Abstract

RIOS RAMIREZ, Alejandra  and  GARRO, Juan Esteban. Accountability and Civil Society: Political Control in the Digital Era. Pap.polit. [online]. 2017, vol.22, n.2, pp.311-337. ISSN 0122-4409.  https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.papo22-2.ascc.

This article aims to expose the weight that information and communication technologies currently have on the exercise of societal accountability. For this, a reconstruction of the term accountability is made, taking into account its dimensions and typologies. Next, a contrast is made between electronic government, open government and the discourse of transparency. We conclude that, although the analysis of the discourses and proposals that seek to link the use of digital tools for the promotion of transparency and political control allows to identify significant advances in the development of applications and portals for the release of state data, the distinction between bets for the free circulation of information and the real possibilities of sanction and control over the State that they promote is not very clear. We have found, through an exhaustive literature review, that this lack of clarity is an obstacle to reconcile the longing for open and transparent governments with tools for inspection, monitoring, and sanctioning the behavior of representatives and public officials. In spite of the above, we propose that taking a serious look at mobile platforms as tools of political control, would allow a kind of “mobile governance” from which open government practices are articulated to the real possibility that active citizens mobilize state agencies aimed at sanctioning those public officials who exceed their administrative and political power exercises.

Keywords : accountability; internet; open government; civil society; social control.

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