Digital Democracy: East German Small Towns Outpace the West

Anyone who believes that digital participation has its stronghold in the affluent regions of West Germany is mistaken. A current survey by the research project "Success Factors of Local E-Participation" (Erfolgsfaktoren lokaler E-Partizipation, ErLE) paints a picture that turns the common clichés of the German digitalization landscape on their head. The research consortium, consisting of scientists from TU Dresden (TUD) and the Universities of Düsseldorf, Leipzig, and Koblenz, has put over 10,000 municipalities under the microscope. The result is a kind of digital East-West swap: especially in rural areas, the East is ahead.

For example, only 43 percent of small towns in West Germany offer digital participation, as a first results report shows. In East Germany, on the other hand, it is already 62 percent. The East also leads significantly in medium-sized cities with 85 to 70 percent. Only in metropolises does the tide turn in favor of the West, but the structural advantage of smaller East German municipalities remains the most striking result of the study.

The data basis is large: 2390 cities and municipalities responded. This means the survey represents places where more than half of the entire German population lives, with 45 million people. The researchers are thus documenting for the first time a gap between the ambitions of large cities and the often arduous reality in rural areas when it comes to online citizen participation.

Resource Trap in Town Halls

Whether a municipality allows its citizens to participate online is rarely a purely political ideology issue. Rather, it is about hard location factors. Large cities with a high population are almost without exception offering digital participation (96 percent). The personnel strength here is the driving force: in large cities, 63 percent of administrations afford their own departments or permanent positions for digital participation within the framework of e-government. The situation in the provinces is entirely different: here, participation is usually managed flexibly and without fixed personnel anchoring.

The research team emphasizes the overarching goal of the project: the aim is to "identify success conditions for digital citizen participation and make them usable for municipal practice." The observation that digital participation appears to be "contagious" shows that this is urgently needed. Municipalities that use corresponding formats are conspicuously frequently found in the neighborhood of other digitally active communities. A kind of regional pull effect is created.

Conversely, small municipalities acting alone in the middle of nowhere find it harder to build up the necessary structures. The team, led by spokesperson Marianne Kneuer from TUD, therefore wants to show ways in which these success factors can also be effective where staffing is thin.

What Moves Citizens the Most

In terms of content, the different types of municipalities are worlds apart. In metropolises, it's about the "big" transformation issues of our time: Over half of large cities allow their citizens to have a say in traffic development as well as climate and environmental protection. Small towns and rural municipalities, on the other hand, tend to use the tools for pragmatic matters: urban development and the management of deficiencies are the focus here – pothole reporters or the design of the new village square. But whether it's a city of millions or a small municipality, one core motive unites almost all participants in the sample: "To make decision-making processes in politics and administration more transparent."

Another aspect of the study is the target group. Large cities rely heavily on the internet to "reach underrepresented groups" (2nd place among motivations). Smaller municipalities are more likely to hope to increase the absolute number of participants at all. They want to get people more involved in politics in general, regardless of their social background. However, the scientists make it clear that the survey is not representative. The structural differences between regions and city types are primarily illuminated.

The ErLE project, funded by the Mercator Foundation, shows: Digital citizen participation in Germany is not a luxury good for privileged city dwellers, but is increasingly becoming a standard tool of local democracy. However, the lead of East German municipalities in the area of small towns also reveals that there is a need for catching up in the old federal states. For e-participation to succeed across the board, according to the results, the framework conditions for smaller administrations must be improved above all: without dedicated contact people and solid financing, digital participation threatens to end at the doorstep of rural municipalities.

(vbr)