Self-organization means that the society organizes itself apart from the government or in a network in which public agencies do not predominate (Boonstra & Boelens, 2011; van Meerkerk, Boonstra, & Edelenbos, 2013). Motives... [ view full abstract ]
Self-organization means that the society organizes itself apart from the government or in a network in which public agencies do not predominate (Boonstra & Boelens, 2011; van Meerkerk, Boonstra, & Edelenbos, 2013).
Motives behind such initiatives can be numerous: the public sector does not provide the given service at all, or it is not entitled for everyone, or it is too bureaucratic, or not sophisticated, personalized etc. enough.
Widely accessible digital platforms can serve as powerful catalysts to that kind of self-organization. They can connect all the stakeholders, recruit volunteers (crowdsourcing) and supporters (crowdfunding). They can also attract partner organization from the business and the civil sectors alike. More importantly, they can shortcut and mass customize those service processes that the public sector traditionally provides.
Potentially, this can lead to disruptive changes in the traditional delivery models. It could happen that the public organization only initiates the service, while the operation and the further development are taken over by other actors. There are a growing number of cases, however, when even the concept and the digital service itself originates outside any public organization, and the public sector remain only a sole contributor or beneficiary of the service.
While the internet that hosts these digital platforms is universal, the public services provided on it tend to be localized (sometimes even geographically restricted) because of differences in language, needs, legal and cultural conditions. Still, thanks to their visibility the successful digital services can be quite well benchmarked in a global scale. In the lack of private interests even the detailed operation model and the program code may be shared with interested parties. These controversial conditions can lead to interesting research questions concerning the obligatory and optimal levels of adaptation a service model should go through when “exported” in one country to another.
The planned empirical research will focus on two popular digital services: the UK based FixMyStreet and the US based Nextdoor as well as their “clones” in some other countries (in Hungary: jarokelo.hu and miutcank.hu). The first type of service enables citizens to report any problem they observed in the settlement, finding the responsible public organization and follow through the official process till the problem is fixed. The second type of service enables neighborhood members to mutually help each other with tools and services; here no public organization is involved by default.
In both cases the international comparison will investigate the differences of the service delivery models and the related IT applications, and whether these differences can be attributed to different local contexts (legal, cultural, political factors) or not. Through site operator interviews the research also wants to explore the formal or informal connections (communication, collaboration, financial assistance etc.) among the “master” and the “clone” sites (if there is any). In addition, the research tries to identify some countries, in which similar services are not provided (or not used intensively), and find out why.
D1 - Community self-organization: how is it shaped in different political-administrative c
