E-consultations: New tools for civic engagement or facades for political correctness?

E-consultations are emerging as a popular tool for civic engagement in policymaking. While they provide new opportunities for interaction between citizens and political actors, their actual impact on policy outcomes is less clear. Existing evidence suggests that citizen inputs from e-consultations are often arbitrarily integrated into policies and their inclusion depends on political will. This raises the question of whether e-consultations meaningfully engage citizens or merely serve as facades of political correctness in the online space.