Affiliations: [a] Department of Political Science, Åbo Akademi
University, FIN-20500 Åbo, Finland. Tel.: +358 40 518 9 445; E-mail:
maija.setala@utu.fi | [b] Social Science Research Institute, Åbo Akademi
University, FIN-65101 Vasa, Finland. Tel.: +358 50 409 6 409; E-mail:
kimmo.gronlund@abo.fi
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author
Abstract: This article analyses the potentialities of parliamentary www-sites
to enhance the publicity of decision-making in representative democracies. We
introduce two different models that emphasize the role of publicity in
representative systems. Jeremy Bentham argued that publicity is needed to
enable citizens to control the acts of the representatives. From the
perspective of Kantian tradition, recently developed by the theorists of
deliberative democracy, publicity is regarded as a test for the validity of the
reasons given for public decisions. According to many theorists of deliberative
democracy, legislative assemblies can be regarded as central forums of public
deliberation in representative democracies. We analyse the contents of the
parliamentary websites in 18 democratic countries and find that these contents
are rather similar in established democracies across the world. We argue that
parliamentary websites can be instrumental to citizens' capacity to control the
representatives in the Benthamite sense, although information provided on
parliamentary websites does not necessarily provide a sufficient account of all
aspects of parliamentary decision-making, most notably in party groups. From
the deliberative perspective, however, publicity on parliamentary websites
cannot replace the role of such mediating actors as journalists, political
activists and parties who "filter" and reflect upon the representatives'
arguments and actions.
Keywords: The Internet, parliament, publicity, accountability, parliamentary websites
