On the Effects of e-Government on Political Institutions

Research on e-government typically focuses on disruptive technologies and their presumed transformational effects on government.The internet and associated technologies are more than two decades old, and even cursory observation demonstrates that institutional change in government is often painstakingly slow. To theorize longer-term developments in e-government, an institutional perspective on e-government is sketched and illustrated in this chapter. An institutional approach invites one to examine interactions among people, technologies and structures over time and in political environments characterized in part by conflict over ideas, rights and resources to uncover mechanisms that contribute to stability and change. To extend institutional perspectives to account for e-government, the chapter introduces the concept of a digitally mediated institution—that is, a government organization characterized by a high degree of digital infrastructure and widespread use of digital applications and tools.The chapter then sketches a partial review of various institutional mechanisms that underlie temporal features of institutional development including policy feedback, conventions, path dependence, and key dimensions of longer-term institutional development including timing, sequencing and more gradual patterns of change than are typically presented in disjunctive formulations. Selected concepts are then illustrated briefly through two case studies of statelevel digitally mediated institutional stability and change focusing on Europe and the United States federal government. These cases highlight the influence of early events on subsequent paths of development, the importance of timing and sequencing, critical junctures and the ways in which policy entrepreneurs often appear as puzzlers exhibiting uncertainty but seeking to construct and employ appropriate logics.The chapter ends with a brief discussion of implications for science, technology and society. In keeping with the major themes of this Handbook, the chapter seeks to shed light on how and why ideas, artifacts, and practices come to be institutionalized or disrupted in political institutions. Institutional perspectives connect micro-level processes with more macro-level organizational and societal systems.With respect to e-government, cultural values dominant in American and European politics—including democracy, strong association of technological development with progress and social betterment, citizen participation, and mistrust of central government, among other normative values—underlie many institutional reform initiatives.