Digital Political Participation, Institutional Quality, and Inclusive Growth: A Bibliometric Review
Keywords:
Digital political participation, Institutional quality, Inclusive growth, Developing countries, Bibliometric analysisAbstract
Political participation is a constituent of development and a mechanism shaping the institutional quality that underpins long-run growth. Yet, the emergence of digital political intermediaries and their developmental consequences has not been systematically assessed. This study maps the intellectual and conceptual structure of research on digital political participation and situates it within the participation–institutions–growth chain. A mixed review design combines bibliometric analysis with a systematic literature review following PRISMA 2020, applied to 173 Scopus-indexed documents (2006–2026) analyzed in VOSviewer. The field is forming rapidly but remains fragmented across 156 sources and 46 countries, with a marked production–influence asymmetry: the Global South produces 43.4% of documents but receives only 14.3% of citations. Four structural deficits and a near-total disconnection between influencer and development literatures indicate that digital participation has ambivalent implications for institutional quality, especially in developing countries. The study delineates digital political participation as a distinct bibliometric object within an economic-development perspective.
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