Citizen Relationship Research Articles

Investigating the impact of citizen relationship quality and the moderating effects of citizen involvement on E-government adoption

In the digital era, e-government services have become essential tools for fostering open innovation and enhancing societal welfare. This study extends SocioCitizenry theory, a novel framework that redefines e-government adoption by positioning citizens as active co-creators. Unlike traditional models, this theory emphasizes citizens' roles in interpreting e-government cues, thereby influencing relationship quality and shaping future behaviors across both adoption and post-adoption stages. Specifically, our analysis of 595 valid responses reveals that strong relational bonds (financial, social, and structural) and high relationship quality (trust and satisfaction) significantly enhance e-government adoption and promote proactive citizenship behaviors, such as advocacy and information sharing. Moreover, the study uncovers the varying effects of citizen involvement with online government services, offering fresh insights into the dynamics of citizen engagement. Consequently, the SocioCitizenry theory provides a transformative, citizen-centric approach that can redefine e-government services by emphasizing the importance of relationship quality and citizen engagement. Ultimately, this framework opens new avenues for developing inclusive e-government services that align with public needs globally, ensuring enhanced accountability and responsiveness of public institutions.

Influence of citizen relationship management system on citizen participation in Taiwan: A participatory politics perspective

Although studies have investigated the development of citizen relationship management (CRM) systems in various cities, no understanding exists regarding how CRM systems operate and how they influence citizen participation. Moreover, limited studies have been conducted regarding the political factors that influence citizen participation through CRM systems. Drawing from data obtained through interviews with key stakeholders involved in the implementation of a CRM system in Taiwan, the present study comprehensively analyzed the primary political characteristics and effects of this system, outlined the political factors influencing system use, and formulated suggestions for mitigating the influence of politics on the system. The findings reveal that the development of the citizen relationship management system was constrained by potential political factors in public policy development. These factors included the dynamics of power relations between citizens and local governments, the politicization of policy processes, conflicts in policy decision-making models involving top-down and bottom-up approaches, the political intentions and motives of stakeholders, and the influence of potential policy actors. Considering the case of the Taiwanese citizen relationship management system, this study provides suggestions and guidance for policymakers aiming to minimize political influence on citizen participation, with a focus on tailoring these approaches to meet the specific public service needs of citizens.

Diversions from policing as usual: A more caring city with Atlanta’s 311PAD?

ABSTRACT Within the framework of “caring cities,” we report findings from a case study of two central and contested neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia (Peoplestown and Summerhill) using a descriptive spatial analysis approach. The purpose was to unpack how everyday citizens can embody the ethics and practice of care through the Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) tools developed by city leadership. In this case, we examined Atlanta’s 311PAD program. Has Atlanta’s 311PAD program resulted in a more caring and inclusive city when it comes to citizen engagement? What barriers to adoption could be removed to ensure these programs successfully cultivate a more caring, just, and inclusive city? Findings show that since the implementation of 311PAD in 2021, only 13 PAD referrals have been made in these neighborhoods, compared to a much higher volume of 311 calls. We speculate that calls may not have been categorized accurately and the level of 311 conflict calls not diverted to PAD may be partially the result of rapid gentrification.

Exploring citizens’ stances on AI in public services: A social contract perspective

Abstract This paper explores citizens’ stances toward the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in public services in Norway. Utilizing a social contract perspective, the study analyzes the government–citizen relationship at macro, meso, and micro levels. A prototype of an AI-enabled public welfare service was designed and presented to 20 participants who were interviewed to investigate their stances on the described AI use. We found a generally positive attitude and identified three factors contributing to this: (a) the high level of trust in government (macro level); (b) the balanced value proposition between individual and collective needs (meso level); and (c) the reassurance provided by having humans in the loop and providing transparency into processes, data, and model’s logic (microlevel). The findings provide valuable insights into citizens’ stances for socially responsible AI in public services. These insights can inform policy and guide the design and implementation of AI systems in the public sector by foregrounding the government–citizen relationship.

Effective Governance Through Crowdsourcing: A Strategic Framework for Empowered Participation

Crowdsourcing in governance has gained widespread popularity and has become a powerful tool to leverage the collective intelligence of citizens for the nation's social welfare. Despite the growing importance of transforming government–citizen relationships, the design aspect is highly unstructured and fragmented. Thus, an in-depth understanding of the notion is essential, given its expanding importance in practice. This article aims to identify and describe elements and design principles phase-wise to improve the government's potential to derive value from crowdsourcing initiatives for civic participation and collaborative governance. Synthesizing all elements and principles in a strategic crowdsourcing framework is a novel conceptual configuration that contributes to the overall understanding of designing crowdsourcing initiatives in the government sector. The article adopts a systematic literature review and a morphological analysis technique to identify and synthesize all the elements and principles of designing crowdsourcing initiatives. Three crowdsourcing initiatives of the government sector were investigated to evaluate the framework in a practical setting and comprehend its efficacy. Government agencies can ensure enhanced interactivity and bidirectionality by emphasizing the nuances of elements and design principles for executing crowdsourcing initiatives that create epistemic and economic value.

Conscripting communalism: surveillance and resistance in contemporary Mauritius

AbstractIn this article I explore changing state–citizen relationships in Mauritius. To do so, I outline and provide analysis of the system through which this Indian Ocean island has historically managed its diversity – a process that I call conscripting communalism. Conscripting communalism was formulated at independence in a context of behavioural predictions for the future that the internet era has challenged in powerful ways. To illustrate my argument, I explore three specific moments when ethnic and religious discourses were surpassed by collective concern within a rapidly authoritarianizing state: first, the sinking of the Wakashio oil tanker off the coast of Mauritius in 2020, which resulted in national solidarity towards the environment rather than communal violence; second, proposed legislation put forward by the Mauritian Information and Communication Technology Authority (ICTA) in 2021, which attempted to enable state surveillance of social media and which was soundly resisted by both domestic and external parties. And finally, I explore 2022 accusations that the Mauritian government authorized the installation of digital interception technology by representatives of the Indian state on one of the country’s fibre optic cables. The article argues that Mauritius represents an important site of analysis of the tensions between competing global visions of human rights, political autonomy, surveillance, solidarity and expectations for the future and the role of the internet in shaping these competing visions. I explore how new technologies have become the tools of both repression and resistance. The implications ripple far beyond the island.

일선 경찰관의 민주적 법집행의지에 대한 구조방정식 모형분석

Numerous studies have identified the impact of police self-legitimacy on support for democratic policing. In Korea, a study exploring legitimacy has been underway from the law enforcement's perspective since 2022. This study introduced the concept of police self-legitimacy, which employed a structural equation model analysis to evaluate whether a linear relationship could be predicted in a single model, with self-legitimacy as a mediator, between independent variables and dependent variables.
 Among the independent variables only the relationship with citizens significantly affected the support for democratic policing. The impact of organizational justice and the relationship with superiors, however, was not exist. Among the mediator, it was evident that only self-assesed legitimacy influenced the support for democratic policing, whereas the effect of external legitimacy was not exist. Additionally, the study found that self-assessed legitimacy mediated the influence of citizen relationships on the commitment to support democratic law enforcement. Theoretically, it was anticipated that external legitimacy would exhibit a stronger connection with citizens. So, further exploration should be needed to understand the outcomes via indirect effects mediated by self-assessed legitimacy. This study offers the opportunity to shift the focus towards the normative aspects of law enforcement. By contrasting other viewpoints of both citizens and police police legitimacy, police legitimacy can be comprehended more systematically.

On the Frontline of Global Inequalities: A Decolonial Approach to the Study of Street-Level Bureaucracies

Abstract This article aims to contribute to street-level bureaucracy (SLB) theory by bringing to the forefront the experiences and perspectives of the Global South. Our argument is that mainstream literature in this field overlooks the social tensions that are more explicit in developing societies, resulting in a structurally limited analytical framework. We identify two key factors from the Global South that are often underestimated: the high degree of social inequalities that fundamentally affect state–citizen relationships, and the ways in which the state itself reflects and reproduces these inequalities. Our critique represents a step toward decolonizing the field and highlighting the conceptual contributions that studies from and of the Global South can offer. By examining the experiences of the Global South, we can gain insights into the crises societies in the Global North are also experiencing. Our article aims to contribute to SLB theory by emphasizing the value of incorporating these perspectives into the study of SLB.

Reshaping state–citizen relationships through donor‐designed targeting systems in Lesotho and Malawi

AbstractSocial and humanitarian cash transfers in sub‐Saharan Africa are increasingly used to support a wide range of vulnerable populations with long‐term support or immediate relief. Designing and implementing cash transfers typically involves a range of transnational actors and government stakeholders who continuously exert power which in turn affects state–citizen relations. The data informing this article come from 109 key informant interviews with (inter)national‐level stakeholders involved in three social cash transfers and two humanitarian cash transfers in Lesotho and Malawi. This article argues that donor‐designed targeting approaches in Lesotho and Malawi create space for new state–citizen relations, but that these are relatively shallow and reconfigured once technical capacity allows for targeting approaches that rely less on communities. It contributes to the literature on the role of transnational actors in social protection by showing that their role is significant when it comes to creating new redistributive relations, even if transnational actors are unable to convince host governments to take full fiscal responsibility for their initiatives due to differing views on who deserves what kind of support.

Pacified citizens with a marketized school system: Causal evidence of boomeranging effects of user choice

AbstractThe marketization of schools and of other public services is supposed to have changed the relationship of citizens to the state in many Western countries over the last 30 years. One explicit aim of marketization has been to increase citizen influence over public services. Yet, studies of its effects on citizens' willingness to address public decision‐making remain scarce in general, and nonexistent as regards schools. In this study, a survey experiment taps the causal effects of both user choice and private provision. The results show that marketization significantly reduces respondents' intention to influence schools and related political and bureaucratic decision‐making. The effects are robust and, in contrast to those of previous studies, driven by significant effects from the user choice introduced in connection with marketization. The pacifying effects recorded suggest that marketization potentially reduces public services' responsiveness to citizens' interests, thereby aggravating the problems it was meant to address.

An analytical citizen relation management system (CZRM) for social vulnerability mapping and policy recommendation in Brazil

The emerging field of Citizen Relationship Management has shown promise to combine data analytics and intuitive digital platforms to help public managers interpret citizen-driven data and draw out appropriate policy. However, research dates back to only the last ten years, and does not commonly focus on families of extreme social vulnerability or how to bring solutions that increase access to public infrastructure. This research addresses the central challenge of setting strategic intervention plans for these families considering their multiple levels of vulnerability and the limited government resources available to address them. The paper builds on the framework for analytical CZRM to prototype and build a tool that analyzes data about income, nutrition, and housing for over 34,000 low-income families in Ceará, Brazil. Each family is assigned a vulnerability score, which is then used to filter public policy recommendations that address specific vulnerability profiles. The CZRM derives from over one year of interaction with government stakeholders who expressed their needs. Further software validation was completed with a series of test cases which ensured the tool was working and showing accurate results. The interactive mapping, ranking and filtering tool exemplifies an emerging decision support system to build a citizen portfolio and to set strategies to provide public services to different citizen groups.

Behavioural Insights and Public Policy in Canada

AbstractMuch of political science rests on assumptions about how policy makers and citizens behave. However, questions remain about how public policy can improve the government–citizen relationship. In this research note, we present behavioural insights (BI) as one way to address this gap. First, we argue that BI can be strategically used both to alleviate administrative burdens and to enhance citizen experience. Second, we argue that BI interventions can assist in several stages of the policy process, strengthening causal inferences about policy efficacy. Third, we present original data from Canada's ongoing experimentation with BI across multiple jurisdictions and areas of public policy. We conclude by acknowledging the myriad pathways through which BI research can engage with public policy to support the enhancement of citizen-oriented service delivery.

From the Editors-in-Chief: The Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment

The discipline of international environmental law is about to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. We, at the Yearbook of International Environmental Law, have just celebrated our thirty years of contributing to the discipline of, and academic research on, the field. As already stated, in these three decades, we have watched environmental matters move slowly but emphatically towards the core of economic and social development and occupy an increasing portion of the political discourse, both at the international scene and on the domestic level. It seems incongruous in this context to celebrate the first panegyric declaration of a right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, initially by the Human Rights Council in Resolution 48/13 (8 October 2021) and later by the UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300 (1 August 2022). One would have presumed that the impressive body of environmental regulation both at the international and national levels would have been safely constructed on a solid principle of law. Instead, reality has worked in the reverse order. Pau de Vilchez and Annalisa Savaresi have produced an impressive piece in which they delve into the specifics of its content with a view to ensuring the full enjoyment of the right. In addition, and perhaps even more important, they delineate and discuss the repercussions of its existence on the increasing use of litigation before domestic courts and international adjudicatory bodies in matters pertaining to climate change. In doing so, climate change moves away from the exclusive government-to-government domain of high politics and descends into the everyday relationship of citizen to state, with all the consequent emphasis on immediacy, effectiveness, and, ultimately, democratic accountability.

Big data-assisted urban governance: An intelligent real-time monitoring and early warning system for public opinion in government hotline

The implementation of big data-based analysis, conducting forecasts, and increasing service capabilities in smart government affairs can effectively enhance the efficiency of urban emergency management. The government hotline is an effective citizen relationship management (CRM) tool that generates a large amount of appeal information every day. Identifying and predicting public opinion hotspots of citizen complaints in real time and accurately identifying periodic and mass incidents present major challenges to city managers. In this study, we propose a pattern-based identification and early warning system for public opinion. This system uses an improved mining algorithm for frequent patterns to accurately identify topics and their corresponding case information and adopts a word-weight method to assign weights to frequent patterns, such that more important information would have a higher weight. Cosine similarity is used to calculate a similarity matrix for frequent patterns in the text content, thereby accurately distinguishing between repeated events and events of major interest. Moreover, a hash table-based retrieval and improved text rank are proposed to extract text summaries. Finally, we define sudden issues of major interest and develop an identification and early warning system for public opinion that is easy to operate, with effective user interaction and data visualization interfaces. A real case study is implemented to experimentally identify public opinion accurately and perform early. The average accuracy rate of data mining reached 87.95% in the first half of the operational evaluation of the system. Besides, when compared with the analysis of the conventional SQL statements, the retrieval efficiency is improved by 6 times and supports multi-keyword retrieval. Consequently, the enhanced text rank summary extraction algorithm improves p@10 accuracy by 6%.

Twin Movement: State, Market and the Non-Elite Middle Class in Post-Reform India

This article explores political economic developments in India’s post-reform period that began in 1991 through the interactions of the non-elite, ordinary middle-class Indians and state institutions and market processes. The article introduces “twin movement” as a concept and revises the Polanyian notion of a double movement of differentiated domains of welfare and neo-liberal state which restricts exploring the tacit relationships that form between the state and the market; how the state subtly forces people to resort to market institutions and processes; and forces/encourages capital accumulation to mitigate challenges of the neo-liberal market. This ethnographic article draws attention to the re-modelling of state institutions that is attuned to neo-liberal market logics; and how this re-modelling modifies state–citizen relationships, and shapes subjectivity and “middleclassness.” In doing so, the article maps how non-elite middleclassness is located in demands, desires, and aspirations; and how intricately these are weaved into the everyday insecurities, risks, and vulnerabilities that constitute the social, economic, and political life of the urban non-elite middle class in neo-liberal India.

Is life satisfaction higher for citizens engaged in political participation: Analysis based on the Chinese social survey.

Political participation is an important component of civil rights. Several studies have shown that citizens' political participation not only influences the allocation of public resources, but also has a positive correlation with participants' life satisfaction. Recently, political participation has become increasingly frequent in China; however, the research on Chinese citizens' political participation and life satisfaction is insufficient. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between political participation and life satisfaction in the Chinese cultural context, and how this relationship varied under different conditions. Based on 8,475 respondents from the 2015 Chinese Social Survey, ordinary least squares modeling was used to investigate the relationship of Chinese citizens' political participation and their life satisfaction, and the differences that might exist in this relationship. Political participation was closely related to life satisfaction. Compared with non-political participants, the life satisfaction of political participants was 0.133 units higher, which was significant at the 1% level. Regarding the types of political participation, citizens engaged in institutionalized political participation had higher life satisfaction, whereas citizens engaged in non-institutionalized political participation had lower life satisfaction. Furthermore, two social capitals, namely social tolerance and social trust, were the mediating variables linking political participation to citizens' life satisfaction. In China, citizens engaged in political participation had higher life satisfaction, in contrast, citizens engaged in non-institutionalized political participation had lower life satisfaction.

Fear and Violence, Loyalty and Treason: Settlement of Status in Syria

Abstract This article examines the arbitrary and oftentimes violent nature of loyalty and belonging in the case of Syria but with applicability to other authoritarian or high-surveillance contexts. It shows how the new “settlement of status” process is an extension of the governmentality of violence used by the Syrian regime to delineate loyal citizens from traitors. However, the article argues that this process is Janus-faced and actually serves to undermine the regime in the long run by destabilizing its surety around who is considered loyal and who is a potential threat. This uncertainty has the potential to sow the seeds for greater dissent and with it, act as one possible catalyst for the regime's eventual collapse. The Syrian case offers broader insights into the various social and political permutations of a citizen's relationship to the state and how that relationship can be impacted over time by the state's use of fear and violence as mechanisms for social control.

Policy translations of citizen participation and new public governance: the case of school governing bodies

ABSTRACT This paper considers the policy problematic of state–citizen relationships, reflecting on renewed calls for citizen collaboration and codesign in the provision of public services in ‘new public governance’. Analysing this through recent policy reform in Australian public school governance, we examine how existing policy architectures – in this case school boards/councils – are being rearticulated in relation to such calls. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a range of policy stakeholders, we examine the diverse policy translations of citizen involvement in school governance. Our analysis highlights the contradictions and limitations of a school board/council structure for policy aspirations of citizen collaboration. While stakeholders welcomed school board member (i.e., parent) involvement in governance, this was strongly mediated by distinctions between strategic and operational decision-making, questions about the possibilities for meaningful participation, and tensions surrounding the need for skilled expert board members and community representation – particularly in disadvantaged contexts.

PREFIGURATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE: Mobility, Citizenship, and the Agency of Objects

AbstractThis article examines the unsanctioned installation of infrastructure for walking and cycling as a site of possibility. In contrast to accounts of everyday urbanism that see in these kinds of interventions possibilities for a politics in which the state subsides, I find instead an effort to reclaim the state for more progressive purposes. I focus on groups calling themselves transformation agencies and departments of transformation to argue that DIY infrastructure is deployed on city streets not as an effort to subvert or supplant city authorities, but instead as prefigurative performances of city–citizen relationships ‘as if’ they were otherwise. Exploiting the plurality and contingency of the state and its legal forms, objects are installed to show how quickly things could be different, and sometimes they succeed in prompting significant shifts. Through guerrilla paint and pop‐up posts, transformation agencies work prefiguratively to imagine and enact forms of citizenship that are not centred on automobility.

A Study of Citizen Satisfaction with the Spirit of Innovation and Work Validity of Basic Government Personnel in Shandong Province, China

Abstract This paper aims to study the government personnel and citizen relationship with innovation spirit and their impact on citizen satisfaction. Descriptive statistical analysis is used in this research for a random sampling method with a 2000 population sample from Shandong province, China. The results obtained from descriptive analysis and correlation studies showed significant outcomes and positive relationships among citizens due to policy implementation by government personnel. The effects of this paper offer the value of innovation spirit in residents that help them to be satisfied with government policies and their performance, and these measurements develop citizen satisfaction. This research validates the use of the value of citizen satisfaction that encourages the grassroots of essential government to perform more efficiently for its public under administration.