Potere e decisioni pubbliche: la sfida della democrazia deliberativa. Consultazioni elettroniche e disuguaglianze partecipative territoriali

This chapter focuses on the relations between power and public decision-making in the context of inclusive decision-making processes using the Web, in particular observing those processes initiated from above, by public administrations or the government. It compares the Italian and British cases in relation to the use of online public consultations through national e-portals and hypothesises possible intersections with forms of deliberative democracy. Despite the fact that top-down e-democracy has shown its limits, we believe that institutional intervention can act as a facilitator for bottom-up forms of e-democracy by supporting and funding active participation processes in hybrid online and on-the-ground deliberative arenas, even in those areas where participation in public decision-making is less widespread. The hypothesis is that instead the most widely used system of public consultation remains that of electronic consultations of individual citizens and organisations already interested in politics, through forms of passive listening.