Political participation researchers have developed several evaluative techniques to assess the representativeness of political participation patterns. Yet, while the Internet has become a mainstream avenue for political participation in the United States, current assessments of online participation insufficiently apply these methods. To incorporate these methods we begin by drawing upon resource theory to inform twostage ordered-logit models of online and offline political participation. Our results suggest that the factors predicting online participation often differ from the factors that predict offline participation. Even so, we find that those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds tend to disproportionately possess these distinct online determinants. Next, we use a wide spectrum of political opinion questions to determine whether online participators' opinions reflect or distort those of the general population. Overall, we find that online participation tends to relate moderately with liberal preferences. However, because offline participation relates to political attitudes similarly, the Internet only marginally advantages the political voice of liberals. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results.

The Internet has become an increasingly popular form of data collection because it permits complex questionnaires to be administered more quickly, flexibly, and inexpensively than conventional survey methods. However, the Internet is restricted to individuals with access to computer networks. Thus, causal inferences to the general population from analyses of Internet samples necessarily rest on two untested assumptions: (a) that the decision-making processes of Internet users are similar to those used by the general population, and (b) that representative samples of Internet users can be drawn. The authors provide mixed support for these assumptions. They find that current Internet sampling techniques only permit the generation of diverse, not representative, samples. However, comparing samples drawn simultaneously using the Internet and probabilistic telephone methods, the authors demonstrate that the psychological mechanisms underlying common political decisions do not differ between Internet users and the population. They discuss the implications of these findings for future survey research.

The Tiebout model of competition in the local market for public goods is an important and controversial theory. The current debate revolves around the apparent disparity between macro empirical studies that show greater efficiency in the supply of public goods in polycentric regions compared to consolidated ones and micro evidence of widespread citizen-consumer ignorance, which has been used to argue that individual actions cannot plausibly lead to efficiency-enhancing competition between local governments. We argue that competitive markets can be driven by a subset of informed consumers who shop around between alternate suppliers and produce pressure for competitive outcomes from which all consumers benefit. Using data from a survey of over five hundred households, we analyze the role of these marginal citizen-consumers and incorporate the costs of information gathering and the strategic interests of local governments into the competitive market model.

No abstract