E-parliament and Democratic Representation in African States: Prospects and Challenges
Journal Title: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTERS & TECHNOLOGY - Year 2014, Vol 13, Issue 6
Abstract
A healthy and credible legislature is indispensable for representative liberal democratic governance. While representation involves informing and listening to those represented and making decisions and exercising influence on their behalf, legislative institutions of many African countries lack the effectiveness to inform and interact with their constituents, thus resulting to serious citizens-representatives disengagement. This pervasive contemporary estrangement is manifested in public cynicism towards political institutions and a collapse in once-strong loyalties and attachment between citizens and government. This research paper draws from case analysis and literature search to examine the potentials and challenges of e-parliament for re-engaging the electorate in the democratic states of Africa. Findings reveal that by leveraging on the exponential growth of ICTs particularly, in the continent, e-parliament provides new strategies for increasing and strengthening deliberative and interactive dialogue between citizens and their representatives. With e-parliament, citizens-representatives estrangement is reduced and new forms of engagement and collaboration created thus making democratic processes more inclusive and transparent. In this process the crisis of democratic legitimacy and accountability is averted for the African states. Though the realization of the full potential of e-parliament in Africa is greatly hampered by such challenges as inadequate infrastructural facilities and capacity building, this paper argues that with effective ICT strategic planning and management so as to judiciously utilize available resources and a mechanism for ICT skill training and development for all stakeholders, e-parliament presents a glimmer of hope for responsive and accountable governance in Africa.
Authors and Affiliations
Aderonke Oni, Oni Samuel
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP650560
- DOI 10.24297/ijct.v13i6.2520
- Views 88
- Downloads 0
Image Steganography combined with Cryptography
Steganography is the science of invisible communication. Apart from the sender and intended recipient no one suspects the existence of the message. Using Steganography, information can be hidden in various mediums known...
Di-Diphone Arabic Speech Synthesis Concatenation
This work describes the new Arabic Text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis system. This system based on di-Diphone concatenation with TD-PSOLA modifier synthesizer. The quality of a synthesized speech is improved by analyzing the...
BIOMETRIC PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION ON 2D WAVELET TRANSFORM AND CHI-SQUARED MODEL
Iris recognition system consists of image acquisition, iris preprocessing, iris segmentation and feature extraction with comparism (matching) stages. The biometric based personal identification using iris requires accura...
Code Comprehending Measure (CCM)
Software complexity, accurately, plays a vital role in life cycle of the software. Many metrics have been proposed in the past like LOC, McCabes cyclomatic measure, Halsteads measures and cognitive measure...
IMPLEMENTATION OF SVM USING SEQUENTIAL MINIMAL OPTIMIZATION FOR POWER TRANSFORMER FAULT ANALYSIS USING DGA
Reliable operations of power transformers are necessary for effective transmission and distribution of power supply. During normal functions of the power transformer, distinct types of faults occurs due to insulation fai...