The extension and transformation of political participation is dependent on widespread deliberation supported by information and communication technologies. The most commonly found examples of these eParticipation systems are political discussion forums. Though much of the discussion of these technologies is conducted in the eGovernment and (particularly) the eDemocracy literature, political di...

This paper analyzes the role of yardstick competition for improving political decisions. We examine how performance comparisons across jurisdictions affect the agency problem resulting from uncertainty about politicians (adverse selection) and their policies (moral hazard). We study two forms of inefficiency: the provision of wasteful project and the failure to provide useful project .We find a...

It is a piece of idle senthentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, or prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application oflegal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in th...

This paper develops a theory of the interaction between appropriative conflict and economic growth. Appropriative conflict, as measured by the diversion of resources, is viewed as the cost of securing effective property rights. We identify conditions under which conflict rises or falls as the rate of economic growth improves. The main implication of the analysis is that if the quality of proper...

Though political theorists have emphasized the importance of political discussion in non-political spaces, past study of online political discussion has focused on primarily political websites. Using a random sample from Blogger.com, we find that 25% of all political posts are from blogs that post about politics less than 20% of the time, because the vast majority of blogs post about politics s...

Political Islam in Iran, which initially formed in the guise of Sultāni order, experiences its second form after 1979 Revolution, named popular order. While in both forms, the authority of religion has been accepted in political life, these types of order demonstrate two different experiences of political Islam in Iran. Thus, the comprehension of this new experience of political Islam after the...