About RELINK for Democracy

While the digital transformation of public institutions and political organisations has substantially improved their capacity to reach and engage citizens, this is an uneven phenomenon, and digital transformations do not always strengthen inclusion. Extensive access to the internet and changes in education policies all aim to reduce digital divides. Nevertheless, there are still digitally marginalised groups with difficulties accessing new technologies and, more importantly, with lack of digital skills needed, particularly in digital political environments.

This collection compiles contributions exploring the nature and quality of links between citizens on the one side and public institutions and political organisations on the other. Contributions can take a normative, conceptual and/or empirical perspective and focus on different settings where state and political actors interact with citizens. This includes a wide array of inter- and transdisciplinary work that addresses digitalization or on the contrary intentional non-digitalization.

While this collection is mainly connected to the Cost-Action RELINK² (CA23114), it also intends to showcase research from other European funded projects centring around the following topics:

• European, national, regional or local level (e.g. smart cities, impact of DSA etc.)
• political parties and civil society organisation (e.g. e-campaigning, e-recruiting)
• e-voting and i-voting, 
• digital democratic innovation,
• e-government,
• state provided e-services,
• nudging and user-interfaces of political platforms and applications