ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out citizenship ideals, in order to put the ‘smart citizen’ in the context of rights claims as an historical and conflictual – thus, inherently political – process. It offers an overview of citizenship as an evolving concept which shapes and is shaped by the political organisation of society. Agonism, in fact, forges a notion of citizenship which is relational to their community of interests and plural with regards to participatory deliberations. The fostering of the procedural dimension of digital rights resembles, often times, an exercise of digital democracy which aims to enhance citizens’ information, consultation, and feedback. The ‘scaffold of smart citizen participation’ is a heuristic tool to compare and evaluate different projects from the perspective of citizen’s roles. In 1969, Sherry Arnstein published a highly influential paper on the ways in which citizens are involved in the planning process and regeneration programmes.
