The International Conference on E-Democracy and Open Government Asia 2018 (CeDEM Asia 2016) follows the success of eleven previous conferences in Europe and three in Asia, and was hosted this year in Yokohama, Japan, from July 12th to 13th.

This book provides a conceptual toolkit to understand the changing technologies and dynamics of political campaigning in India. Examining political campaigning and party strategies across many Indian states, with special attention to regional politics, histories, cultures, social and technological contexts, the book discusses the potential impacts of campaign strategies on electoral outcomes. Political campaigning reached a tipping point with millions of social media users engaging online with family and friends, political issues, parties and candidates in India’s 2019 parliamentary election. Although India’s political parties had been working with consultants and professional advertising agencies for decades, by 2019, millions of first-time voters as well as older voters were microtargeted with campaign messaging by parties and their affiliates, including frequent misinformation from unknown sources supporting one party or another. Filling a key gap in political communication research on election campaigns in digital India, the chapters in this book capture how political campaigning is important for the electoral fortunes of political parties in India’s diverse regions and states. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and practitioners in political communication, public administration, and political consulting, as well as anyone interested in data-driven political campaigning. It will also be an invaluable reading for those interested in South Asian studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

As India’s power and prominence rise on the international stage, its longstanding tradition of democracy is under threat. Since establishing a secular and democratic constitution in 1950, India has held elections at the local, state, and national levels with frequent transitions of power between opposing parties. This commitment to democracy has provided political order to a country that is twice the size of Europe and with a stunning array of social and economic divides. Despite this rich tradition, India’s democracy faces an unprecedented threat with the rise of Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. After decisively winning general elections in 2014, Modi and the BJP have pursued a range of anti-democratic policies in which the state and society are used to undermine the opposition, to stifle free speech, and to harass religious minorities. The Troubling State of India’s Democracy brings together leading scholars from around the world to assess the conditions of India’s democracy across three important dimensions: politics, specifically the state of political parties and the party system; the state, including the condition of federalism and the health of various institutions; and society, including NGOs, ethnic and religious tensions, and control of the media. Even though elements of India’s democracy seem to function—like its commitment to elections—the contributors document a disturbing trajectory, one that not only threatens to undermine India’s own stability, but could also affect the global order.

EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2018 represents the merge of the IFIP WG 8.5 Electronic Government (EGOV), the IFIP WG 8.5 IFIP Electronic Participation (ePart) and the Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government Conference (CeDEM). The EGOV-CeDEM-ePart proceedings bring together the essence of academic and practical knowledge on e-government, e-democracy and open government, and e-participation. The peer-reviewed ongoing research papers, project descriptions, reflections and viewpoints, workshop and panel proposals, posters, and the PhD colloquium papers found in these proceedings capture the newest developments, trends, tools and procedures, and demonstrate the many ways that these impact society, the polity, and the economy.

Signaling without Saying develops game-theoretic approaches to social meaning to model the phenomenon of dogwhistles, perhaps best known from political speech. These constructions involve language that sends one message to an out-group while at the same time sending a second-often taboo, controversial, or inflammatory-message to an in-group. Robert Henderson and Elin McCready show that dogwhistles should not be modeled in the same way as related language, like slurs, and nor should they be treated via standard Gricean implicatures computed over truth-conditional meaning; instead, they should be treated as primarily bearing social meaning, as understood by modern variationist sociolinguistic theories. The book identifies and models two different kinds of dogwhistle meaning, while also exploring a variety of related phenomena. The authors show how novel implicatures in the social meaning domain can arise when a listener detects a dogwhistle, and connect them to implicatures familiar in the truth-conditional domain. Social meaning, they argue, can be added to theories of trust in testimonial evidence, and dogwhistles can help to establish trust with an audience, even when expressing false propositions. The final chapter of the book looks at connections between dogwhistles and other issues important in epistemology and philosophy of language which might involve social meaning, such as standpoint theory.

The European Conference on e-Government has been running now for 18 years. This event has been held in Italy, Ireland, Belgium, UK, Slovenia, to mention a few of the countries who have hosted it. This year we are refocusing the conference to look more broadly at the area of Digital Government. The conference is generally attended by participants from more than 40 countries and attracts an interesting combination of academic scholars, public sector workers and individuals who are engaged in various aspects of Digital Government research and application.

Many East Asian states have undergone profound economic transformations over the last two decades. Singapore and Hong Kong especially have adapted to shifting economic and technological conditions by transforming themselves into ‘smart developmental states’. In these cities, the proliferation of digital technologies has given rise to new growth sectors and opened up new areas of political contestation within these early proponents of the developmental state model. Providing a theoretical and empirical discussion of the Asian developmental state model, the book assesses the evolution of the developmental state model, considers recent developments in the field and evaluates the development state’s continued relevance as a conceptual framework for understanding the politics of economic development. Focusing on digital and technology-enabled economic activities in Hong Kong and Singapore, the author explores the various policies that allow developmental states to stimulate economic growth, ensure organizational coherence, and engage businesses and other stakeholders. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of political economy and economic development in Asia as well as business professionals and other practitioners.