ABSTRACT
In the mid-1980s, several American local government authorities (such as Glendale, Pasadena, Santa Monica) were at the forefront of this shift in the envisaged uses of information and communications technologies. They primarily sought to improve contact between the local authority and the citizens, to upgrade delivery of services and, in the longer term, to encourage citizen participation in public affairs (Docter and Dutton, Chapter 7 this volume; Dutton and Guthrie, 1991; Guthrie and Dutton, 1992). Similarly, since the early 1990s a number of European local authorities such as Amsterdam, Bologna, Manchester (see Francissen and Brants, Chapter 2; Tambini, Chapter 5; Bryan, Chapter 8; all this volume) and civil society actors (see Schwartz, Chapter 6 this volume) rather than central governments have been engaged in experiments in electronic democracy. They frequently argued that by embracing information and communications technologies, they could resuscitate declining citizen participation in political life and give new vigour to local politics.
