ABSTRACT
Crowdsourcing is rapidly evolving and applied in situations where ideas, labor, opinion or expertise of large groups of people are used. Crowdsourcing is now used in various policymaking initiatives; however, this use has usually focused on open collaboration platforms and specific stages of the policy process, such as agenda-setting and policy evaluations. Other forms of crowdsourcing, such as Tournaments or Virtual Labor Markets, have been neglected in policymaking, with a few exceptions. This chapter examines the application of crowdsourcing as a generic tool for policymaking and systematically explores and categorizes the different roles that principal types of crowdsourcing can take in different stages of the policy cycle. The chapter addresses questions surrounding the role of crowdsourcing and whether it can be considered as a policy tool or as a technological enabler, focuses on the potential new roles for crowdsourcing in policy design and examines the new developments in crowdsourcing.
