An Overview of the Trends in E-democracy: Based on Assessment of Electronic Voters Registration and Verification in Literature

Abstract

The systematic literature review explores recent research trends in e-democracy, focusing on voter registration and verification in e-election procedures. The research seeks to reveal scholars' disciplinary affiliations and the philosophical assumptions underpinning study in the field. Scholars, however, have paid little attention to e-voter registration and verification in e-democracy. The study was driven by the question: what kinds of studies dominate the e-democracy literature? The SLR approach evaluated 41 publications from four databases on electronic voting, e-democracy, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The studies identified four distinct e-democracy themes related to electronic voter registration and verification. The findings show that political scientists and international relations specialists dominate the sector. Though the interpretivism stance dominated the e-democracy research domain, more research in e-voter registration and verification is required. We recommend boosting the number of IS-based scholars studying e-voter registration and verification, contributing IS-based insights to ongoing theorizing of this phenomenon.