The Role of Information and Communications Technology in Strengthening Citizen Participation and Shaping Democracy: an Analysis of Mexico’s Initial Experience and Pending Challenges

Information and communications technology (ICT) is considered to hold a tremendous potential for strengthening citizen participation and shaping democracy insofar as it facilitates the collection, dissemination, exchange, and coordination of publicly relevant information and ideas and, consequently, subjects law and policy making and safeguarding processes to an expanded range of inputs. This paper critically assesses this potential as it relates to Mexico by identifying the scope of the measures which have been taken to create electronic spaces for citizen advocacy and analyzing, from a comparative perspective, the initial impact of the online citizen participation mechanisms launched by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, as well as those planned by state and local entities. This assessment is supplemented by an evaluation of the principal technological, legal, and cultural obstacles which Mexico must overcome in order to maximize the citizen participation benefits associated with ICT.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the aforementioned publicly-oriented and government-operated electronic spaces indicates, as a general proposition, that the elevated quantity of citizen-generated information derived from online citizen participation mechanisms positively informs law and policy making processes in Mexico. This said, however, the same process of evaluation reveals a consistent disconnect between the provision and the downstream use of citizen input. Against this backdrop, the paper concludes by arguing that if ICT-based citizen participation mechanisms are to fulfill their substantial potential in terms of shaping Mexico’s democratic transition, further efforts must be undertaken to inculcate a robust civic culture and strengthen the perceived linkage between citizen input and legislative-political impact.