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This article analyses the potentialities of parliamentary www-sites to enhance the publicity of decision-making in representative democracies. We introduce two different models that emphasize the role of publicity in representative systems. Jeremy Bentham argued that publicity is needed to enable citizens to control the acts of the representatives. From the perspective of Kantian tradition, recently developed by the theorists of deliberative democracy, publicity is regarded as a test for the validity of the reasons given for public decisions. According to many theorists of deliberative democracy, legislative assemblies can be regarded as central forums of public deliberation in representative democracies. We analyse the contents of the parliamentary websites in 18 democratic countries and find that these contents are rather similar in established democracies across the world. We argue that parliamentary websites can be instrumental to citizens' capacity to control the representatives in the Benthamite sense, although information provided on parliamentary websites does not necessarily provide a sufficient account of all aspects of parliamentary decision-making, most notably in party groups. From the deliberative perspective, however, publicity on parliamentary websites cannot replace the role of such mediating actors as journalists, political activists and parties who "filter" and reflect upon the representatives' arguments and actions.
Information Polity – IOS Press
Published: Jan 1, 2006
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