Approaching e-Democracy: A Case Study Analysis from Jordan

Despite the notable growing citizens participation enabled by the new advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT), especially with the introduction of web 2.0, developing countries seems to lag way behind in the utilization of these advancements toward the empowerment of citizen´s for more participation and democratization in decision making. However, this lag is not only due to underutilization of ICT tools only, other challenges face this transition. These vary from pure political barriers such as the very slow democratization process to weak ICT infrastructure. This paper seeks to understand, address and document the Jordanian experience of both side´s government and citizens in the transition to e-democracy. The analysis of this case studies showed that, citizens are taking lead and gaining more power day by day despite the weak governmental push for effective citizenpsilas participation. Therefore, we argue that this represent a growing challenge for governments to direct and respond quickly to the growing public power empowered by e-democracy. Consequently, governments need to account and shift their classical e-government models toward more e-democratic oriented model that leverage democracy and secure citizens rights of participation in decision making.