteljahresschrift [ISSN:] 1862-2860 [Volume:] 61 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften [Place:] Wiesbaden [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 285-308
Publisher: 
VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden
Abstract: 
The emergence of the Internet fueled euphoric—partially utopian—visions that can be summarized as democratic promises. In most cases, the normative and empirical discussion so far has considered e‑democracy tools and their potential, regardless of the scale of interaction—be it local, national, or transnational—as a one-size-fits-all approach, assuming that what is applicable for the national level will be equally true for the subnational and transnational levels. We argue that the question of whether the Internet and digital tools can fulfill the democratic promises must be confronted in a more differentiated way, examining under which spatial conditions e‑democracy is more likely to incentivize citizens to engage and to involve more citizens as well as marginalized citizens in public debates and decision making. The article introduces scale as a new element for a better theoretical understanding of e‑democracy. We establish a conceptual framework that enables us to capture scale as distance in terms of territorial, cognitive, and affective distance. The spatial perspective brings an innovative spin to the somewhat petrified positions on the mobilizing or reinforcing effects of digital tools as well as a new theoretical argument for the debate on e‑democracy in general.
Subjects: 
Democracy
Internet
Online political participation
Digital media
Space
Distance
Demokratie
Internet
Politische Online-Partizipation
Digitale Medien
Raum
Distanz
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
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Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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