Interactivity in political representation : A conceptual discussion and some empirical insights

The decline of the mediating function of political parties-, the emergence and evolution of ICT’s as instruments for political communication and the trend of government initiated participatory engineering are developments that indicate a possible development towards more individualized communication between elected representatives and citizens. This paper examines the concept of interactivity in political representation. Interactivity is characterized as a possible strategy for performing political representation. A measurement is proposed for studying attitudes regarding interactivity among political representatives. The measurement investigates interactivity in relation to strategic functions in political representation regarding; accountability, and inquiry. In the concluding part of the paper the possibilities and implications of using the concept of interactivity in political representation and the proposed measurement in future studies are discussed. In an appendix to the paper some empirical investig tions from an analysis using the proposed measurement are presented