Citizen empowerment and participation in e-democracy: Indian context

Citizen Empowerment and Participation in E-Democracy: Indian Context Sreejith Alathur

P Vigneswara Ilavarasan

M.P.Gupta

Department of Management Studies Dept. of Humanities & Social Science Department of Management Studies Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Indian Institute of Technology Delhi New Delhi, India 110016 New Delhi, India 110016 New Delhi, India 110 016 +91-0-9717967403 +91-11-2659 1374 +91-11-26528389

[email protected]

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Communication Technologies (ICTs) helps to facilitate citizen empowerment by providing information and opportunities to participate. Equal opportunity in decision-making is a form of empowerment that can reduce the gap between the powerful and the powerless. Democratic governments often emphasize empowering their citizens with equal opportunity in decisionmaking, and enhancing the opportunities for participation are seen as a suitable strategy to achieve this end [14][39], in other words, the efforts to empower citizens and provide opportunities for participation are prerequisites for democratic decision-making. Different forms of online forums can enhance citizen participation in public policy-making. These e-democracy forums are often self-grown or sometimes formulated with a formal or informal structure to seek citizen participation [43].

ABSTRACT Present paper examines whether citizens’ empowered status influences their online democratic participation. The paper put forward two stages of citizen empowerment in the virtual space. In the first stage, citizens are enabled for e-democracy participation and in the second stage citizens are part of the decision making process. On the basis of review of literature, a research model was delineated and tested with quantitative data collected through a survey. Regression results indicate that empowerment elements do influence the participation in edemocracy. The study also reveals that participation in partisan networks influences by cohesive empowerment. Citizen participation through electronic voting machines is influenced by the network actor’s empowerment status. And citizens’ technical empowerment is found to influence participation through mobile phones.

This study differentiates two levels of citizen empowerment. Level one empowerment enables citizens to engage in quality eparticipation. If these e-participation initiatives help citizens to influence decision-making, they are considered to have achieved the next level of empowerment, i.e. Level 2. In Level two, power sharing between citizens and the government becomes an important element of the democratic system. For power sharing, democracy models emphasize the importance of public discussions and the aggregation of differing citizens’ interests. Now the e-democracy models can integrate the ideals of liberal, deliberative, patrician and direct democracy [47]. Use of and access to ICTs are crucial pre-conditions for such participation to meet the expectations of democracy and bring about citizen empowerment [4][47].

Categories and Subject Descriptors K.4.0 [Computing Milieux]: Computers and Society- General

General Terms Theory, Human Factors, web-based interaction

Keywords Digital democracy, E-participation, Empowerment, India.

1. INTRODUCTION

The quality of e-participation is emphasized by scholars as it is essential to the success of e-democracy initiatives. Some scholars (for instance [43]) emphasize the importance of empowering stakeholders to engage in conflict-ridden negotiation. Appropriate design and participation norms are important to reduce deadlocks and to make the participation platforms more transparent and accountable. This paper attempts to examine the relationship between citizens’ empowerment and e-participation.

The interrelation between democracy and empowerment is the concern of this paper. Some scholars believe that democracy empowers citizens with inclusive decision-making while other scholars believe that empowerment enables democratic participation. For example, [37] discusses participation as crucial for empowering citizens while [22] argues that citizen empowerment is a prerequisite for participation and democracy. Empowerment can be explained in terms of the power and powerlessness of citizens [31]. To gain power, citizens should gain information and work with others [28]. Now Information and

The paper is organized as follows. The above introduction briefly discussed e-democracy participation and the different levels of citizen empowerment. The second section presents a review of the literature on participation in e-democracy networks and citizen empowerment. It also delineates the research model and outlines the Indian context. The third section discusses the method adopted by the empirical study. The fourth section describes the results. The fifth section discusses the findings of the study and offers concluding remarks.

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ICTs initiatives with a partisan nature (PN): Researchers identified that to enhance partisan attachments the candidates should communicate directly with the voters rather than through party organizational channels [25]. Web pages and emails (ED3) help the candidates and political parties to build strong partisanship. These services can infer the visitor’s issues and interest and can inform the leaders by email [20]. For the government, partisanship can be improved by e-consultation (ED7) by defining issues for consultation and seeking citizens’ views and opinions [34].

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 E-participation The phenomenon of democratic participation is complex and participation goes far beyond just voting [21]. For example, political participation takes account of discussions, circulating and signing petitions, writing letters to newspapers and participation in consultative activities including mobilizing other citizens. To enhance participation, ICTs offer powerful tools and techniques [13]. And ICTs become important in democratic participation due to its ability to enhance quality decision-making in various areas [13][42][52].

Networks with competitive-elitist nature: In an ever increasing population like India’s, to ensure inclusive governance and mobilization of voters, ballot initiatives have a crucial role [12]. ICTs, is identified as crucial in mobilizing individuals to vote and is utilized by political parties as well. The Government of India widely adopted Electronic Voting Machines (ED11) as one of several ICTs tools in the election. Furthermore, to ensure the democratic nature of various initiatives, short messaging services (SMS) with the support of mobile phone devises (ED10) is commonly used in opinion polling.

ICTs, especially the internet is often acknowledged as an enabler of participation and modern democracy. For instance [54][20] argues that the internet can transcend political boundaries and can enable free thought and citizen movements. ICTs increases social engagement and strong public participation through its various participation forms [26] and can promote democratic models such as the following. The deliberative model consists of organizing around issues and calling concerned citizens to express their views to the decision-makers. In the partisan model, political parties organize activities primarily to get their candidates elected and appeal to the citizens as party loyalties and voters. In the monitorial model, politics come to life when there is great dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs and citizens find expression in ad hoc protest movements that are often directed at elected officials to pave the way for effective grievance redress systems [20]. Writing blogs, protesting through social media networks, e-petitioning, and email campaigns are various tools used by these models.

Economics forums: Researchers [36] identified that democracy is frequent and survives in economically developed countries. Now ICTs is crucial for business activities and economic development. Furthermore, e-participation researchers argue that the development of e-business (ED5) has improved interactions between people [9]. And this transactional, one-way interaction is regarded as an initial level of e-participation [38]. Knowledge sharing platforms: The democratic nature of the internet comes from its ability to provide a vast quantity of information to empower and cognitively mobilize citizens for participating in complex political systems. Knowledge sharing platforms provide a forum for democratic participation. For example Wikis (ED6) are platforms for collaborative information sharing and openness [13].

There are various e-democracy forums observed by the extant literature. Some of them are discussed below: ICTs initiatives which can enable community building: Civil societies are self-generating and self-supporting communities of people. They often volunteer to organize political, economic or cultural activities. ICTs provide the citizen with the tools of political communication for organizing [19]. For example ecommunities (E-democracy 1= ED1), Twitter and Facebook can provide a dynamic base for political communication and promise to strengthen civil society engagement.

Networks with a monitorial nature: In monitorial model, the citizens call for action by volunteers, who foresee some national or local crisis. Hurwitz [20] finds that that the aroused citizens join in petition drives to widen support by addressing others who might have same concern. E-petitions (ED8) can complement traditional petition system, and are considered inherently more democratic with convenient access and the ability to reach wider section of society [26].

ICTs initiatives with a deliberative nature (DN): Deliberative democracy refers to a strong public sphere and a very vivid form of public discussion. Equality in participation, discursive equality and diversity of viewpoints and arguments are crucial for this type of democracy model [53]. ICTs with a deliberative nature –blogs, online discussion forums and online news papers- can help to improve citizens’ understanding of the social issues. These deliberative forums also increase citizens’ opportunities for democratic e-participation. For example blogs (ED2) provide a promising deliberative platform through which individuals can express their political thoughts without any form of intervention. Blogs also allow like-minded people to group together and make an impact in the political sphere [16][29]. Similarly, online discussion forums (ED4) provide the opportunity for comprehensive deliberation over a specific policy or political parties. These forums can help citizens to have better understanding of the issues. Online news papers (ED9) can also provide a means by which the citizen can understand, deliberate about and share the news, videos and so on, dealing with the social issues.

The above discussions indicate that ICTs enabled participation opportunities are capable of incorporating democratic ideals. In addition to ICTs enabled participation, quality of e-participation is also important for democracy. Supporting this view, we can see that democracy measurement attempts assess factors like citizenship, right and degree of participation [3][50][32] which consider indicators including citizens’ empowered status with various types of freedom and rights available to citizen.

2.2 Citizen Empowerment Empowerment refers to improving the human capability to interpret and influence the surroundings by utilizing the existing capacity for the development of both self and society. The process of empowerment in terms of the distribution of power to citizen is closely associated with democracy and ICTs are identified as a promising channel for power distribution [24]. E-participation empowers the citizen (Level2) with decision-making power in 12

internalized value developed through individuals’ social setup motivate citizens’ with moral (Pe6) and social (Pe4) commitment to participate in political activities [25]. The value system is found to influence individuals’ mutual trust, that equip them with willingness to voice for non-personal concerns (Pe5) and for issues that are against citizens’ social/religious interest (Pe2)[23]. Moreover the lack of trust on government or political parties reflects as citizens’ dissatisfaction (Pe1) and influences citizens’ e-participation [54]. Citizens’ level of participation is also influenced by their perception of the likely benefits to be generated. Thus the value system contributing to an ownership feeling can motivate citizens’ to participate in issues, extent of personal concerns (Pe3).

governance. Researchers consider that developing the aptitude for empowerment is important as power belongs to those who seek, others can only abet [22]. Thus in a democratic system, citizens must be empowered (Level1) to define their needs and act upon them. Citizen can be empowered with the power seeking attitude by enabling factors including access to information and improving their capacities to make choices in public issues. Level 1 empowerment deals with the development of self with comprehensive knowledge for competence to attain personal and collective goals [2]. The empowerment (Level 1) will provide citizens with improved self-esteem and enable active participation in the realm of individual, group and community level. Community level participation can become collective movements for social justice and improved quality of social life [32]. However the ICTs enabled participation opportunities often does not receive expected quality participation due to lack of effective mechanisms to carry out focused discussions [20]. Participants must be pre-requisitely possessed with some empowerment elements for having quality participation.

Legal (Le) and Technical (Te) empowerment: Researchers identified deliberative network including blogs has raised demand for internet content regulation, user empowerment and government censorship [11][29]. But stringent legal restrictions might prevent citizens from entering politics [7]. Thus legal validity (Le1) and frameworks (Le2) should balance freedom of expression with the rights of others. Legal and technological policies are also identified as playing a part in improving trust. Scholars identified that, insisting for a matured (Te1) and best industry standards (Te2) by considering ease of implementation (Te3) and up-gradation (Te4) does promote trust and citizen participation [40][54]. Scholars also discuss facilities to ensuring access to right tools (Te5) and distinguishing the fake web-pages (Te7) is crucial for e-participation. Furthermore, by identifying the growing demand for re-examining the correctness (Te6) at the end of e-participation [54], recently Election Commission of India (ECI) conducted electronic voting with paper trails.

Empowerment Elements Subjective (Se): Citizens anticipate that the internet environment provides a homogeneity and equality for the political discussions [53]. However internet do not generate such uniformity, hence individuals’ tolerance (Se4) to encounter conflicts and discursive equality is essential for political participation. To add, scholars [27] consider that the lack of necessary critical thinking on deliberative issue is an obstacle to achieve e-participation. The actual empowered status of citizens indicates the improved awareness about the issues (Se1) and equips citizens to think critically for participation. However computer system and the societal systems can be designed to keep the elite in power [44]. Hence system support to build knowledge about current eparticipation tools (Se2) and help citizens to think in terms of their earlier forms of participation process (Se3) is important for individuals’ e-participation.

Network Actors (Ne): Studies identified that e-government initiatives are not moving in the direction of e-democracy [33]. The initiators fail to ensure democratic participation due to poor management, unclear aims and requirements and other political reasons [54]. It is identified that confidence (Te1) in organizations that seeking e-participation is crucial for e-participation. To have better e-participation the initiators must be trained to professionally manage (Te2) and foresee the requirements (Te3) of e-participants.

Cohesive (Ce): Discussions of empowerment is often follows collective concerns in terms of feminist, ecological or cultural movements. Citizen cohesiveness fosters an environment for gender and racial equality. Thus proportional representation of disadvantages (Ce1) and equal representation of women (Ce2) is an important form of empowerment. It is now expected that ICTs will improve support for the collective movements. However in terms of digital divide concerns ICTs support for cohesive environments is often challenged. Moreover [48] argue that the digital divide is not merely a problem of access to ICTs, but is also an issue of the ability to use ICTs to acquire information and convert information into useful knowledge. In these line accessibility issues (Ce3) and multiple language support (Ce4) are crucial for collective movements [47]. Trust factors have been found to influence citizens’ level of participation in ‘e’ initiatives. To gain citizens’ faith and all political parties support for eparticipation initiatives, the transparency (Ce5) and opportunities to verify source code (Ce6) of participation tools are identified crucial [54]. It is also identified that concerns like fear of physical violence (Ce7) and lack of a confidential environment (Ce8) challenges collective movements [47].

Above discussions presented the pre-requisite empowerment elements that influence the participation in e-democracy networks. Earlier e-participation researches are often limited in nature, because of not considering multiple e-democracy forums/models. It is also noted that, in an e-democracy context, the need for participants to be empowered for quality e-participation has not been discussed much.

2.3 Research Model and Hypothesis As mentioned earlier, e-participation is often influenced by the presence of likeminded people and individuals’ capabilities to commend on complex political scenarios. Thus having mere eparticipation opportunities is not sufficient for active citizens’ participation [53]. The above literature review suggested subjective empowerment elements can equip citizens for active eparticipation with less aversion to difference and disagreement [27][44]. This research thus proposes: H1: Citizens’ subjective empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in e-democracy.

Political (Pe): Individual motivation to engage in knowledge sharing and other online political activities is identified as being closely associated with the value system they belongs to. The 13

difficulties that arise out of technical challenges to e-initiatives. The networks actors are also responsible for enhancing egovernment initiatives to a two-way participation level. Thus network actors have a crucial role in e-democracy. Furthermore, literatures strongly argue that for successive deployment of Electronic Voting Machines, initiators must have the skill to develop collective agreement.

Scholars identified that ensuring the adequate representation of women or minority groups found to improve collective movements [1]. It is also noted that the political parties focus on the disadvantaged groups can have a positive impact on participation [18][46]. The literature review discussed that efforts from government and political parties to build trust and citizen centric governance improve cohesiveness among the citizens and the e-participation. Thus the propositions are:

H6: Network actors’ empowered status positively affects citizens’ intention to participate in e-democracy

H2: Citizens’ cohesive empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in e-democracy.

H6a: Network actors’ empowered status positively affects citizens’ intention to participate in electronic voting machines.

H2a: Citizens cohesive empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in forums with a partisan nature.

Considering the influence of empowerment elements on quality eparticipation in ICTs enabled democratic networks, a research model is provided in Figure 1.

As discussed, online political engagement is associated with value systems. Democratic theory also indicates that ‘participation is not just of value in and out of itself, but it also has an educative role that promotes civic engagement and wider virtues’ [35][30]. For example people get actively involved only if they feel capable of what political participation commonly requires [51]. Similarly, political engagement is influenced by personal political efficacy and political influence [5]. This educative role of a democratic system is crucial for forums with deliberative nature, because to have useful deliberations political efficacy is inevitable. This research thus proposes:

Se

H1(+) H2a(+)

Partisan

Ce H2(+) H3(+)

Pe

H3: Citizens’ political empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in e-democracy.

H3a(+) H5(+)

Te

H3a: Citizens’ political empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in forums with a deliberative nature.

Deliberative

H4(+)

Participation in E-Democracy

Le

The policy of openly sharing information and intellectual property items such as the source code of e-voting software raises demand for competition law and tort liability issues [29][54]. Even though judicial probe and anti-sedition law is crucial in digital democracy, the legal framework must also support fair information access and practices for active e-participation [29][54]. The above literature review identified that empowering citizens with adequate legal support in their e-participation improve their online activities. Thus:

H6(+)

Ne Figure 1. Research Model

2.4 E-democracy initiatives in India In order to gain understanding of the e-participation opportunities an empirical survey was conducted in India. This section discusses e-democracy initiatives in India.

H4: Citizens legal empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in e-democracy.

The technological evolution in India is in two phases: i) from the early 1970s to late 1990s and ii) from the internet era of the late 1990s [17][45]. In 1995, the Government of India enabled information provision through its web-based e-government initiatives. The Indian e-democracy evolution milestones can be considered as the establishment of the National Informatics Centre (1976), the Right to Information Act (2005) and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) (2008). More over initiatives including the Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) and the efforts of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in graphics and intelligence based Script Technology (GIST) provided opportunities to Indian citizens for e-participation in native languages as well.

Studies identified that while seeking e-participation the technology must be improved with trust-building factors [40][29][54]. Literature review also pointed out opinion polls with short messaging services (SMS) is becomes an important eparticipation tool since mobile devises have the potential to enable wider and cost effective access. Explaining the influence of technology components scholars say that adequate flexibility and adaptability for easier participation improve mobile phone adoption as a political participation tool [6]. H5: Citizens technical empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in e-democracy. H5a: Citizens technical empowerment positively affects their intention to participate in mobile voting

In India, e-democracy initiatives have contributions from government, civil society, the private sector and from political candidates and parties [15]. The e-participation opportunities initiated by the Government of India are multifaceted. For instance The Election Commission of India initiated Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) for the public election from 1982 onwards. The State Election Commission, Gujarat in 2011

Opportunities for inclusive decision-making indicate the government’s ability to keep citizens at the centre of online services [49]. Network actors often have to incorporate public interest by listening to the opinions of technology experts. This requires a high level of skill from the network actors in resolving 14

initiated online elections (http://onlinevotinggujarat.gov.in/#). The web pages of Election Commissions provided the voters with the facility to access the affidavits of candidates and voter registration details. The Central Vigilance Commission’s Vigeye (www.vigeye.com) project (2010) was setup to empower the citizens to fight against corruption. Now, through mobile SMS or web interfaces citizens can expose corruption in India. The central and state governments also initiated various e-petitioning systems including the public redress mechanisms (http://pgportal.gov.in) of the Government of India, e-Abhijoga (of Odisha), Prajavani (of Andhra Pradesh), E-Samadhan of Rajasthan and the Sutharyakeralam of Kerala. Government efforts towards edemocracy also include webcasts of parliamentary procedures. These various government initiations towards e-governance have empowered Indian citizens with Information and e-participation.

customized email request, with a link to survey page was forwarded to 33600 email-ids collected from various online discussion groups. The survey link with a request for feedback was also posted on 326 e-democracy platforms including email groups, discussion forums and social networking sites dedicated to democracy, politics, ICTs and social issues. 182 questionnaires were also distributed physically in five government institutes. The difficulties of obtaining online response are well documented. For instance, [8] says that ‘achieving even 1 per cent citizen participation in any one e-petition would generally be considered a stunning success’. Scholars also pointed out that many questions of online surveys remain unanswered [10]. A total of 446 responses were received out of which 150 responses were from offline participants. Only 360 responses were considered for this study. The sample characteristics of the study are provided in Table 1.

Most of e-democracy activities from the non-governmental domain are led by the upper and middle class Indians [15]. The initiatives include e-registration of voters, the formation of new political parties and provision of information about the candidates their programs and services [15]. Political parties use the internet as one viable campaigning tool and to improve the performance of their candidates. The parties’ own (especially parties with religious inclinations) chat rooms/email groups are found to receive active citizen participation. The newspapers/media have also initiated citizen participation opportunities with their discussion forums and e-polling. For example, the Malayalam language newspaper Mathrubhumi’s online discussion forums actively engage its readers. Online newspapers also enable their readers as citizen journalists. Citizen mobilization efforts are also used as a marketing strategy by corporate bodies, for example Jaago Re of Tata Tea provide activity space for social change. In India, e-petition initiatives also come from non-government origins, e.g. ‘Indian Voice’. ‘PRS India’ helps citizens to track parliamentary functions. Youth for Equality and India Against Corruption (IAC) are some other Indian e-democracy initiatives.

Table 1. Demographics information of survey respondents Classification Frequency Percentage 18–30 157 44 Age 31–59 171 48 60+ 32 8 Women 78 22 Gender Men 282 78 Student/Academia 159 45 Govt./Semi Govt. 60 15 Occupation Private Sector 129 37 Other 12 3 Bachelors’ degree 148 41 Education Masters and above 192 53 status Other 20 6 Urban 271 75 Residential location Rural 89 25 Highly political 10 3 Family Political 69 19 orientation Non-political 281 78 To 10,000 29 8 Annual 10,001 to 100,000 63 17 income (in Indian 100,001 to 500,000 182 53 Rupees) Above 500,000 86 22 24x7 236 65 Internet access 1–5 days per week 65 18 1–4 days per month 59 17

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Survey Procedure: Sample and Data Collection Analyzing the rhetorical power of e-participation projects for citizen empowerment might be helpful in understanding the participants and improving their democratic participation. This study conducted a survey to understand the linkage between edemocracy participation and the empowerment. To ensure appropriateness of the respondents, the study conducted only those who often participate in the online discussion forums of social networking sites, online news papers or communicated in the emailing lists of social issues. The survey participants are above eighteen years and have the right to vote as per the Indian constitution. A questionnaire was circulated among the active eparticipants in both online and offline modes. This questionnaire consists of three sections. The first section got eleven questions to identify the areas of e-democracy (ED, see Section 2.1) participation in which the respondents are actively involved. The second section incorporates questions that assess the empowered status of e-participants (Se-4, Ce-8, Pe-8, Le-2, Te-7, and Ne-3 questions). The third section sought demographic information on the survey respondents. The survey was conducted between June and September 2010.

Among the respondents, those who have a non-political family orientation (78 per cent) participated more in this survey than those who from highly political orientation (3 per cent). The participation of women (22 per cent) level was lower than that of men (78 per cent). Seventy-five per cent of the respondents are from urban areas and 94 per cent have education beyond matriculation. Among the respondents, those who are having all time internet access and income of above one million rupees are dominant. These findings support [15] argument that eparticipation initiatives are from India’s urban, English-speaking, upper and middle classes. Measures used in this study Dependent Variables: The dependent variables are those derived from the democracy ideals (see Section 2.1). Questions are framed to identify a respondent’s e-participation experience. Using a fivepoint Likert type responses ranging from never participated to

In the first phase, questionnaire forms were sent, using the Google Docs facility, to 1121 citizens but only eleven responded. Later 15

always participated, participants were requested to mark their frequency of participation in eleven e-democracy areas (ED1ED11). The overall e-democracy index is reliable as inferred by Cronbach Alpha reliability score, 0.76.

Table 3. Regression results of ED and dependent variables Dependent Adj. Independent beta T VIF R2 variable variable ** 0.35 Se 0.40 6.92 1.23 Ce 0.03 0.47 1.82 Pe 0.26 4.65** 1.13 ED Le -0.13 -2.27* 1.16 Te 0.01 0.25 1.71 Ne 0.12 1.87 1.59 * p < 0.05, **p < 0.01

Independent variable: The empowerment elements (Level 1) form the independent variables for this study (see Section 2.2). Each item had a five point Likert type response ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Cronbach Alpha values for these measures (α = 0.59 for Se, 0.65 for Ce, 0.61 for Pe, 0.78 for Le, 0.67 for Te, and α = 0.62 for Ne) is having an acceptable range of values indicating the reliability of the measured used.

The variables Se (β = 0.40, p < 0.01), Pe ( β = 0.26, p < 0.01) and the Le (β = -0.13, p < 0.05) are significantly related to ED (see Table 3). This infers that citizens’ intention to participate in edemocracy is influenced by their subjective, political and legal empowered status. Relationships between Ce, Te and Ne were found to be non significant, thus rejecting hypothesis H2, H5 and H6. The regression carried out with deliberative, partisan, mobile voting and electronic voting machines as dependent variables and political, cohesive, technology and network actors as respective independent variables is provided in Table 4.

4. FINDINGS As part of interrelated analysis procedures, Person correlation between the variables was carried out. ED variables found to be correlated with each other, except for the voting process. The correlation analysis for the dependent and independent variables is provided in Table 2. The correlation is significant for all the variables except for the Le. This can be due to application of legal restrictions for limited e-democracy services. For example, legal framework is more valid for e-voting rather than an open discussion forum. The Pearson correlation between the participation in Electronic Voting Machines and the networks actors’ empowerment is significant. The correlation between the mobile voting and technical empowerment is also found to be significant. Moreover, the Pearson correlation between the deliberative platforms and the political empowerment and that between partisan nature and cohesiveness is significant. Thus overall all the independent variables have been significantly correlated with the dependent variables.

Table 4. Regression results of DN, PN, M-voting and EVM as dependent variables and Pe, Ce, Te, Ne as respective independent variables Dependent Adj. Independent beta T VIF R2 variable variable ** DN 0.17 Pe 0.41 8.27 1.00 PN 0.01 Ce 0.15 2.57* 1.00 M-voting 0.01 Te 0.14 2.51* 1.00 EVM 0.04 Ne 0.21 3.91** 1.00 * p < 0.05, **p < 0.01

Table 2. Correlation analysis between research variables Se Ce Pe Le Te Ne Se 1.00 Ce 1.00 Pe 0.30** 0.13* 1.00 Le 0.29** 1.00 Te 0.23** 0.56** 0.16** 0.39** 1.00 Ne 0.36** 0.50** 0.15** 0.22** 0.42** 1.00 M-v 0.08 0.96 0.10 0.00 0.14* 0.19** EVM 0.20** 0.04 0.12* 0.06 0.12* 0.21** DN 0.38** 0.07 0.41** -0.76 0.13* 0.22** ** * ** * PN 0.28 0.15 0.19 0.01 0.12 0.17** ** * ** ** ED 0.45 0.15 0.38 0.20 0.29** * ** p < 0.05 , p < 0.01

Variables Ce (β = 0.15, p