Uncovering the Janus face of e-Participation: A Delayed Introduction

This paper describes a local practice of tailoring of a tool for eParticipation and discusses how established work routines and power-relations affect the activity. At the same time as eParticipation is culturally pictured as a rich area for exploration, reviving great expectations of possibilities to broaden and deepen the scope and results of democratic decision-making, it also runs the risk of having a restricting function. In this particular case was the tailoring activity of the tool functioning as a sociotechnical mechanism, controlling and steering mediated participation towards uniformity and normalisation and thereby also contributing to the formation of what could be called a symbolic eParticipation. Janus was originally the name of a Roman God, always pictured with two faces. The Janus-faces symbolised the two sides of new beginnings, i.e. the possibility to create a new future alternatively with re-establishing the past. The Janus figure was placed at the entrance of the sacred Forum Romanum in Rome. In this paper, eParticipation is regarded as an equivalent to this two-faced figure, emphasising the double function of how for instance "good practices of eParticipation" both could help in evolving new forms and determine old traditions of participation, in various practices of implementation or local adaptation of electronically supported participation.