Explaining Country Heterogeneity in E-Government Evolution Based on Longitudinal Analysis of Nations

Abstract

E-government (EGOV) has emerged as an important innovation disrupting the government-citizen relationship in the past two decades. It has attracted wide attention from scholars across varied domains. However, most of these scholarly works, while richly contributing to this evolving domain, assume homogeneity and uniformity in its design, implementation, and impact. This “one size fits all” approach fails to account for the contextual richness, often culminating in a “design-reality” gap. Also, the existing literature lacks adequate investigation of EGOV heterogeneities along time. To address the lacuna, this study attempts to uncover country-level heterogeneities inherent in EGOV longitudinal evolution. Using a dataset over 2008-2018, the study performs a longitudinal clustering analysis and identifies four distinct cohorts with varying EGOV trajectories. Further, the study uncovers variations in EGOV's influence on country-level development indicators across the four cohorts. The findings help derive theoretical and policy implications while identifying avenues for future works.