Human Development, Social Policy and Citizen Electronic Participation in Russia’s Regions

Abstract

Human development, social policy and e-participation are interdependent. Effective social investment in the human capital leads to the emergence of demand for participation mechanisms among citizens, which in turn results in the willingness of authorities to implement participatory innovations. At the same time, e-participation is itself a part of the social investment paradigm, aimed at raising the quality of citizen feedback on social and economic policy. This paper attempts to test this interrelationship in the case of the Russian regions. Recently regional authorities have introduced a lot of e-participation platforms. However, many researchers emphasize the insufficient effectiveness of such platforms, as well as disproportions in their development at the regional level. Using an original evaluation methodology, we have estimated the quality of the regional e-participation portals. These data have been used in a quantitative study. The results of correlation and regression analysis suggest that human development and social expenses of the regions are important factors of e-participation development, in comparison to other potential predictors, like quality of political institutions, quality of governance and IT-expenses. It is impossible to say that human development inevitably leads to the growth of demand on e-participation among citizens, or the supply of such services from the government. However, the analysis shows that social policy is important for e-participation development: despite investment in ICT, regional authorities should actively contribute to social investment. Possible directions of such investment include providing equal opportunities via raising the living standards of the unprotected social groups, developing social programs for active citizens, eliminating regional disparities, as well as investing in the digital capabilities of citizens and civic initiatives.