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This paper examines the link between local party organizations at a county level, voter turnout and party outcomes. The theoretical background for this link is examined and an argument is developed that local party organizations should play a successful role in increasing turnout and improving party outcomes. Using data from Illinois' 2002 gubernatorial election, the data show that while the Democratic Party enjoyed increased success in areas where it's local party organization was strong, the Republican Party did not, almost certainly this relates to the unique context of the election. The effect was rather mild, but given the limitation of the methodology, the findings support the hypothesis that local party organizations remain an important source of electoral mobilization in American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A watershed group is a local or regional voluntary association whose mission is to improve, maintain, and/or restore the ecological health of a watershed (the area of land that drains into a body of water). These groups occupy an intermediate political space between government and citizen, as they typically are comprised of government officials as well as local citizens working together to achieve watershed protection and restoration. Their activities have been described in many instances as collaborative with government, akin to citizen advisory councils and collaborative environmental management initiatives. However, they also advocate for cleaner water, similarly to traditional interest groups. While watershed group activities have been documented in many cases, past research has not focused much on their political behavior. This study identifies the range of political strategies employed by watershed groups in Ohio to determine if these groups employ mostly "collaborative" strategies, mostly "pressure" strategies, or a combination. In addition, the study explores the effects of key organizational attributes (membership profile, amount of financial resources, source(s) of financial resources, human resources, and group age) on a watershed group's choice of political strategies. Semi-structured interviews with watershed group key informants are used to collect data on group organizational attributes and political strategies. Qualitative and quantitative methods of data analysis reveal patterns of political behavior and factors affecting such behavior. The main implications are that the capacities of watershed groups to engage in different political behaviors may differ depending on internal characteristics of the groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1975 and 1988 the National Science Foundation funded $1.9 million studies of information technology in 42 US cities (URBIS I and II). These are the most studied cities in regards to IT or computer use and were intended to offer us a view of where cities would be moving in the future. But that future has become the past. Moreover, something has changed IT in the last fifteen years that represents an IT revolution in itself with broad ramifications for government and governance, which is the Internet. This chapter returns to the URBIS cities and explores their use of e-government with contrasts with several other data sets: Government Technology magazine's Best of the Web 2001 and 2002 city winners, ICMA's 2002 city/county survey, Brown University's Taubman Center's 2002 municipal survey, and Scavo's 2002 survey of city/county websites in each state. Focus is put on how up to date the websites are, common features across websites, number of clicks on home page, and online transaction features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]