The Order of E-Democracy: Internet and Democracy in Swedish Local Governments

This paper is a case study of two Swedish municipalities, Gothenburg and Tranemo, and their work with IT and democracy issues. Using a discourse perspective, the structures of power that constitute and determine an IT-and-democracy activity are revealed. With theoretical inspiration from Habermas, it is argued that the discourse is characterized by a technological form of politics, which includes non-value-depending policy, non-problematic consensus, and expert-dependency. Furthermore, within the area there is an implicit, but regulatory, individualistic democracy ideal and a being with technology that can be understood as deterministic and non-flexible.