Trakhtenberg Anna
Abstract: The article deals with the question of citizens’ adoption of electronic forms of interaction with the authorities. It is shown that the concept of “e-government” is generated by the New Public Management (state as corporation offering public goods). Due to operationalization, “e-government” is transformed into a set of “e-services” as specific species of public goods. E-services must displace traditional ones (logic of exclusion). The author using the thesis of the asymmetrical relationship between the authorities and citizens hypothesizes that citizens’ “tactics of the weak” (M. de Certeau) are based not on the exclusion but in the inclusion (“bricolage”) of e-services in the traditional arch of action, the core of which is an informal interaction with the authorities. The data of the sociological survey conducted in the Sverdlovsk region confirms this hypothesis. Most successful “bricolage” of traditional and e-services is typical for representatives of the urban “middle class”: young, educated, with prestigious employment. They are the main beneficiaries of the transition to “e-government”.
Keywords: e-government, technology adoption, operationalization, “tactics of the weak”, beneficiaries.