Call for Papers - eParticipation in Southern Europe & the Balkans.

Special  Issue on

E-Participation in Southern Europe and the Balkans:

Issues of democracy and participation via electronic media

Aims and Scope

The rapid development and the growing penetration of digital technologies, especially the Internet, provide rich opportunities for more extensive involvement of citizens in influencing public policy and allowing for collective decision-making. They offer possibilities to strengthen participatory discussion through virtual meetings not dependent on time, location or physical presence. Digital technologies have the potential to support the provision of information to the citizens concerning government activities and public policies, the consultation with the citizens and also their active participation.Also, they have the potential to support both top-down government initiatives and ground-up civil society initiatives concerning public participation in government decision processes. However, it is necessary to question and investigate to what extent this potential is actually exploited, to what extent e-participation is implemented in ‘real-life’, how, what outcomes and impact have resulted, and which contextual factors affect success.

This Special Issue of the ‘Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans’ solicits original high quality papers investigating the above issues in the particular context of the Southern Europe and the Balkans. Topics of interest for the above area include, but are not limited to, the following:

-   Progress of e-participation

- Particular e-participation projects (especially in multilingual and culturally diverse environments)

-  Applications of e-participation systems for enhancing participation of minorities in the government decision processes, or in areas of digital divide or e-inclusion threats

-   Outcome, impact and value of e-participation

-   Challenges, barriers and critical success factors

-  Factors of the national context of these countries (e.g. social, economic, political, legal, ethical, historical, etc. factors) shaping e-participation and affecting its success.

Submissions

Authors are invited to prepare original manuscripts of between 5000 and 7000 words (excluding references) according to the ‘Instructions for Authors’ web-page of this Journal  ( http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1461-3190&linktype=44).Emphasis should be placed on the use of footnotes for references (no bibliography in the end). At the end of each paper should be placed short biographical notes for all the authors, and also address for correspondence and e-mail address for the corresponding author. Papers should be written in grammatically correct and coherent English. Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers will be refereed through a peer review process.

Send your manuscript to the corresponding Guest Editor Prof. Euripidis N. Loukis (eloukis@aegean.gr)

Schedule

• Submission deadline:

January 31, 2009

• Completion of first review:

March 31, 2009

• Revisions deadline:

April 30, 2009

• Final decisions notification:

May 15, 2009

• Final manuscripts deadline:

May 29, 2009

• Tentative publication:

Summer 2009

Guest  Editors