Paper Type

Complete

Abstract

Democracies are increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures that can both empower civic participation and accelerate democratic backsliding. Weinhardt et al. (2024) issued a call to the information systems community, proposing a six-area research agenda for “resilient digital democracies,” but its real-world applicability remains untested. This study examines its practical fit in a democracy under pressure, Israel, drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 Israeli scholars across seven disciplines. The study confirms the framework’s relevance while revealing important contextual blind spots. We develop an empirically grounded extension that integrates sociopolitical context and geopolitical context as omnipresent analytical dimensions and conceptualizes IT regulation as a cross-cutting research layer. By assessing and refining the agenda, the study advances high-impact, context-sensitive, and power-aware research on resilient digital democracy and contributes to ongoing debates beyond e-government toward a more comprehensive understanding of e-democracy.

Paper Number

1691

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Aug 15th, 12:00 AM

Resilient Digital Democracy: A Contextual Refinement of a Research Framework

Democracies are increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures that can both empower civic participation and accelerate democratic backsliding. Weinhardt et al. (2024) issued a call to the information systems community, proposing a six-area research agenda for “resilient digital democracies,” but its real-world applicability remains untested. This study examines its practical fit in a democracy under pressure, Israel, drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 Israeli scholars across seven disciplines. The study confirms the framework’s relevance while revealing important contextual blind spots. We develop an empirically grounded extension that integrates sociopolitical context and geopolitical context as omnipresent analytical dimensions and conceptualizes IT regulation as a cross-cutting research layer. By assessing and refining the agenda, the study advances high-impact, context-sensitive, and power-aware research on resilient digital democracy and contributes to ongoing debates beyond e-government toward a more comprehensive understanding of e-democracy.