Rethinking electronic participation categories: an analysis of Legislative Assemblies’ websites*

Abstract This article presents a proposal for categorizing electronic participation (e-participation) based on an analysis of the websites of the 26 Brazilian Legislative Assemblies. From the perspective of a “representative democracy seen from below”, with different forms of relationship between the citizen and the State, and varying degrees of impact on the legislative process, this study identifies six levels of e-participation. Four levels correspond to a renaming of categories already proposed in the literature (Macintosh, 2004; Gomes, 2005; Tambouris, Liotas and Tarabanis, 2007) – informative, advisory, collaborative, and decision--making –, and two levels correspond to two new categories proposed in this study – citizens’ manifestations and propositional.