Excluded by Design? Digital Public Services and the Unequal Conditions of Democratic Participation

Digitalization is transforming the conditions under which citizens access the state, public information, public services, and political participation. Public administration, welfare access, consultation procedures, civic communication, elections, and political information are increasingly mediated through digital platforms. While these developments are often presented as tools for efficiency, transparency, and inclusion, they may also create new barriers for citizens who lack digital or informational resources.
This panel explores digital exclusion as a form of democratic exclusion. Across very different domains, welfare administration, e-participation platforms, electoral information, civic communication, digitalization tends to convert citizens' existing resources (skills, time, trust, infrastructure, literacy) into a precondition for exercising rights and claims that were previously more resource-independent. Disability, age, socioeconomic inequality, rurality, low digital and media literacy, and distrust each operate as different sources of this same underlying gap, with cumulative consequences for who can access rights, make claims, engage with public institutions, and participate in political life. Rather than focusing only on visible forms of online participation, the panel shifts attention to the often, ordinary infrastructures and competences that condition democratic citizenship in digital societies.
By connecting research on political participation, digital government, democratic inequality, and media/digital literacy, the panel asks how technological transformation reshapes who can participate, whose voices are heard, and how democratic institutions can remain inclusive and resilient across online and offline arenas. We welcome theoretical, empirical, as well as comparative contributions addressing digital public services, e-participation, accessibility, political trust, civic engagement, information inequalities, and the unequal distribution of democratic capacities.