This paper examines the evolving nature of urban citizenship in the context of blurred online and offline boundaries. Using two examples from Breda, Netherlands, the paper explores how state and civic actors interact within a hybrid space where traditional distinctions between online and offline are increasingly blurred yet simultaneously reinforced. The article highlights the dynamics of "translation" (blurring boundaries) and "purification" (reinforcing boundaries) as they impact urban citizenship. It argues that while urban citizenship is enacted across both online and offline spaces, the state's selective engagement with these spheres often results in fragmented citizenship, where different norms apply depending on the context. The paper calls for an integrated approach to studying urban citizenship that accounts for the interconnected and contested nature of these hybrid spaces. This research contributes to urban sociology and public administration by challenging the traditional separation of online and offline realms and emphasizing the need to understand the power dynamics shaping citizenship in the digital age.

Tax is key part of social contract between citizens and the state (Steinmo 2018), and its administration is being revolutionised by digital systems for interaction. These systems have implications for citizens’ views about administrative burdens, their compliance with paying tax and legitimacy of systems (Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey 2015). However, we know relatively little about what citizens want in tax administration, especially relative to research about public opinion on tax levels and distributive aspects (Ballard-Rosa et al. 2017). In this paper we estimate citizens’ preferences for features of tax administration (filing methods, information sources used by tax authorities, audit processes and appeals processes). It is difficult to establish preferences from looking at actual use of tax administration because jurisdictions’ systems only utilise specific features not the full range of possibilities. We develop and apply a conjoint experiment to establish citizens’ preferences for features of tax administration, a method that allows participants to be presented with a broad range of different features (Mangham et al. 2009), We implement the experiment on samples (3 x n = 1,000) in Canada, the US, and UK, focusing on individual citizens and the administration of taxes on income. We examine variation in citizens’ preferences according to political values and trust in government, and use the results to compare preferences with actual systems found in the three countries. Our findings, which will be available before Sept 2024, will help inform discussion of digital government design (Meijer 2015) to help boost legitimacy and tax compliance.

Ballard-Rosa, C., Martin, L, and Scheve, K (2017). The Structure of Income Tax Policy Preferences. Journal of Politics, 79(1), 1-16.

Mangham, L. J., Hanson, K., & McPake, B. (2009). How to do (or not to do)… Designing a discrete choice experiment for application in a low-income country. Health policy and planning, 24(2), 151-158.

Meijer, A. (2015). E-governance innovation: Barriers and strategies. Government information quarterly, 32(2), 198-206.

Moynihan, D. P., Herd, P., and Harvey, H. 2015. Administrative burden: Learning, psychological, and compliance costs in citizen-state interactions. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 25(1):43–69.

Steinmo, S. (ed.) (2018). The Leap of Faith: The Fiscal Foundations of Successful Government in Europe and America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

With the spread of digital technology on a global scale, an increasing number of countries recognize its potential to alleviate administrative burdens, sparking a wave of digitalization in public services. However, in comparison to the burgeoning practice of digital public services, the theoretical research has lagged behind. Existing studies have primarily focused on measuring and conceptualizing the administrative costs that citizens may encounter when interacting with the state in traditional social welfare contexts, with relatively limited research on the experience and mechanisms of administrative burdens in digital scenarios (Rik Peeters, 2023; Martin et al., 2023; Madsen, Lindgren, Melin, 2022; Chudnovsky & Peeters, 2020). Specifically, whether the administrative burden on the public can be reduced through digital public services, and what factors influence the administrative burden on the public within digital services, remain issues that have not been fully discussed (Madsen et al., 2022).

Since 2020, China has been fully implemented the digital administration of the declaration of individual income tax (IIT) on “Individual Income Tax” app, with the aim of enhancing the efficiency of tax declarations and reducing administrative burdens. Our study utilizes this large-scale reform of digital public services to explore the experience and mechanisms of administrative burdens on citizens within digital public services. Focusing on the public's administrative burden in declaration of personal income tax, we conducted a survey using the Credamo platform to randomly distribute 1600 questionnaires, from which we collected 1084 valid responses. This empirical research examined the experience and mechanisms of administrative burdens in digital public services.

The contributions of this paper are threefold: First, This study starts by exploring where administrative tasks and digital government meet. It offers theoretical references for examining administrative burden against the backdrop of government digital transformation and addresses a research gap in this field. Second, this research constructs a multidimensional framework that reveals the importance of citizens digital literacy, communication between citizens and the government, and information comprehension for administrative burdens, providing new empirical evidence for explaining administrative burdens in digital public services. Thirdly, it broadens the scope of administrative burden research beyond the traditional realm of social welfare to encompass a broader spectrum of routine public services.

This article focuses on the role of nonprofit organization as intermediaries between public administration and citizens in a digitalized world. Although e-administration provides access at to all citizens at any time and in any place, there is still a part of the population excluded from access to public services for various reasons: lack of mastery of the digital tool, exclusion linked to the status of the citizen (homeless), etc…

To remedy this, the French public administration has set up a range of relay services, supported by nonprofit organizations with strong local roots and labeled “Maisons France Service” from the public administration.

A first work carried out with the PIMMS Rennes nonprofit organization revealed the important role of these nonprofit organizations for the inclusion of citizens around administrative procedures (Perrin, 2023). This first work highlights some significant elements:

- Territorial proximity and relationships with users improve their relations with public administration

- The development of innovative services by the nonprofit organization (itinerant buses) contributes to the inclusion of a majority of citizens

- The work carried out by the nonprofit organization reduces the number of complaints to the public administration and acts as a first filter for citizens' requests.

Citizens express very clearly to the nonprofit organization what they like or do not like about the way the public service operates. So many elements of understanding and improvement that can enrich civil servants in their relationship with users.

The digitalization of public administration leads civil servants to reinvent public services so that they are more consistent with citizens’ expectations. Some French local administrations have successfully experimented with intrapreneurship but have however been confronted with numerous limitations: financial and human resources (Boukamel & Emery, 2017). It therefore becomes difficult for civil servants to carry out everything at the same time: efficient public services, innovative public services, inclusive public services.

We then draw on the management literature on the ambidexterity of organizations to distinguish exploitation activities from exploration activities (March, 1991). If structural ambidexterity proves difficult to implement for the reasons cited above, on the other hand, network ambidexterity suggests that exploration activities can be carried out externally through alliances between organizations.

We explore the relationship between public administration, nonprofit organization and citizens. How can these nonprofit organization lighten the workload of civils servant? Are they vectors of innovation and information to better understand citizens' needs? How can the public sector benefit from this relationship and strengthen its legitimacy with citizens, while delegating some of its exploration and operational functions?

Qualitative research is carried out with the Pimms Rennes nonprofit organization. It shows how nonprofit organization provide a better understanding of citizens’ expectations.

Modernization has been a process of urbanization and it also has been a process of concentrating various resources in order to improve production efficiency and achieve economic development. Expanded metropolitan areas today account for 80% of world economic activities (World Bank, 2023) and are expected to hold 70% of the total population by 2050 (UN, 2019). Efficiency through concentration, however, is vulnerable to various types of disasters and the concentration of population and wealth makes the damage even more serious in case of disasters. This phenomenon was already well-known through natural disasters; however, the recent COVID-19 pandemic made the world realize this double-edged characteristic of metropolis (Kudo, 2021).

Thus, Smart City initiatives aiming resilience and agility have recently become the major trend among Smart City projects (Vermiglio et al., 2020). These initiatives require consensus building among stakeholders prior to the project and citizen participation during the experiments and implementation, especially in order to gather data from the residents and all related stakeholders. However, both consensus building and citizen participation are not always easy to achieve in real cases. Often the participation is passive and not all stakeholders are engaged during the process of consensus building. As more and more Smart City projects focus on data collection, not only the minimum legal requirement, but also political and social consensus have become important, while many cases show the difficulty in achieving consensus and make citizen participate in the process. Various Smart City cases show that the participation is often at nonparticipation level of the Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation (1969), at most information or placation level.

This research, thus, tries to understand the patterns of consensus building and participation from both literatures and cases. The paper first explores the concept of recent Smart Cities in relation to their transitions and types, then, tries to classify the patterns of consensus building and participation in Smart City initiative through literature review and cases. Around 20 Japanese and 10 international cases are classified according to the types of consensus building and participation patterns, revealing relationship among stakeholders’ readiness, local experiences, and type, size, main objectives of Smart City. The paper concludes with some practical implications for consensus building and participation in Smart City.