¹Development Informatics Group, IDPM, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Correspondence: R. Heeks, Development Informatics Group, IDPM, University of Manchester, Precinct Centre, Manchester M13 9QH, U.K.. Tel: +44 161 275 2800; E-mail: richard.heeks@manchester.ac.uk

Received 29 March 2006; Revised 24 November 2006; Re-revised 12 February 2007; Accepted 1 March 2007.

Abstract

A number of models have been offered to help explain the trajectories of e-Government projects: their frequent failures and their rarer successes. Most, though, lack a sense of the political interaction of stakeholders that is fundamental to understanding the public sector. This paper draws on actor-network theory to provide a perspective that is used to explain the trajectory of an e-Government case study. This perspective is found to provide a valuable insight into the local and global actor-networks that surround e-Government projects. The mobilisation, interaction and disintegration of these networks underpins the course of such projects, and can itself be understood in relation to network actor power: not through a static conception of 'power over' others but through the dynamic-enacted concept of 'power to'. As well as providing a research tool for analysis of e-Government project trajectories, the local/global networks approach also offers insights into e-Government leadership as a process of network formation and maintenance; and into the tensions between network stabilisation and design stabilisation.