The Prospect of Internet Democracy

Michael Margolis, Gerson Moreno-Riaño

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754675143
• eBook ISBN: 9781317018810
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The internet opens up new opportunities for citizens to organize and mobilize for action but it also provides new channels that established political, social and economic interests can use to extend their powers. Will the internet revolutionize politics? The Prospect of Internet Democracy is a rich and detailed exploration of the theoretical implications of the internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs) for democratic theory. Focusing in particular on how political uses of the internet have affected or seem likely to affect patterns of influence among citizens, interest groups and political institutions, the authors examine whether the internet's impact on democratic politics is destined to repeat the history of other innovative ICTs. The volume explores the likely long-term effects of such uses on the conduct of politics in the USA and other nations that declare themselves modern democracies and assesses the extent to which they help or hinder viable democratic governance.

Chapter 1
The Internet and the Prospect of Democracy

Does the Internet Foster Democracy?

The Internet is the stuff of dreams. It has sparked visions of a new information economy in which citizens enjoy unprecedented levels of prosperity and democracy, and it has been hyped as the means to realize both. In this work we explore the prospect that the Internet will enable the USA, and eventually the world, to realize these long sought goals. The enthusiasm for the Internet’s revitalization of democratic politics stems from two expectations:

1. Public officials will use the Internet’s information and communication technologies (ICTs) to elicit citizen input about public policy decisions and to deliver public services with greater equity and efficiency; and

2. Citizens will use ICTs to acquire knowledge about civic affairs and public policies and to organize themselves to communicate effectively to policy makers their informed opinions and desires.

But what do we mean by prosperity and democracy? While dictionary definitions of “prosperity” usually refer to general good fortune, we commonly use the word to denote wealth and affluence. In contrast, even though dictionary definitions of “democracy” usually emphasize government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives, in popular parlance we use the word as a catchall for nearly everything that is good or desirable in society. For many, democracy is not merely one criterion among others that we use to adjudge an ideal society: it is the ideal society. Americans in particular often proclaim that democracy facilitates—perhaps even produces—widespread prosperity. People’s conceptions of democracy generally incorporate whatever values they yearn for, whether these values entail justice, freedom, liberty, religion, equality, community, prosperity, or some other desiderata. Scratch beneath the surface of these values, however, and great differences emerge. Does justice include capital punishment for criminals? Does freedom mean people seeking work can move to wherever they can find employment both within and across national boundaries? Does liberty include the right to post whatever one pleases on the Internet? Virtually every society values religion, but are all types of religiosity (or atheism) tolerable? Notwithstanding the complexities these differences entail, people ask: “How can a nation call itself a democracy if it fails to promote our particular list of cherished values?”

Obviously, we cannot resolve these questions in this chapter nor even in this book. We can begin to evaluate how the Internet affects a nation’s politics, however, by considering a less exalted notion of democracy. An ideal society implies perfection, a worthy but unreachable goal. To start with, therefore, we will use a conception of democracy that reflects its dictionary definitions. We will consider democracy as a method of governing an association, a form of governance through which the people rule by means of political procedures upon which they commonly agree. We view rule by the people as a necessary, but hardly sufficient, condition for an ideal society. Unfettered majority rule, for instance, can be used to suppress the opinions and values of those in the minority. Finding an agreeable balance between the power of democratically designated majorities to rule but still preserve the power of opposing minorities to replace them leaves a great number of social and political values and procedures to explore.1

Political theorists who emphasize democratic procedures for decision-making argue that such procedures should provide all adult citizens with substantially equal opportunity for effective participation in politics. “Effective participation” implies participation that demonstrably has more than a negligible probability of influencing the outcomes toward which that participation is directed. Voting in an election in which no candidates appear on the ballot other than those nominated by a governing elite, for instance, does not constitute effective participation. Neither does expressing an opinion about any question of public concern for which the most relevant data remain classified as secret or otherwise as the exclusive property of a governmental or technological elite (Dahl 1989, 106-118; Margolis 1979, 156).

The procedures must presume modern governmental institutions that are capable of dealing responsibly with complex problems in a democratic fashion. That means citizens or their elected representatives must be able to control governmental bureaucracies, the military and large private corporations, whose officers are not directly responsible to the people. This power should include both the ability to protect traditional liberal democratic concerns, such as guarantees of due process or enforcement of contracts, as well as the ability to address informational, social and economic concerns, such as setting standards for protecting sensitive personal and governmental data and for utilizing human labor and natural resources. Otherwise unelected bureaucrats, military leaders, and corporate officers can freely exploit their informational and economic advantages to dominate a nation’s governance.

American democracy has emphasized liberal values like individual freedom and liberty for all. Liberal democratic procedures, therefore, should facilitate diverse lifestyles and individual self-development. While individual liberties must accommodate the social concerns of others and the limitations of the society’s natural resources, liberal democracies are distinguishable from those that consistently rank communal values over individual concerns. When communal values preclude the ability of ordinary citizens to place alternatives they favor onto the political agenda for public consideration, or when only an elite sets the political agenda, liberalism is absent.

Lastly, democratic procedures must not demand a level and quality of participation that exceeds people’s capabilities and willingness to participate. Reformers who desire to “improve” these procedures must take into account social science research results about citizens’ knowledge, attitudes and behavior regarding public affairs.2

To what extent have these procedures been put into practice? The USA tends to present itself internationally as an exemplar of democracy, but like any human society it falls short of fulfilling its democratic ideals. Many who recognize the imperfections of American and other self-proclaimed democratic governments have looked to the Internet as a means for remedying their procedural and institutional flaws (Chadwick 2003 and 2006; Watson and Mundy 2001). In truth, our hopes that the Internet’s powerful capabilities would improve the conduct of democratic politics in the United States and possibly throughout the world originally inspired our research.

Two aspects of democratic theory suggest that American society is inadequately democratic. The first concerns the process by which the American political system implements popular rule. While the process formally embodies the rule of law and the values of a democratic constitution, its practices are largely controlled by socially and economically privileged elites. Citizens have the right to participate in politics, but many believe their participation is ineffective and they choose not to participate (Sullivan and Riedel 2001). To make matters worse, many who chose to participate either lack the knowledge to act rationally and responsibly or find that the elites control access to the information necessary to acquire that knowledge. (Barber 1984 and 2007; Fishkin 1992; Gilens 2001). Scholars and critics who favor widespread but limited democratic participation see the Internet as a vehicle for educating citizens to make more informed choices among competing slates of leaders (for example, Kobayashi 2006; Kaye and Johnson 2002). Those who favor widespread active participation look to the Internet as a vehicle for providing information on demand sufficient for citizens to make informed policy choices (for example, Deibert 2000; Coleman and Gøtze 2002). In either case the Internet holds the prospect of improving democratic governance.

The second aspect concerns the scope of democracy itself. The Internet advances the prospect of extending and deepening citizens’ involvement in public affairs. Why restrict democratic participation to formal aspects of governmental decision-making? Why not use the Internet to extend democracy to other areas of decision-making, which heretofore were considered private, yet demonstratively have profound effects on civil society? The affluence of modern society supposedly fosters individualism, yet people turn over control of significant areas of their lives to assorted professionals and bureaucrats. For example, to what extent can a government call itself a democracy yet remain largely indifferent toward regulating the decision-making processes of giant corporations like Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil, American International Group (AIG) or Toyota?

The Internet provides opportunities to create innumerable virtual communities in which the people can take charge of various aspects of their own lives and work out their own collective fates. These range from creating online extensions of real world organizations to creating new interest groups online that can reach out to the real world. Social networks can range from gargantuan communities like Facebook and MySpace to modestly sized family groups. Cyberspace also allows people to create new identities that are recognized almost exclusively in virtual communities like Second Life. People can control aspects of their personalities in online communities that were never thought subject to individual choice. Some theorists claim that democracy online is often superior to the mundane democracy available in the real world. “The cybercitizens of virtual communities can establish forms of interaction and self-government that are more meaningful to the participants than citizenship is in either ethnically or territorially bounded nation-states” (Vandenberg 2000, 289). While mundane reality has always frustrated those who sought the democratic ideal, perhaps they have been looking in the wrong place. The Internet and related ICTs present limitless arenas within which each citizen can realize the democratic prospect (Castronova 2005, 205-226).

To what extent can these virtual communities overcome democracy’s limitations? Why, despite all efforts to promote democracy, do great swaths of our common physical and social environments remain exempt from the democratic will? Traditionally the nation state has been the locus of democratic practice. Democracy tries to control the power of the state, but what if the state is subject to forces beyond itself, to the flows of international capital and freewheeling transnational corporations? Can hundreds of millions—potentially billions—of e-citizens use the Internet to organize popular pressure to meet the challenges of the international political economy?3 Can the Internet serve to extend democracy beyond the nation-state?

The Democratic Process

The procedures alluded to in the previous section represent a first approximation of a democratic process of governance. Robert Dahl, a leading political scientist and democratic theorist, has influenced our view. He argues that for a process to be truly democratic, it must meet five criteria. There must be effective participation. By this he means that all the members must have a chance to make their views known about a proposed policy before it is adopted.4 There must be voting equality. Each member must have an equal chance to vote, and all votes need to be counted honestly, accurately and equally. There must be enlightened understanding. This means that all members must have an opportunity for learning about alternative policies and their possible outcomes. The members must have control over the [political] agenda, and membership must be based upon the inclusion of adults. Dahl argues that nearly every permanent adult resident should have full citizenship rights as delineated by the first four criteria. He also observes that this last criterion was not acceptable to most advocates of democracy before the twentieth century (Dahl 1998, 37-38).5

Effective Participation

We need not agree with Dahl’s understanding of these criteria to find them useful and suggestive. For example, some critics of contemporary American democracy argue that effective participation means more than simply the right to make one’s views known. Effective participation requires not merely a chance, but rather an equal chance to voice those views. But what constitutes “an equal chance” in modern society? The right of free speech affirms people’s right to air their views, but the overwhelming majority does not exercise this right. In contrast, the views of some are not just voiced, but also amplified millions of times via the mass media. Critics of modern democratic practice point out that the marginalized in society—the poor, various ethnic, racial and religious minorities, and women—suffer from this lack of political equality. The problem of inequality is exacerbated when we consider the enormous divide between the resources available to citizens of rich versus poor nations (Norris 2001). The principle of political equality is violated when effective participation is denied to so many.

The Internet has been heralded as a way of creating a space in which all voices get an equal chance to be heard, and all views can be expressed effectively. Technically, for a modest investment every citizen can become his or her own publisher. All one needs is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a digital communication device with which to access the Net. One can use the Net to communicate with many others simultaneously as well as asynchronously, a feature that facilitates group organization and coordination. Moreover, as the information packets that comprise each user’s communications traverse the Internet, the transmission control protocols assures that they are treated equally and relayed without regard to their contents, origins or destinations (Margolis and Resnick 2000, 25-52). While this “Net Neutrality” represents good news for democrats who advocate equal opportunities for extensive political participation, it does not sit so well with commercial Network Service Providers that own and operate most of the major routers and backbone connections, which provide the Internet capacity that ISPs purchase. They would rather establish something akin to tiered levels of service, where well-heeled users can pay ISPs to give their information packets priority.6

Out of the welter of democratic theories we can distinguish two major models: classical democratic theory and elite democratic theory. Classical democratic theory envisions democracy as a form of self-government that entails the public’s direct participation in political life on an ongoing basis. It harks back to the understanding of democracy in ancient Athens where citizens were seen as active participants in their polity’s collective fate. In contrast, elite democratic theory describes democracy as essentially a system of government in which political leaders periodically appeal to citizens who have the right to chose those who will govern them. As Joseph Schumpeter, a leading exponent of this view, put it, “the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (Schumpeter 1950, 269). Elite democratic theory claims to be more realistic than classical theory, and more suited to modern conditions of mass society and representative government. It assumes that citizens act mostly as consumers of public policies. Rather than creating the policies directly, they prefer to elect those who they believe will create the policies they favor. Elite democratic theory tries to explain how responsible and responsive government, which has long been the aim of democratic theory, can be realized without requiring citizens’ direct active participation in governmental decision-making.

Dahl’s understanding of effective participation leans more towards classical democratic theory, but it is still compatible with elite theory. Effective participation can mean that the citizens have a right to publicly express their views about politics, to tell political parties and political leaders what policies they would prefer prior to elections. In fact modern political leaders are highly attuned to what the people prefer. An entire industry has developed that attempts to discern public opinion. For advocates of classical democratic theory, however, making views known by speaking to pollsters, voicing opinions through mass media or contacting officeholders or office-seekers is inadequate. “Real” effective participation means taking an active role in policy making. Participation cannot be limited to expressions of opinion and voting (Chadwick 2006, 83-113; Berthon and Williams 2007).

Unless citizens engage directly in the political process, classical democrats believe that politics cannot yield the psychological and moral benefits that a democracy should provide. Considerations such as these lead to the belief that the Internet can renew democracy. Citizens can do more to affect public policy than simply to choose one set of candidates over another. They need not be passive spectators to distant contests that may hold little meaning for them. Citizens can learn about policy alternatives, and they can debate them with fellow citizens. The Internet creates an accessible public sphere for citizenship where deliberations can raise the quality of public discourse. For advocates of the classical ideal of active political participation, the Internet demonstrates that we need not accept the limited view of participation prescribed by elitist democrats. Elite theories of democracy may not be as realistic as their adherents believe.

Anthony Downs, in his model of democracy, modified Schumpeter’s elite model. He elaborated upon how competition among political parties provides the means by which people can exercise the power to decide upon questions of public concern. Political parties, by offering slates of candidates who articulate competing principles and policies, enable citizens to use their votes to express their policy preferences effectively. If we accept Downs’ focus on the centrality of party competition for democracy, then the principle of political equality entails not only that each citizen has the right to participate equally, but also that each political party or group has the right to espouse popular principles and to compete in a fair and equitable manner (Downs 1957; Dudley and Gitelson 2002; Lowi 1994; Schattschneider 1942). If the voices of a few major parties drown out the appeals of minor parties or groups, electoral competition is rigged and the democratic process is defective.7

The elite theory of democracy raises another problem. Democracy means popular rule, but the business of formulating public policies and implementing them actually is done by the government in power. In a modern mass democracy such things are done in the name of the people and hopefully for the people, but most assuredly, they are not done by the people. Elite theory denies that the gap between the people and the officials who carry on governmental business can be eliminated in any populous modern nation. Through voting in elections or through voicing opinions to governmental officials, people can provide input for making public policies, but they cannot implement them. What may have been possible in democratic city-states of the ancient world is impossible in the mass societies of today.

Many adherents of classical democratic theory believe that the Internet can permit the people to rule more directly than they do now,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Internet and the Prospect of Democracy
• 2 Impossible Dreams: The Radical Roots of Cyber-Democracy
• 3 Tempering the Dreams: Revised Theories of Cyber-Democracy
• 4 Democracy, Tolerance and the Internet
• 5 Mass Media and Internet Democracy
• 6 The Internet and Democratic Education
• 7 Parties, Interest Groups and the Internet’s Impact on Democratic Participation
• 8 Internet Democracy in the 21st Century
• Bibliography
• Index