ABSTRACT
In writing this book we set ourselves the task of exploring the relationship between new forms of information and communication technology (ICT) and the current restructuring and redefinition of many of the fundamental relations within the political systems of Western European countries. Our basic claim was —and is-that ICTs play an important role in this process, while at the same time becoming an integral feature of the ‘new’ models of democracy now emerging. Our analytical strategy was to construct a number of different models of democracy which were not to be understood as ‘ideal types’ but rather, as Bellamy states in Chapter 2, grounded in a set of rival discourses connecting notions of citizenship and democratic values and procedures to technological change.
