e-Participation Experiences and Local Government in Catalonia: An Explanatory Analysis

This research analyzes the main explanatory factors in the impulse of citizen participation experiences in public decision-making, both online and offline, looking for differences and similarities regarding Internet use for participation. It focuses the analysis in Catalonia, one of the Spanish and European Union geographical areas that have headed the impulse of participatory experiences. It focuses on the local level of government, a prolific space for these activities. Anyway, their impulse among different municipalities has been very heterogeneous and data has not been collected in a systematic way. In general terms the analyses show that political variables such as the political party of the mayor or electoral abstention rate would be explanatory for promotion of e-Participatory experiences, as well as variables relating to the participative context of the municipality or population size.