Affiliations: [a] Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science, University of Turku, Turku, Finland | [b] Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Maija Jäske, Political Science, University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland. Tel.: +358 400 864830; E-mail mhkarj@utu.fi.
Abstract: Recently, digital democratic applications have increased in presence and scope. This study clarifies how civic applications – bottom-up technologies that use open data to solve governance and policy challenges – can contribute to democratic governance. While civic applications claim to deepen democracy, systematic frameworks for assessing the democratic potential of civic apps are missing, because apps are often evaluated against technical criteria. This study introduces a framework for evaluating the democratic potential of civic apps, distinguishing six criteria: inclusiveness, deliberation, influence, publicity, mobilization, and knowledge production. The framework is applied to a case study of the Finnish DataDemo competition in 2014 by analyzing the institutional design features of six civic applications. It is argued that in terms of democratic governance, the greatest potential of civic apps lies in enhancing publicity and mobilization, while they should not be expected to increase inclusiveness or direct influence in decisions. Thus, our study contributes to understanding how civic applications can improve democracy in times of open data abundance.
Keywords: Democratic governance, democratic innovations, civic applications, open data contest, civic engagementKey points for practitioners:•Understanding the implications of democratic criteria, such as deliberation, inclusiveness, or policy influence helps practitioners align them with corresponding design features in civic app prototypes.•Civic apps do not necessarily improve democratic inclusiveness or influence in political decision-making processes due to open self-selection and bottom-up character.•Civic apps may contribute to deliberation in the public sphere, but their deliberative potential for participants remains limited unless they provide possibilities for moderated in-app dialogue amongst users.•Practitioners need to realize the potential of open data driven civic apps especially in fostering transparency and publicity of democratic governance, and mobilizing people into collective action.
