Cooperation of citizens with the authority as a feedback channel in e-participation: institutionalization issues

The paper considers e-participation as a complex of tools and methods to provide G2C interaction aiming to take into account citizens’ opinion in federal and municipal decision-making. The author presents an institutional model of e-participation functioning in Russia based on legislation analysis in this filed. The model considers the interests of federal and municipal decision-making centers’ interests. At present, the institutional pattern of e-participation in the Russian Federation still has no explicit nature. A gradual increase of interest in use of modern information technologies for the general modernization by the top officials of the country's economy in 2016 could be an indirect evidence of this trend. E-participation is an important component that provides feedback for the whole system of the electronic interaction between the citizen and the authorities, including, in particular, multi-level e-government infrastructure. Currently, however, this feedback is not functioning effectively, since there are a number of institutional barriers created by the power institutions to exclude the possibility of using e-participation technology by non-systemic opposition. At the same time, there is a clear authorities’ interest in information use and direction of citizens to the ongoing monitoring of the situation in the regions and municipalities.