The European Union and e-democracy: Interactive Policy-Making (IPM)

This study assesses the European Commission's Interactive Policy-Making (IPM) initiative launched in 2001 with respect to its potential to promote democratic participation in the European Union (EU). It is argued that the EU is an example of the consultative, if not participatory model of e-democracy. The first section reviews the existing literature on the implications of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) for democratic participation, followed by a brief history of e-government and e-democracy in the EU in the second section. The third section investigates the IPM project in detail, before evaluating the findings in the last section.