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RATIONALCHOICE ANDDEMOCRATICPARTICIPATION 85Who is on the Web? US Connectivity010203040506070Jun-97Sep-97Dec-97Mar-98Jun-98Sep-98Dec-98Mar-99Jun-99Sep-99Dec-99Mar-00Jun-00Sep-00Dec-00Mar-01Jun-01Sep-01Dec-01Mar-02Jun-02
DatePercent of PopulationFigure 1: Who is on the Web in the United States? (Data source: NUA Internet Surveys.)lowered transaction costs for new immigrants and poorly
educated urbanites, provided jobs and social welfare
(via the patronage system), and encouraged political in-
volvement. This is why, in some quarters, “boss politics,”
although corrupt by modern standards, is celebrated as
a reasonable adjustment of the political system to an un-
dereducated, rapidly urbanizing population.
Is it accurate today to refer to a new “political ma-
chine”? Today’s political machine is the personal com-
puter, powered by the Internet. Many trumpet the political
potential of the Web-connected PC for many of the same
reasons that some celebrate the old political machine. The
PC and the Internet, they argue, will lower the costs of po-
litical information and involvement, make politics more
relevant to our daily lives, and consequently substantially
increase rates of political participation. The rapid growth
of the Internet means that it is far too important for any
political candidate or organization to ignore. As shown
in Figure 1, Internet penetration rates in the U.S. have
climbed dramatically over the past decade and are cur-
rently estimated at 60% (though showing little growth
in the past year). Perhaps most importantly, the more
wired segments of the population—those with higher lev-
els of education, income, and occupational status—are
the same segments who are more likely to volunteer, do-
nate money, and vote (Bimber, 2002; Davis, 1999; Rosen-
stone & Hansen, 1993). A significant proportion (35%) of
Americans report going on the Internet at least once a
week to get news, although, parallel to penetration rates,
this proportion has slowed significantly from its rapid
growth in the late 1990s and still lags far behind tradi-
tional media sources (Pew Center, 2002). Users with high-
speed connections—currently estimated at 21% of U.S.
users—report far higher rates of Internet utilization fornewsgathering (Horrigan & Rainie, 2002). The Internet is
clearly a mass medium for communication.
International Internet penetration rates, however, al-
though they continue to climb rapidly, remain below 10%
(NUA Internet Surveys, 2002). As Pippa Norris has shown,
this difference means that, except for a few more highly
connected European countries, e-politics will remain a
distinctly American phenomenon (Norris, 2001).
The new political machine holds the potential for a
more egalitarian, democratized, and decentralized polit-
ical system, whereas the old political machine was the
very essence of centralized political control. The machine
metaphor is appropriate, furthermore, because it focuses
our lens on the area where the Internet has already had,
and is likely to continue to have, its greatest impact—on
the ability of political elites and organizations to commu-
nicate with, mobilize, and potentially control public atti-
tudes and political activities. The Internet has become a
central tool for mobilization efforts by political organiza-
tions. The rapid penetration of electronic mail and World
Wide Web access into homes and offices, the proliferation
of Web sites, and the emergence of the Internet as a new
forum for communication present vast new opportunities
for citizen participation in the political process. The In-
ternet’s potential to broaden and increase participation
by changing the behavior of individual citizens, however,
runs squarely into one of the most widely recognized so-
cial dilemmas: the logic of collective action.RATIONAL CHOICE AND DEMOCRATIC
PARTICIPATION
In Strong Democracy, political philosopher Benjamin
Barber argues that neighborhood assemblies and town