An Analysis Of Public Participation In Public Decision-Making Of Local Government In The Context Of E-Democracy

In recent years, the information technology revolution has induced transformational economic and social shifts around the world. New technologies are likely to continue to have a profound impact on the political, economic, social and cultural values of the world in the coming decades. Governments of the world are fully cognizant of this potential, and start trying to increase the quality of public policy-making, citizens’understanding of public policy issues and their participation in government policy making. A document made by CPC Central Committee "a decision on strengthening the Party’s governance capability stressed the need to improve the major decision-making rules and procedures through various channels and forms, and promote a more scientific and democratic decision-making to achieve".As a new form of democratic participation, the emergence and application of e-democracy in China are expanding. It not only attracted the close attention of the government, but also has become a hot research topic in the administration, political science, economics, information technology and other disciplines. In the21st century, e-democracy has set up an electronic communication bridge which aims to promote communication between the public and government and enhance the effective development of public decision making. Same with e-democracy, as a new term public executive ability is also cited in recent years to improve public service. It has been observed that public decision making is one of the major problems confronting developing nations. Moreover, public participation in public decision-making is the core of modern democracy, it has important practical significance for the development of government and social society.Based on above considerations, in this dissertation, the aspects of public participation in public decision making in the local government and the development of e-democracy will be combined.The research approach adopted in this dissertation includes literature review and case study. A range of possible objectives of the dissertation can be listed as:firstly, to describe the definition and status of e-democracy, public decision making and public participation; secondly, to evaluate the problems of traditional public participation in public decision-making of local government; thirdly, to analyze public participation in local government public decision-making model in the context of e-democracy; finally, to conclude the recommendations from barriers to e-democracy.