Use of the websites of parliaments to promote citizen deliberation in the process of public decision-making. Comparative study of ten countries (America and Europe)

Abstract

This study develops a longitudinal research (2010-2015) on 10 countries – 5 European countries (France, United Kingdom, Sweden, Italy and Spain) and 5 American countries (Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and the USA). The aim is to compare how the parliaments use its official websites in order to promote the political participation process in the citizenship. The study focuses on the deliberation axe (Macintosh, 2004, Hagen, 2000, Vedel, 2003, 2007) and in the way that representative institutions define a digital strategy to create an online public sphere. Starting with the recognition of Web 2.0 as a debate sphere and as a place of reconfiguration of the traditional –and utopian- Greek Agora, the study adopts the ‘deliberate’ political action axe to evaluate, qualitatively and quantitatively -using a content analysis methodology- the use of the Web 2.0 tools made by the legislative bodies of the analysed countries. The article shows how, which and what parliaments use Web 2.0 tools - integrated in their web page - as a scenario that allows deliberation at the different legislative processes that integrate the examined political systems. Finally, the comparative results show the main differences and similarities between the countries, as well as a tendency to reduce deliberation tools offering by representative institutions in the countries sampled