Assessing the Influence of Actors on E-Government Policies: Evidences from Chile and Costa Rica Experiences

Background

The importance of actors has been recognized in several fields related with political sciences like institutions (North, 1990; Tsebelis, 2001), policy networks (Klijn, 1998), governance and governability (Prats, 2001) or public policies (Subirats, Knoepfel, Larrue, & Varonne, 2008). However such importance is admitted, one can affirm that not enough efforts to characterize properties on actors have been made. Yet, some notions of concepts related to them like power, have been elaborated. For example, the capacity to avoid changes on institutions (known as veto power) is described by Tsebelis (2001). The source of such power is given by institutional results, like the number of seats that a politic party has on Deputies Chamber. Furthermore, institutional rules could construct complex models based on game theories by which actors could construct scenarios on how to play “political games” (Shepsle & Bonchek, 2005).

However, the political complexities are no limited to institutions. Since 80’s decade, the reduction of the size and capacity of State and government has implied that other actors, not related directly to institutional contexts, have become more and more important for policy construction and implementation. This has been the case, for example, of policy networks (Klijn, 1998; Fleury, 2002). In this broad perspective, authors like Prats (2001) state that “strategic actors” are important for governability. Such “strategic actors” are capable to block changes on rules that govern any given society. A good governability is more that just government. Indeed it is a characteristic of a society.