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• See Trechsel, A., Kies, R., Mendez, F. and Schmitter, P. (2003) Evaluation of the Use of New Technologies in Order to Facilitate Democracy in Europe: E-democratizing the Parliaments and Parties in Europe, European Parliament, STOA (Scientific and Technological Option Assessment) Report, Directorate-General for Research.
• Eagly, A. and Ghaiken, S. (1993) Psychology of Attitudes, New York: Flarcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 306.
• This idea goes back to Simon's pioneering work on 'satisficing' and 'bounded rationality', see Simon, FI.A. (1959) 'Theories of decision-making in economics and behavioral sciences', American Economic Review, 49: 253-83 and to Tversky and Kahneman's 'cognitive heuristics'
• see Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. (1974) 'Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases', Science, 195: 1124-31.
• Downs had already applied this insight to the choices in representative democracies: he had argued that citizens simplify their choices by using cognitive shortcuts and by delegating the search for information or even the decisions to other actors, whom they trust and believe to be competent. It is very likely that voters will use similar strategies in direct-democratic procedures. See Downs, A. (1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York: Harper Collins, p. 230 ff.
• Zaller, J.R. (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• As Kuklinski et al. suggest, 'the much lamented limitations of citizen competence are less inherent in the capabilities and dispositions that individuals bring to politics and more a consequence of deficiencies in the political environment than scholars and practitioners often suppose'. See Kuklinski, J.H., Qpirk, P.J., Jerit, J. and Rich, R. (2001) 'The Political Environment and citizens competence', American Journal of Political Science, 45: 423.
• By lowering the information and motivation hurdles for the citizens, intensive campaigns diminish the difference between the cognitive strategies of informed and uninformed citizens. This could not only be observed for elections to the American senate, see Kahn, K. and Kenney, P.J. (1999) The Spectacle of U.S. Senate Campaigns, Princeton: Princeton University Press, but also for direct-democratic campaigns in the US
• see Bowler, S. and Donovan, T. (1998) Demanding Choices. Opinion, Voting, and Direct Democracy, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, chapter 8.
• Nixon, P. and Johansson, H. (1999) 'Transparency through technology: the internet and political parties', in B.N. Hague and B.D. Loader (eds) Digital Democracy, London: Routledge.
• Norris, P. (2002) 'Revolution, what revolution? The internet and U.S. elections, 1992-2000', in E.C. Kamarck and J.S. Nye Jr (eds) Governance.com, Washington: Brookings Institution Press.
• See Trechsel et al., op. cit., pp. 29-30.
• For details, see Norris, op. cit., p. 64.
• When asked where the internet users went more often for news about the 2000 elections: almost half of news consumers (47 per cent) said they frequented the websites of major news organizations such as CNN and the New York Times, and in contrast few often visited candidate websites (7 per cent) or issue oriented websites (4 per cent). See Norris, op. cit., p. 65.
• For details, see Norris, op. cit., p. 69.
• Data were obtained from 524 respondents, with a response rate of 65 per cent. According to Muhlberger the sample was sufficiently representative. See Muhlberger, P. (2000) Access, Skill, and Motivation in Online Political Discussion: The Democratic Digital Divide, Draft Document, Institute for the Study of Information Technologies and Society, Heinz School of Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University. Available at: www.communityconnections.heinz.cmu.edu/papers/AgencyPublicSphere.doc.
• Muhlberger, op. cit., p. 1.
• With regard to information, while the official information concerning the object of the referendum was present and widely used (76 per cent), 32 per cent of the respondents asked for more official information, 54 per cent would like to have direct links to political parties' websites, 44 per cent to media websites and 43 per cent to other political actors' websites. With regard to interaction, 67 per cent of the respondents indicated they would like to have the possibility to contact through e-mail the political authorities and 55 per cent said they would like to see discussion forums being proposed on the official website and 36 per cent showed an interest in having 'chat'. See Christin, T. and Muller, R. (2002) Analyse quantitative du test Alpha Ter: Analyse par Questionnaire du système du vote par Internet, Geneva: University of Geneva. www.ge.ch/chancellerie/e-government/doc/rapport_alphater_e-voting.pdf.
• Pew Research Center (2002) Rise of the E-Citizen, at: www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=57.
• A huge amount of literature suggests that political involvement increases with age, see, for example, Milbrath, L.W. and Goel, M.L. (1977) Political Participation: How and Why do People Get Involved in Politics, Chicago: Rand McNally, pp. 114-16;
• Wernli, B. (2001) Contraintes institutionnelles, influences contextuelles et participation aux elections fédérales en Suisse, Bern: Haupt, pp. 87-104.
• For direct-democratic participation, in particular see Mottier, V. (1993) 'La structuration sociale de la participation aux votations fédérales', in H. Kriesi et al. (eds) Citoyenneté et démocratie directe, Zurich: Seismo, pp. 123-44.
• Graber, D.A. (2001) 'Adapting political news to the needs of twenty-first century Americans', in W.L. Bennett and R.M. Entman (eds) Mediated Politics. Communication in the Future of Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 435.
• Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 266.
• Kies, R. and Trechsel, A.H. (2001) 'Le contexte socio-politique', in A. Auer and A.H. Trechsel (eds) Voter par internet? Le projet e-voting dans le canton de Genève dans une perspective socio-politique et juridique, Geneva, Basle, Munich: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, p. 53 ff., at: www.ge.ch/chancellerie/e-government/doc/Voter_par_Internet.pdf.
• Zukin, C. (1997) Generation Xand the News, Washington, DC: Radio and Television News Directors Foundation.
• For details see Graber, op. cit., p. 435.
• For details see Graber, op. cit., p. 438.
• For details see Graber, op. cit., p. 447.
• For a review and evaluation of e-government initiatives worldwide refer to West, M.D. (2002) 'Global e-Government 2002', Brown Policy Report, at: www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2002-03/02-022.html.
• Oblak, T. 'Boundaries of interactive public engagement: Political institutions and citizens in new spaces of political actions', paper presented at the Euricom Colloquium: Computer Network and Democratic Engagement, University of Nijmegen, 2002, p. 12.
• The already quoted study indicates that very few parliaments in Europe have introduced e-democratic tools such as the e-forums, e-consultation, e-feedback. On the other hand, most of them offered the possibility to contact the MPs through e-mail, but as the study shows this does not constitute a guaranty of reply. See Trechsel et al., op. cit.
• A notable exception, however not a public one, are the i-voting binding experiences of the Italian 'Partito Radicale' for electing a part of its executive board every year. For these elections an elaborate pre-voting sphere was set up: each candidate could present their CV; people could deliberate on the election among themselves and with the candidates; an elaborate system of questioning the candidates was proposed etc. For more information on this avant-gardiste experience see the case study by Kies on the e-democracy strategy of the Partito Radicale in Trechsel, A. et al., op. cit.
• For details see Norris, op. cit., p. 239.
• See Kriesi, H. (1994a) 'Le défi á la démocratie directe posé par les transforma tions de l'espace public', in Y. Papadopoulos (ed.) Présent et avenir de la démocratie directe, Geneva: Georg;
• Kriesi, H. (1994b) 'Akteure-Medien-Publikum. Die Herausforderung direkter Demokratie durch die Transformation der Öffentlichkeit', in F. Neidhardt (ed.) Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, soziale Bewegungen, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
• Lessig, L. (1999) Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, New York: Basic Books.
• See www.dnet.org.
• See www.debateamerica.org.
• See www.vote-smart.org.
• For a presentation of these different independent web-based campaign organisations see Levine, P. (2003) 'Online, in D.M. Anderson and M. Cornfield (eds) The Civic Web, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• Elberse, A., Hale, M.L. and Dutton, W.H. (2000) 'Guiding voters through the net: the democracy Network in a California Primary Election', in K.H. Hacker and J. van Dijk (eds) Digital Democracy: Issue of Theory and Practise, London: Sage Publication, p. 135.
• For details, see Trechsel et al., op. cit.
• However, a study about how citizens consult an independent civic site aiming at increasing the electoral civic competence showed a limited equalising effect: 'the statements of the four major candidates were viewed more often than statements provided by other candidates', see Elberse et al., op. cit., p. 144. This is not surprising, since people are, above all, interested in candidates whom they know and who have the best chances to be elected. Nevertheless, this does not mean that such sites will have no impact at all. We still believe that the introduction of such tools could encourage citizens to consult electoral information that they otherwise would have ignored.
• Manin, B. (1995) Principes du gouvernement représentatf Paris: Flammarion, p. 228.
• Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge: Polity.
• See Lupia, A. (2002) 'Deliberation disconnect: what it takes to improve civic competence', Law and Contemporary Problems, 65: p. 23, at: www-personal.umich.edu/-lupia/deliberation.pdf.
• Sunstein, C. (2001) Republic.com, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• See, for example, Shapiro, A. (1999) The Control Revolution, New York: Public affairs;
• Davis, R. (1999) The Web of Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press;
• Wilhelm, A.G. (2000) Democracy in the Digital Age: Challenges to Political Life in Cyberspace, New York: Routledge.
• Maldonado, T. (1997) Critica della ragione informatica, Milano: Feltrinelli, p. 58.
• Dahlberg, L. (2001) 'The internet and democratic discourse', Information, Communication & Society, 4: 615-33.
• For details see Kies and Trechsel, op. cit., p. 23 f.
• Levine, op. cit., p. 123.
• This view, however, has two problems, as Fallows points out, 'one involves the Internet, the other involves the non electronic ways in which citizens interact'. Compared to the past and present balkanisation involved by social cleavages based on religion, ethnicity, region or class-remember the construction of class-and confession-specific sub-societies (pillarisation) in the early twentieth century, the internet seems a trivial source of the problem at hand. Moreover, and quite contrary to the assertions of Sunstein, the internet actually functions less as a filtering device, than as the general interest intermediaries that Sunstein thinks are so important. As Fallows observes, 'if you start looking up information on Web sites, you almost never end up where you expected'. See Fallows, J. (2002) 'He's Got Mail', The New York Review of Books, 14 March: pp. 4-7.