NEW FORMS OF PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY AT LOCAL LEVEL: eCITIZENS?

The rapid development and diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) provides various political and administrative institutions with new opportunities for civil political action. There are new tools, channels and methods, which can be utilised both in order to transform closed representative democracy systems into more open and communicative ones and to facilitate new forms of authentic civil political action - participatory democracy. The theoretical concepts of paper are participatory democracy and eParticipation, which are placed in the eGovernance framework. Based on empirical data, author wants to answer the research questions whether there are adequate tools for eParticipation available to Slovenian citizens at local level of government and if the concept of "eCitizens" can also be applied in Slovenian case. In context of Slovenians' familiarity and qualification of ICT on one hand and with further information, dissemination and especially establishment of e-tools for active participation on the other hand, author concludes that the concept of eCitizens has good future opportunities to develop in Slovenia.