E-services have been gaining increasing importance in the public sector over recent years. But even though e-services help governments in many ways – for example by increasing agency efficiency or enabling citizens to participate in democratic processes – citizen e-services usage rates still lag behind expectations in many countries to date. This article analyzes the reasons why citizens do not...

Disputes concerning industrial legacies such as the disposal of toxic wastes illustrate changing pressures on corporations and governments. Business and governments are now confronted with managing the expectations of a society increasingly aware of the social and environmental impacts and risks associated with economic development and demanding more equitable distribution and democratic manage...

Although populists in government have already frustrated the common interest projects, curbed institutional progress, and questioned fundamental values of European Union, integration theories so far failed to address question: what explains populist governments’ actions within EU? This article claims that existing accounts either downplay relevance or fail grasp complexity governments, because ...

The use of Information Technologies in government (or e-government) has evolved during the last few years to make the interactions between government and citizens (G2C), government and businesses (G2B), and inter-agency relationships (G2G) more effective, democratic and transparent [1,6,8]. Moreover, in the most recent years we have observed two important trends with an impact in all these inte...

The trend towards more user contributions on the web and an increased interest in social media technology, from both governments and citizens, leads to new potentials and challenges in designing for citizen-government interactions. For several years now, governments have recognised the potential of the web 2.0 to bring citizens and their governments closer together. Indeed, the social web holds...

In the 1950s and 1960s, many Africans believed that independence would change prospects for rapid economic growth and development. First, independence implied the end of colonialism and its despotic, exploitative, and repressive institutions. Second, with the Europeans gone, Africans could now engage in democratic (people-driven, participatory, and inclusive) constitution-making to provide them...

The article addresses the claim that the "left populist" governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela failed to effectively reduce inequality in the 2000s. The author examines the econometric evidence presented by McLeod and Lustig (2011) that the "social democratic" governments of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay were more successful and shows that McLeod and Lustig's results are highly...