Developing a theory of full democratic consolidation: Exploring the links between democracy and digital transformation in developing eastern European countries

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of the adoption of an information system on the consolidation process of a fully democratic system for eastern European countries. The interactions between the adoption of e-management policies and democracy are examined as a strategic approach to managing future, dynamic organizations. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analyses (fsQCA) were conducted to assess the combined effect of the conditions. The fsQCA analysis considered a sample of 26 case studies of eastern European countries with post-communist, in transition regimes as the unit of analysis.During the research the factors that were necessary or sufficient to consolidate a full democratic system in developing countries were detected, analyzed, and explained. The output is presented as a result of applying the strategic approach given by the current sociotechnical transition based on improving the management of societies through information technology capabilities. The objective is to consolidate the output in developing countries given the institutionalization of a society’s e-management core value system. As a response to the current crisis and detected anomalies (IS, Globalization and Power Concentration) in democratic consolidation theory this research empirically demonstrates the need to create a technology-based system with the goal of presenting high performance and capability to support the heavy processing of economic, societal, and political challenges among businesses, citizens, and governments as the main actors in a democratic system. As a result of the research a ‘Theory for Full Democratic Consolidation through IS’ is proposed based on the ‘magic’ pathway or model developed using a qualitative, comparative analysis methodology.The novelty of this research lies in the fact that in contrast to the current academic literature, it turns the consolidation of the democratic system and its components into a result while the process’s approach is offered by the strategic approach offered by the transformative discourse of information technologies.