Hi everyone, If you are working on democracy, governance, and the internet, I am pleased to invite you to contribute a paper to our conference track for DG.O 2021. The track is focused on futuristic, alternative, and radical perspectives on how the internet can support or harm the ways in which we govern society. All accepted papers will be published and included in the ACM digital library and the DBLP bibliography system. In addition, we are planning a special issue in a leading journal for our specific track. The deadline for submitting papers is January 20, 2021 – and be sure to submit to the correct track (Track 6 Beyond Bureaucracy: Participatory Online Politics and the Future of E-democracy). The full call for papers is below. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions! Regards, Dr. Zach Bastick Researcher in Digital Government European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL), France *Call for Papers* Track 6: Beyond Bureaucracy: Participatory online politics and the future of e-democracy Track chairs: Zach Bastick (ESPOL) and Alois Paulin (Siemens) 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (DG.O 2021) June 9-11, 2021, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, USA Description: This track explores innovations in e-government and e-democracy that place the citizen at the center of governance. While traditional lines of inquiry at the intersection of politics and technology focus on enhancing or supporting existing political institutions, there is an underexplored opportunity for citizens to use technology to control government more directly. Internet optimists have long anticipated new, digital models of self-governance. These include representative, direct, liquid, and anarchic models. On the other hand, critics have argued that technology cannot safely or desirably support greater citizen involvement. This track serves to explore these more futuristic potentials of technology for governance. The track covers all aspects of direct, futuristic, radical, exploratory, and critical approaches to digital governance. These include the (un)desirability of using technology to support self-governance; challenges to self-governance through technology; theoretical and empirical proposals; assessments of technologies to support models of governance (AI, IoT, blockchain, 5G, platforms); the impact of developing digital phenomena on self-governance (misinformation, bots, digital collective intelligence); and the ethical, technological, social, and political implications of existing and potential future models of public governance. In short, the track is specifically interested in how the latest technological developments and theories can enable new or renewed political structures and processes. More generally, we will explore questions such as: What might a digital political future look like? How might we control or steer providers of societal functions and deliver societal functions through technology? How can digital governance occur collaboratively and enable public values to emerge? What digital issues should policymakers, platforms, designers, internet users and citizens consider when imagining the future of democracy? Suggested topics include: 1. Algorithmic governance and politics 2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and policymaking 3. Governance of online communities and virtual organizations 4. Collaborative, community-led or inclusive online government 5. Human, crowd, and machine intelligence in the service of democracy 6. Governance and bots, misinformation, and algorithmic obscurity 7. The (un)desirability of governance through technology 8. Representative democracy, liquid democracy, crypto-anarchism, direct democracy 9. Ethics and morals in digital governance 10. Participatory budgeting 11. Collaborative, bottom-up or grass-roots digital responses to COVID-19 We solicit papers on a wide range of perspectives and approaches and encourage both theoretical and empirical contributions. Papers are to be submitted at the following website by January 20, 2021: http://dgsociety.org/dgo-2021/call-for-proposals/