Digital Government and Green Development: Governance Mechanisms, Institutional Conditions, and Future Research

Abstract

Despite widespread policy enthusiasm for digital government as a tool for environmental governance, research on digital government and green development has evolved as largely separate literatures, leaving the mechanisms and contingencies of their relationship poorly understood. This review combines descriptive CiteSpace mapping with an integrative qualitative synthesis to examine how digital government capacities may shape green development outcomes through information integration, cross-agency coordination, participation, regulatory implementation, and green-oriented resource allocation. The framework treats digital government as an enabling and contingent governance capacity rather than an autonomous driver of environmental transformation, and identifies institutional capacity, regulatory quality, data governance, and digital inclusion as boundary conditions. It also highlights tensions involving surveillance, exclusion, data bias, and the material footprint of digital infrastructure. The review contributes a mechanism-centered agenda for comparative and causal research linking public sector digital transformation to environmental and developmental objectives.