Grounded in Media System Dependency theory, this article investigates the impact of new media on political efficacy. It suggests that dependence on online resources affects people's perceptions about the democratic potential of the Internet. Using structural equation modeling, the study tests the relationship between political attitudes and the perceived utility of the Web. The analysis employs...

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of participation in online polls and its relationship to the perception of online polls, information literacy, and the political efficacy of Internet users in mainland China. Data was gathered online from a sample of 419 Internet users. Results show that perceptions of both the usefulness and trustworthiness of online polls positively correlate...

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...

School‐based civic education is increasingly recognized as an effective means for increasing political awareness and participation in American youth. This study examines the Student Voices curriculum, implemented in 22 Philadelphia high schools, to assess program activities that mediate gains in outcomes linked to future political participation (following of politics, political knowledge, and p...

Declining political participation has caused much concern among political scientists and politicians. This article builds upon Henrik Bang’s conceptualization of Expert Citizens and Everyday Makers as new forms of political participation. Using the 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey, we identify four types of political participant: Political Activists, Expert Citizens, Everyday Makers and Non-...

This paper studies the political and social impacts of increased education by utilizing a randomized girls' merit scholarship programme in Kenya that raised test scores and secondary schooling. Consistent with the view that education empowers the disadvantaged to challenge authority, we find that the programme reduced the acceptance of domestic violence and political authority. Young women in p...

When and why are codified constitutions efficacious? Answering these key and apparently straightforward questions turns out to be extremely challenging. The road to responding to them is paved with conceptual, theoretical, and empirical difficulties. In this article, I make a modest, but nevertheless hopefully useful, claim: that overlooking certain conceptual difficulties is detrimental to the...

INTRODUCTION The study focuses on the programmatic bases of Slovenian political parties since independence. It presents an analysis of party programs and their preferences regarding doctors and other health workers, as well as the contents most commonly related to them. At the same time, the study also highlights the intensity of the presence of doctors on the policy agenda through time. METH...

This study investigates the effect of participative political institutions (PPIs) that emerged in many central European cities from the late 13th century. The empirical analysis of the paper is based on newly compiled long-run data for the existence of different types of PPIs in 104 cities in the Holy Roman Empire. The effect of both an overall index of participativeness of political institutio...