LIST OF PANELS

The internet, social networks and new information and communication technologies have changed the relationship among individuals and between individuals and the state. The web opens new possibilities for collective enterprises to decrease citizens’ informational deficits about State actions, to expand political participation and deliberation, and to increase the accountability of elected representatives and state bureaucracy. Individuals through the internet can canvass different perspectives and knowledge to interpret and analyze information produced by the State. Additionally, these changes also decrease costs of collective action for social movements. In this sense, new technologies of information and communication have the potential to affect public policies at different moments and under different theoretical assumptions. The panel for Public Policy Management and New Technologies opens a call for papers for the Second International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) in Milan, Italy. This Panel will focus on studies that engage in discussing the ways in which new information and communication technologies can be grasped by public policies either by theoretical approaches or by empirical studies. The main objective of the panel is to discuss ways that these new technologies can influence the formulation and evaluation of public policies.

The internet and new communications and information technologies (ICT) have provided a profound change in the shape of relations between individuals at the beginning of XXI century, as social networks are now being consolidated as tools for information spreading, opinion sharing and decision making. These new paradigms of connectivity and interactivity not only affected relations among people, but also opened great space for interaction between people and the state, as well as decreased costs of collective action for social movements. It is perceived more than ever that the internet can foster the emergence of a new society that seeks information related to politics, economy, and public policy, increasingly more transparent and self-organized. The monitoring and analysis by the State of citizen´s needs and opinions online is growing due to the consolidation of ICT as a means for creating Policy feedback tools, inducing transparency tools and deliberative spaces with capacity of influence in the political and social structures. The growth of citizen participation in the public sphere occurs in several areas of interest of public management and public policy due to the construction of new platforms and points of contact between civil society and the state. In electoral politics, for example, participation can be verified in campaign finance in the United States, on web budgeting in Brazil, and the involvement of information and communication technologies for the realization of large protests in continents as South America, Africa and Asia. The web opens spaces to decrease informational deficits for citizens about State actions, so that they can expand political participation and deliberation and to increase the accountability of elected representatives and state bureaucracy. New technologies of information and communication have the potential to affect public policies at different moments and under different theoretical positions.  They can affect the debate on what area and where the State should look upon, as well as change the classic cycle of public policy allowing then for a more immediate verification of perceptions of negative and positive externalities of State action. Thus, new technologies are an important field of discussion and study around the role of ICTs in expanding the discursive and deliberative governance dimension to understand the impact and efficiency of new platforms and tools in social and political structures. This panel discusses how these new technologies of information and communication can be used to facilitate, expand and qualify public policies. The panel is opened for both papers that discuss innovations in this field, and for works that debate theoretically the role of these new technologies in the formulation and evaluation of public policies and state bureaucracy.