The existence of political interest in society is critical for the health and future of all democracies and countries aspiring to become democracies. Likewise, a populace having the ability and willingness to participate in politics is crucial for a healthy society. An interest in politics and a desire to participate are not the same thing as actually being able to participate. Currently, there...

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...

This article argues that political stakeholders in national and international political arenas, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and firms in particular, are increasingly investing in 'Public-Attention-Seeking' activities in order to maintain access to scarce public resources in politics. The principal goal of 'Public-Attention-Seeking' is to win the public's favor and trust. As a cons...

Many studies suggest a relationship between education and political participation, but only some address causality. We add to this by re-examining the German case. For identification, we exploit an exogenous increase in compulsory schooling, use data from National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The enable analyses that do not rely solely on conversion of school-leaving qualifications into scho...