The concept of electronic democracy has experienced a remarkable career in the social sciences during the past decade. It is not a new concept, despite the most recent outburst of publications and conferences on the topic. It can be traced back to the early 1970s when normative theorists of democracy perceived new digital media such as telephone and computer networks as tools for democratic reform (cf. Krauch 1972; Etzioni et al. 1975; Becker 1981; Barber 1984). However, it has changed in character since those days. Today, electronic democracy is being used as an empirical-analytical concept that carries the assumption that new digital media in general and computer networks in particular are in the process of changing the nature of political communication and democratic government (Rheingold 1993; Grossman 1995; Browning 1996; Rash 1997).

This so-called cyber-optimism is driven by the far-reaching diffusion of computer networks as a means of communication during the late 1990s. Few people knew about this medium before. It was primarily used by researchers around the globe to communicate and to share their research. This changed significantly during the past decade. The number of those with access to the Internet increased from 26 million in 1996 to 407 million in 2000 worldwide (NUA 2001). Among established democracies significant minorities of one quarter up to one third of the population were online by the end of the year 2000.