The impact of government form on e-participation: A study of New Jersey municipalities

• Governments use information and communication technologies for citizen involvement.
• Disparity among cities concerning how extensive e-participation offerings are.
• Reasons for the disparity may be technical or political.
• This research uses New Jersey municipal data to investigate the impact of government structure on e-participation offerings.
• The analysis shows a relation between mayor-council form of government and higher levels of participation offerings.
• This study suggests that an elected executive facilitates the will to provide greater involvement opportunities for citizens.

During the past two decades, governments have started to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to offer a new forum for citizen involvement known as e-participation. The rapid development of e-participation has been attracting attention from many researchers. While a growing body of research has explored various factors impacting e-participation, few studies have examined the influence of government structures on the e-participation opportunities that jurisdictions offer users. To fill the research gap and begin investigating this relationship, we use data from 97 New Jersey municipalities to analyze the impact on e-participation of three local government structures: mayor-council, council-manager, and township. The results show that municipalities with the mayor-council form of government are more likely to have higher levels of e-participation offerings. We argue that the role of an elected executive in this structure facilitates the will to provide greater opportunities for citizens to participate online.