Measuring the institutional offer of e-participation on municipal web pages: creation and application of an index
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2025.83.3.1416Keywords:
participatory processes, e-democracy, local administration, citizen participation, judges' criteriaAbstract
This work has as its aim to validate and evaluate an instrument designed to measure institutional resources offer of citizen participation on the municipal web pages of medium- and large-sized Valencian towns, assesing the extent to which those portals are endowed with resources, services, and channels for citizen participation. This initiative is undertaken through an analysis of web page contents and the previous evaluation of the measuring items by means of judges’ criteria, for the purpose of obtaining a synthetic index that allows for adequately gauging the scope of development of participation on the websites of each municipality. The results, applied to the Valencian Autonomous Region, unveil a relatively low presence of e-participation possibilities in these towns, even though a number of variables, among which stands out population size or the municipal budget, permit to identify segments of municipalities with a higher development of participatory offer on web pages.
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