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 study investigates the relationship between political cynicism and political involvement by connecting them with antecedent variables: need for cognition, elaboration and perceived media importance. The findings show that elaboration and political involvement are exogenous, casting influence on political cynicism, need for cognition, and perceived importance of media. This finding confirms...

Previous research on personality and political attitudes has been conducted in countries where political parties from the center dominate the political system. In the present research (N = 675), we focus on the relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism, respectively, in the course of a presidential election where the two candidates represent...

Political trust is an important indicator of political legitimacy. Hence, seemingly decreasing levels of political trust in Western democracies have stimulated a growing body of research on the causes and consequences of political trust. However, the neglect of potential measurement problems of political trust raises doubts about the findings of earlier studies. The current study revisits the m...

This case study examines how traditional and Internet news use, as well as face-to-face and online political discussion, contributed to political participation during the period leading up to the Iraq War. A Web-based survey of political dissenters (N=307) conducted at the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq provides the data used to examine the relationships among informational media use, o...

Two important human action selection processes are the choice by citizens of parties to support in elections and the choice by party leaders of policy 'packages' offered to citizens in order to attract this support. Having reviewed approaches analysing these choices and the reasons for doing this using the methodology of agent-based modelling, we extend a recent agent-based model of party compe...