Participative Deliberation and Policy Proposals on Government Websites in Korea: Analysis From a Habermasian Public Deliberation Model

Abstract

This paper investigates whether eParticipation projects in Korean government websites lead to meaningful participation in terms of the level of deliberative quality and influence on the government policy-making processes, as compared to Habermasian ideas of the TCA/ISS (Theory of Communicative Action/ Ideal Speech Situation) and Communicative Power (CP). For this study, two eParticipation programmes from the Kukmin Chamyao Madang (KCM: Citizen Participatory Space) are chosen to investigate the internal process of eParticipation practices with regards to the deliberative quality and the impact on actual policy-making. The conclusion examines whether the internal process and nature of eParticipation complies with the Habermasian public deliberation model.