Can e-participation be a transformative innovation in South African policymaking?

In South Africa, e-participation initiatives tend to be localised to individual municipality departments and units, often for a short time period and with limited influence on policymaking. Ensuring these initiatives are more impactful and sustaining them over a longer duration is usually seen as an issue of institutionalisation. However, meaningful e-participation involves a more fundamental reconfiguration of relationships between citizens and governments which suggests a narrow institutionalisation lens may underplay the depth of changes that are involved. For this reason, we look to an emerging body of research on ‘transformative innovation policy’ (TIP) which has explored the ways in which innovations are nurtured and scaled as part of a systemic change process. By mapping key literature on e-participation institutionalisation and diffusion against the twelve TIP sub-processes, with a specific consideration of African and developing country issues, we identify potential opportunities for directing e-participation implementation and governance towards impactful outcomes. This mapping is to be used for an in-depth analysis of e-participation pilot projects currently being implemented in South Africa.