ABSTRACT
Political parties, interest groups, social movement organizations and the media are the main intermediaries that are involved in what Lawson (1988) coined as the ‘linkage chain’, the chain of connections that runs from the citizens’ wishes to political decisions. It has been claimed that one of the effects of the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the public domain, notably the internet, will be that the intermediary roles of these actors will erode, because citizens will be able to bypass them. Such a ‘disintermediation’ has been welcomed as one of the potential benefits of the internet, as it would allow for a direct, unbiased representation of citizens’ demands in political decision-making (cf. Bryan et al. 1998). However, disintermediation has also been designated as a threat to democracy, because intermediaries are important sources of judgement and selection, social integration and checks and balances (Shapiro 1999).
