The correlation between social ties and political participation has been evident for some time, though very little attention is devoted to examining the causal mechanisms producing this relationship. This paper moves the literature in this direction by examining how an important feature of social networks – levels of political expertise – affect the attitudes underlying involvement. After outli...

IN T R O D U C T IO N Reduced to its simplest terms, solid waste collection and disposal consists of the acceptance of the solid waste from processes of human life, the transportation of such material to disposal sites, and the process­ ing and disposal of the material so that nuisances are not created. The entire process must be carried out in such a manner that the public health of the commun...

In many parts of the world there is a growing demand for participation in public policy decision making. This demand could be satisfied by the design and deployment of webbased group decision support systems to aid large groups of, possibly, non-sophisticated, users in participating in such decisions. After describing several mechanisms for participatory democracy, we provide a framework for de...