E-State: Realistic or Utopian?

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is known to facilitate governance and citizen participation in States' decision making processes. However, e-governance researchers have argued that beyond the current use of ICT to facilitate already existing means of governance lays the possibility of its use to fundamentally revolutionise public administration. There is the ideation and aspiration for ICT-based States (E-states) which exist without governments, and whose citizens can self-organise and self-govern without the need for institutions. This is a conceptual paper which discusses the viability and prospects of this aspiration. The study reviews literature in the areas of politics, public administration and Information Technology in the context of governance and public administration. This study ultimately argues that the possibility of establishing an E-state will be dependent on changing existing political ideologies and systems of governance to anarchism. As it is, ICT cannot be a substitute for governments and certain governmental institutions but can only help them.