This article discusses the impact of social media and new technologies of participation on citizen participation in lawmaking. This article focuses on electronic petitioning and examines how Uber, a controversial ride-sharing digital platform, has employed a traditional instrument of civic...

In the debate over the role of civil society under authoritarian regimes, the spread of transnational web-based media obliges us to rethink the arenas in which the societal voice can be raised - and heard. Taking the case of state-socialist Cuba, a diachronic comparison analyzes civil society...

In many places e-voting technologies are under development, and an intensive theoretical and normative debate is taking place about the pros and cons. We investigate the opinions of the users of this type of technologies, as this is crucial for the shaping and acceptance of the technology. We...

This article examines the changing relationship of the United States Federal government and the American public over the internet. The concepts of trust in government and political efficacy are used to construct a theoretical framework to study this relationship. After defining these concepts, a...

Social movements are an important part of a functioning society – also on a global scale. I argue that the internet and social media enable the formation of informal civil society movements and provide the means for such movements to participate in the shaping of international law to an...

This paper studies the effect of expanding internet access on electoral outcomes at the municipality level in Colombia. I use a difference-in-differences strategy that compares electoral outcomes in municipalities that received the internet right before the presidential election, with those that...

We investigate the causal impact of broadband Internet on political participation using data from Italy. We show that this impact varies across different forms of political engagement and over time. Initially, broadband had a negative effect on turnout in national elections, driven by increased...