March 2, 2006 Abstract: Indonesia has a tradition of corruption among local officials who harass and collect bribes from firms. Corruption flourished in the Suharto, pre-democracy era. This paper asks whether local democratization that occurred after Suharto reduced corruption and whether specific local politics, over and above the effects of local culture, affect corruption. We have a firm lev...

Multistakeholder Internet governance aspires to fulfill democratic values in a process of dialogue producing results that can be considered for possible action. How can these goals be accomplished when the participants in these processes come from entities as varied as corporations, governments, civil society and academia drawn from countries all over the world? How can such a multistakeholder ...

E-government is a way for governments to use the new technologies to provide citizens, businesses, and government agencies with more convenient access to government information and services, to improve the quality of the services and to provide greater opportunities to participate in democratic institutions and processes. The Webocrat System which will be designed and implemented within the Web...

Previous studies have found large negative e¤ects of direct democracies on government spending. Since they do not control for preference heterogeneity, these estimates su¤er from omitted variable bias. If citizens in areas with stronger direct democracy have lower tastes for government, the restraining e¤ect of institutions is overstated. Exploiting a unique dataset in Switzerland, we demonstra...

Various nations across the globe have always used media as a tool to safeguard their strategic interests by promoting their ideologies, cultural or democratic values; policies and priorities, political ambitions and at the same time used media in propaganda and counter propaganda operations both in times of peace and war. Such an exercise has mostly been accomplished through official media unde...

During the wave of constitutional reforms, which started in the late 1980s, Institutions of Direct Democracy (IDD) have been incorporated into most Latin American constitutions, and over the past fi fteen years, an increased use of these instruments by Latin American governments has been observed. This article deals with two questions related to this phenomenon: (1) what motivated the adoption ...

This paper is based upon the STeM MUDIA report, Prognastic study of media content usage – The users role in online news, by Brian Trench and Gary Quinn, July 2002. The study aimed to establish, if in the context of more immediately interactive media technologies, a demand-driven, or more dialogic information practice can be, or is being developed, and how this sits with established professional...

A global ‘associational revolution’ appears to be underway in many parts of the world and the rise of private voluntary organizations is beginning to have significant impacts on many nations’ democratic governance (Salamon, 1993; Kim, 2003). The rise of third sector organizations (TSOs) or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the decline of nationstates are changing not only the way societ...

This essay explores the roots of redistributive social solidarity in the developed democracies. Banting and Kymlicka (this volume) define social solidarity as a worldview widespread among the populace, with civic, democratic and redistributive dimensions, whereby individuals tolerate views and practices they dislike, accept democratic decisions even if those run counter to their beliefs or inte...

It is claimed that Internet technology offers governments the opportunity to engage citizens online and bridge the growing gap between citizens and the state. In the current climate of citizen disengagement this is a potentially important prospect. Academic studies into e-government tend to follow a well-trodden path of technology acceptance, citizens’ willingness and ability to use public serv...