I think maybe there is a mistake here: it says e-dem is linked to good governance and then goes on to define what E-governance is. Did the authors mean to say that “e-democracy is closely linked to e-governance”? Also, funnily enough, here we find a definition of “e-governance” whereas there is no definition of “e-democracy”. Also, this raises the question: is the term “e-governance” really useful? Seeing this definition of e-governance I would say that “e-democracy” covers everything in this definition apart from the concepts of “efficiency” and “effectiveness”. Just to anticipate comments, democracy is not inherently linked to the idea of “efficiency” and “effectiveness”.

Agree on the lack of definition on edemocracy and the need for one. One would argue though that democracy links quite well to both efficiency and effectiveness if put in relation with serving human rights for example.

Chris, I understand your perspective, but I believe for this document a tight definition of e-democracy and democracy is better. In that sense, I would say that human rights are pre-conditions rather than a byproduct of democracy. Given that democracy in general is associated with decision-making one could link democracy to anything, but then we are linking it rather to the object of the decision-making than to the process itself that is supposed to be democratic. Democracy is related to the participation of citizens in governments / processes that affect them, be it by periodically electing representatives through electoral processes or by participating more directly in the decision-making process that takes place between the electoral cycles and so on… Both in a theoretic and empiric perspective you can have a system of decision-making that makes the least efficient / effective decisions but that is still highly democratic. Empirically there is no systematic evidence whatsoever that more democracy leads to more “efficiency / effectiveness”. It MAY lead to better decision-making but it is a process that is normally very difficult to engender and hard to sustain. I am not saying that the concepts of democracy / efficiency are mutually exclusive but nor do they go hand-in-hand as some might claim: for over 2000 years and still today, the literature on the subject tends to approach the problem of democracy and efficiency as a tension rather than as a spontaneous symbiosis. (I know this is not what you claim) Of course, if we want to “sell” “more democracy” to policy-makers we should talk about its potential benefits, such as, among many others, that it MAY lead to better decision-making. Nonetheless, associating democracy with efficiency is not as obvious as it seems, and doing so might only generate frustration and discredit of democratic practices in the future.