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There can be little doubt that, by virtue of the Internet’s distinctive characteristics, parties’ engagement with it carries the potential for an enhancement of the quality of democracy. Whether that potential is, or is likely to be, realised in the future is something that depends on the choices of parties themselves–where such choices will in turn be a function of their strategic implications given the systemic and cultural contexts within which the parties find themselves. This being the case, it would seem highly unlikely that what has so far been discovered about the impact of the net on parties and party competition in some democracies will be found to be replicated in exactly the same form in all democracies. For example, we might reasonably expect (though a case could also be made for the opposite view) that in party systems that are highly competitive in the Sartorian (1976) sense, parties will be more active in exploiting …