Online and Offline Participation at the Local Level

Abstract

and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Supply of and demand for e-democracy: A study of the Swedish case

“…One noteworthy example though, is van der Graft and Svensson's [22] test of the effect of voter turnout on e-democracy, which shows contradictory results to those theorized earlier, namely a negative influence on e-democracy. These studies and other having the same ambition [5,31,50,64] emphasize the legitimacy of such theoretical tests of e-democracy on a sub-national level.…”

“…Correlation statistics do, however, reject such a statement. 5 The somewhat surprising outcome is thus that individuals' involvement in e-democratic processes is independent of the supply of e-democratic processes by the municipalities and vice versa. In other words, citizens that are highly active when it comes to e-democracy can be residents of a municipality that gives poor opportunities for such involvement.…”

“…4 For the demand data the dependent variable of the main model is applied in these analyses. 5 If the two outliers are removed a significant correlation emerges (Pearson correlation: 0.522, ρ = 0.022). No theoretical support can, though, be found for such an operation.…”

“…First, previous studies in this field are often theoretically limited, meaning that they can seldom fully contribute to the theoretical foundation of how variations in e-democracy can be explained. Thus, they have, with a few exceptions [5,40,41], problems in addressing the complete explanations that should be the goal in empirically oriented social science [26]. Second, as implied by Saebø et al [48] in their survey of the field, studies that combine data are seldom found to be of the type that would enable comparisons of societies' level of e-democracy with citizens' actual use of such functions.…”

Party Activism in the Internet Era: Testing for Reinforcement and Mobilization

“…First, it has been argued that what matters for online participation are certain specific skills akin to the new media, such as Internet familiarity and expertise (Krueger, 2002;Best and Krueger (2005) use a very restrictive measure of frequency: only those activists that use the Internet 6-7 days per weeks are considered frequent Internet users. Second, some authors have found that the size of the municipality is a strong predictor of the participation experiences at the local level (Borge et al, 2009) Third, it has also been argued that that members that approach and join the party online tend to be most active online (Lusoli and Ward, 2004;Ward, Lusoli and Gibson, 2002). That is, that the way of approaching the party is relevant for predicting online participation.…”