The First Steps Towards E-Governance and E-Democracy

The Case of the Virtual Baja

Kumin Ferenc <p00kuf01@student.ceu.hu>

CUE - Political Science

According to the technological development in computer-mediated communication more and more scholars attempt to revise pre-Internet theories about public sphere, political action, democracy, and governance. The majority of these analyses are based on pure theory since the phenomenon of virtual political action is quite rarely available for research. The only existing forms of empirical sources in this field are case studies, and one can find works about Amsterdam, Berlin, or Santa Monica e.g. in the book Cyberdemocracy (Tambini, Damian 1998). Though these studies provide thorough examinations about the virtual political activity of these Western European or American cities, no such case study have been completed in Central or Eastern Europe. The evident reason for this gap in the political science literature is that the region has a significant disadvantage in the computer-mediated communication infrastructure. However, in the culture of new technology separated exceptions are there to take a closer look at. One such exception is the case of Baja.

The case of Baja seems to be an ideal object for this kind of investigation. Why exactly this average, middle size city close to the Yugoslavian border proved to become a milestone in the history of Hungarian cyber politics is a question yet. For more than two years the citizens and the leaders of this town showed outstanding activity on the net, and built a reputation among the members of the Hungarian cyber-political community. The first step was the opening of a new topic in the political forum of the popular Hungarian portal, Index. The novelty was only the request of the opener that every comment should have been submitted with true names, not only accompanied with anonymous nicknames as usual. Until now they have been given a separated collective forum room lifting the topics of Baja users out from the gray mass of other political issues of Index. But the ambitious citizens have not stopped there. They opened their own portal site under the domain baja.hu with overwhelmingly political content.

What makes the Baja case particularly worthwhile to study is that the virtual space activity is not only observable from grass root initiatives of the residents but also from the side of the local authorities. The self-governance of Baja has its own web page on the net and the leaders of the city are committed to the development of electronic governance. This aspect of the research might provide valuable evidences, about the relations of e-democracy and e-government. Do they develop separately or encourage each other? If there is causation, what is the direction of it? These are all exciting question, which I intend to answer through appropriate study of this remarkable case.