10 Big Pieces: Kamarck and Nye, eds., governance.com

governance.com: Democracy in the Information Age
Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye Jr., eds.
Brookings Institution Press, Washington DC 2002

Summary

1. “Information Technology and Democratic Governance,” Joseph S. Nye Jr. Nye examines the causes of a decline in public confidence in government, stating that analysts “need not fall into the fallacy of technological determinism to see that technology is one of the significant causes of social and political change.” He sees governance as the diffusion of elements from the 20^th Century nation-state core out to a broad variety of other institutions, driven in part by “the Information Revolution.” (4-8) Information technology affects politics by reorganizing work to break down pyramidal bureaucratic structures, reinforcing globalized production strategies at the expense of traditional nation-state control, decreasing the importance of both commodities and territory, changing the nature of banks and money in a way that challenges taxation and central monetary policy, developing virtual communities untied to geography, fragmenting the unitary communities fostered by broadcasting, and revolutionizing education. He notes, however, that none of these changes is irreversible, but that the challenges faced by traditional governments are grave and escalating. (8-11)
2. “Failure in the Cybermarketplace of Ideas,” Arthur Isak Applebaum. “One must resist, here and elsewhere, the temptation to compare the ideal form of one’s favored institutional arrangement with realized instantiations of the disfavored alternatives.” “[I]t is easy to confuse the enterprise of designing actual legitimate institutions with the enterprise of modeling the principles of morality or of justice as the outcome of a hypothetical deliberation conducted by idealized persons under idealized contitions.” (25) He offers by contrast a defense of Madison’s political engineering, seeing representation as a feature designed to control “bad will” rather than a bug for which strong democracy is the fix.
3. “James Madison on Cyberdemocracy,” Dennis Thompson. Presented as an email from Madison to the previous author. The author claims that Madison missed the potential of minorities to use the technologies of government to rule tyrannically, and notes that information technology may enable such rule by either majorities or minorities. On the other hand, the diversity of the internet offers greater attractions than politics, making the (astonishingly counterfactual) claim that “ The less politically interested (and therefore less politically competent) devote their attention to other activities and leave government to those who know best.” (35) The author sees the convergence into like-minded groups enabled by the internet as a democratic flaw: “Democracy, properly understood, requires technologies that support forums accessible to citizens of diverse perspectives and opportunities for active and regular interchange, all governed by norms of mutual respect and openness.” (38). The author sets out “five amendments to the constitution of cyberdemocracy,” in formal and informal language: No bozo filters, no lurking, no churning, no flame bait, and no cookies. (39)
4. “The Impact of the Internet on Civic Life: An Early Assessment,” William A. Galston. Galston frames a conflict between two “principal cultural forces” in American society: “the high value attached to individual choice and the longing for community,” which give rise to a desire “for finding ways of living that combine individual autonomy and strong social bonds.” The result is “voluntary community,” marked by “low barriers to entry, low barriers to exit, and interpersonal relations shaped by mutual adjustment rather than hierarchical authority or coercion.” (42-3) Analyzing whether there can be online communities, he states (contra Sclove) that “it is important not to build place, or face-to-face relationships, into the definition of community. To do so would be to resolve by fiat, in the negative, the relationship between community and the Internet.” (45) Using “Bender’s classic definition of community” as involving “limited membership, shared norms, affective ties, and a sense of mutual obligation,” he investigates whether online communities exist. Under “Limited Membership,” he contrasts “exit” and “voice” as strategies of dissent, claiming that the development of “voice” is a “a traditional function of Toquevillian associations,” but unlikely on the internet, given low barriers to exit, which result in more homogenous associations. Under “Shared Norms, “ citing Ostrom, he argues that “despite the anarcho-libertarianism frequently attributed to Internet users, the medium is capable of promoting a kind of socialization and moral learning through mutual adjustment.” (47) Under “Affective Ties,” he claims that online identities are dissociated from offline ones: “the Internet facilitates the invention of online personalities at odds with offline realities,” and thus is “not readily compatible with the development of meaningful affective ties.” (48) Under “Mutual Obligation” he argues that online groups fail to develop it, but that offline society has failed as well. (49-50) He concludes that internet associations “may intensify current tendencies to fragmentation and polarization in U.S. civic life.” (54)
5. “Power and Interdependence in the Information Age,” Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr. Noting that “the state… has been more resilient than modernists expected,” the authors claim that critics of the state, like boosters of information technology, “moved too directly from technology to political consequences, without sufficiently considering the continuity of belief systems, the persistence of institutions, or the strategic options available to leaders of states.” (162) The authors argue that information technology “creates a new politics of credibility in which transparency will increasingly be a power asset.”” (164) They conclude that information technology will not, contrary to conventional wisdom, lead to an equalizing of power among states, due to network effects; that states will find it more difficult to control messages and information flows; that soft power and credibility will become much more important vis-à-vis hard power; and that “geographically based states will continue to structure politics in an information age, but the processes of world politics within that structure are undergoing profound change.” (177)

Critique and Analysis

The authors represent the views of the political-science establishment, and as such provide a counterpoint to the less mainstream authors on the list. Applebaum’s argument for weak democracy is useful, but thin – even for a short article, he fails to make a robust case, although Thompson’s critique is poorer, theory untainted by practical experience in internet life. Galston’s essay is rich with fodder for engagement, though his point on identity is unsupported, and contrary to any evidence or psychological theory. His point that internet groups foster their own tyrannies of the local, at least as severely as any geographic community, is a strong retort to my critique of Sclove’s passionate defense of strong geographic communities. While his conclusion that internet associations may be weakening US civic life is somewhat beside the point (so what? what does it create in its stead, is the more interesting question), it does remain to be engaged with, particularly in the context of projects of governance working within the resilient state structure Keohane and Nye describe.

Utility

Galston in particular is a strong critic of my digital-community boosterism, and stronger versions of his arguments will need to be sought out and addressed. Likewise, Keohane and Nye suggest that, however desirable, the wholesale replacement of legacy institutions is unlikely to happen soon, and that new systems will exist in competition with them for the foreseeable future. The volume as a whole is a caution against internet triumphalism, and a reminder that the current order must be engaged, rather than dismissed, in any attempt to model or create new systems of developing technologies and governing institutions.