politics play a central part in determining health and development outcomes as gorik ooms highlights in his recent commentary. as health becomes more global and more politicized the need grows to better understand the inherently political processes at all levels of governance, such as ideological positions, ideas, value judgments, and power. i agree that global health research should strengthen...

Many cross-national surveys examine the extent to which citizens of new democracies believe that democracy is always preferable to any other form of government. There is little evidence, however, regarding how such attitudes affect citizen behavior. This article examines the case of Bolivia, asking whether and how Bolivians’ attitudes toward democracy affect participation, including contacts wi...

On-line political communities, such as the Norwegian site Demokratitorget (Democracy Square), are often designed according to a set of un-reflected assumptions about the political interests of their potential members. In political science, democracy is not taken as given in this way, but can be represented by different models which characterize different relationships between politicians and th...

Some studies have contended that direct democracy has secondary benefits unrelated to its impact on policy. In particular, recent scholarship claims that the American ballot initiative process enhances political efficacy. We began with concerns about the logic and empirical methods underlying this conclusion. We connect this research to the broader political psychology literature and in doing s...

This essay turns to ancient sources in order to rethink the relationship between political apathy and democracy. If modern democratic theorists place political apathy entirely outside of democracy – either as a destructive limit upon the full realization of a democratic polity, or, more sanguinely, as a pragmatic necessity which tempers democracy so that it may function in a workable yet watere...

This paper examines how three Dutch political parties employ the Internet as a tool to enhance ‘digital democracy’. The potential of digital democracy is considered to be strongest in the sphere of collective action outside the domain of political institutions. In this article, however, attention is given to how institutionalized channels might be supportive of digital democracy. Three componen...

The article is devoted to the problem of influence effects digitalization on institutions and ideology democracy in its various modern interpretations, as well very evolution formats participation masses politics. Technological progress development electronic communication systems lead often unexpected, if not paradoxical, consequences relationship between elitism mass As a result, new stage st...