Civic Engagement in a Network Society

Edited by:
Erik Bergrud, Park University
Kaifeng Yang, Florida State University

A volume in the series: Research on International Civic Engagement. Editor(s): Walter Heinecke, University of Virginia. Carah Ong Whaley, University of Virginia.

Published 2008

The Pew Charitable Trusts defines civic engagement as “Individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern. Civic engagement can take many forms, from individual volunteerism to organizational involvement to electoral participation. It can include efforts to directly address an issue, work with others in a community to solve a problem or interact with the institutions of representative democracy. Civic engagement encompasses a range of activities such as working in a soup kitchen, serving on a neighborhood association, writing a letter to an elected official or voting.”

CONTENTS
Civic Engagement in a Network Society: An Introduction, Kaifeng Yang and Erik Bergrud. PART I: NETWORKS, PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT. It Takes Two to Tango: When Public and Private Actors Interact, Annika Agger, Eva Sørensen, and Jacob Torfing. Collaboration Management in Public Administration: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration of Mutual Challenges for Governance, Citizens, and Businesses in Modern Network Societies, Eran Vigoda-Gadot. New Ways of Working: Civic Engagement Through Networks, Myrna Mandell. Conductive Public Organizations in Networks: Collaborative Management and Civic Engagement, Robert Agranoff. PART II: CASE-BASED PERSPECTIVES ON CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND NETWORK SOCIETY. Civic Engagement as Collaborative Complex Adaptive Networks, David Booher. Opening Up What May Yet Come: Performing Civic Engagement in a Complex World, Jean Hillier and Joris Van Wezemae. A Comparative Study of Citizen Engagement in Infrastructure Planning in Japan and the United States: A Look at Legal Frameworks and Two Successful Cases, Shunsaku Komatsuzaki and Hindy Lauer Schachter. Citizensourcing: Citizen Participation in a Networked Nation, Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer and Lars Hasselblad Torres. PART III: THE INTERNET AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT. Does Internet Use Really Facilitate Civic Engagement? Empirical Evidence From the American National Election Studies, Hun Myoung Park and James L. Perry. Something Rich and Strange: Participation, Engagement, and the Tempest of Online Politics, Jason MacDonald and Caroline Tolbert. Opportunities for Civic Engagement: An Online Assessment of Worldwide Municipal Web Sites, Marc Holzer and Aroon Manoharan. About the Authors.