Electronic participation: what determines the different civic engagement in electronic way? comparative analysis of lithuanian municipalities

Electronic Participation: what Determines the Different Civic Engagement in Electronic Way? Comparative Analysis of Lithuanian Municipalities The main object of bachelor’s thesis is civic engagement via e-participation tools at local level in Lithuania. Lithuanian municipalities started deeper development of e-participation tools then were given financial support from EU structural funds. All municipalities have implemented projects, which has created various e-participation tools such as e-consultation, e-polls, e-forum, e-petition, etc. in municipal websites. These tools are providing an opportunity for residents to engage in decision making process in new ways. However, citizens are not tending to use these new e-tools in order to participate in public affairs. Researches shows, that society of Lithuania are still in the early stage of e-participation level. Based on this research problem is formulated as follows: despite the fact that development of e-participation services is completed in Lithuanian municipalities, citizens are not likely to use these services and more effectively engaged in decision making process. Therefore the aim of this bachelor‘s thesis is to discover, institutional factors, which determine level of online civic engagement in Lithuanian municipalities. For this aim to be achieved, there are five research objectives set: • To analyze the concept of e-democracy and e-participation. • To examine institutional factors, which possible make influence on online civic engagement. • To evaluate supply level of e-participation services in Lithuanian municipalities and to examine the actual use of e-participation tools in municipalities. • To accomplish comparative analysis of Lithuanian municipalities and investigate how institutional factors determine civic engagement by using e-participation services. The main findings of this research are: • Based on collected data from municipal websites, level of e-participation supply and demand was evaluated in this analysis. As the result, level of supply is medium, because only 1/3 of municipalities are advanced according to the development of e-participation services and has a major part of e-tools in their websites. Unfortunately, situation of the actual use of e-participation tools is poor in local level. Online civic engagement is low in the most municipalities, only a few stands out with more intensive citizens’ use of e-tools. • The comparative analysis of selected municipalities was conducted to find out the main determinants of online civic engagement intensity at the local level. The results revealed that institutional factors such as visualization of e-tools, instruction, how to use these e-tools and registration to the system do not make any influence on e-participation level. On the other hand communication via social networks, especially, feedback and respecting for citizens’ opinions in order to decision making are directly related with online civic engagement level in municipalities and do make influence on it. The main recommendations for municipalities based on research results are: • To strengthen communication with citizens via social networks and develop information about e-participation opportunities and efficiency. • Also devote more attention on feedback quality and respecting to citizens’ opinion with argumentation. Decisions of government to make openness and transparent, for example prepare annual reports, which providing information about e-participation, what government do, which online proposals were implemented or rejected, etc. Bachelor thesis is valuable, because it contribute to clearer e-participation conception and develops the understanding of what determine e-participation level. The results of analysis provide evaluation of current e-participation supply and demand in Lithuanian municipalities. Also the main findings provide guidelines for municipalities how to achieve more active online civic engagement