Official Syllabus

Please consult the current syllabus on MyHLS for now; it may eventually migrate to the wiki.

Course Overview:

The Internet has at once a disruptive and a constructive effect on democracies around the world. Information and communications technologies (ICTs), of which the Internet is a primary component, have been changing the way that democracies work, the way activists and candidates run campaigns, and the manner in which citizens communicate with one another and interact with their states.

Just as in business, the Internet does not change everything when it comes to politics. But the Internet has, in a few instances – such as South Korea in a recent presidential election cycle, in the Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution,” and here in the United States – made a notable difference in terms of how campaigns are conducted and how people engage in civic life. The Internet enables connections among people geographically disparate from one another and whose only link is a common interest in an idea. The Internet makes possible a series of models that place power at the edges, rather than vest most power in a centralized hub. At the same time, more political activity on the Internet is not necessarily a good thing. New online technologies enable states to carry out intrusive means of surveillance and control over the communications of their citizens.

The puzzle of this course is to pull apart what is real from what is hype and to examine closely what effects, if any, these technologies are having on the way that democracies work around the world. This course will consider some of the most intriguing of the political and legal issues to which the advent of the Internet gives rise. The course will seek to frame these questions in the context of political theory. Students will be encouraged to take on active projects in lieu of writing a traditional term paper.

Themes of the Course:

The core themes that we will explore include:

• Internet & Democracies: This course is geared toward examining the ways in which the Internet is having an impact on politics and, in turn, strengthening democracies in states near and far. How will we know if and when we are making progress in this regard, or even know if things are going well or going badly? Are consumers of information online really becoming “creators” in large (or meaningful) numbers? Will that shift result in a more active populace? Most scholars have taken the view that we have enough data to know that something is going on in terms of Internet and democracy, but no one yet understands the phenomenon with any degree of clarity. This course will delve into the traditional political theory question of what sort of a democracy we are seeking and, along these lines, into the problem of whether the Internet is helping to strengthen democratic institutions or not.
• Internet, Campaigns, and Elections: Many political campaigns, whether for an issue or a candidate, adopt an “Internet strategy” of one sort or another. From online fundraising that smashed previous records in the past cycle, to bloggers who broke stories of international importance or just covered the local PTA meeting, to citizen-journalism efforts that moved elections, to the luring of new voters into the political fray, the election cycles in the last few years in the United States and elsewhere around the world have given rise to headlines and head-spinning about the power of the internet to transform politics. The reality may be, however, that the Internet just allows campaigners to be more productive in the way they carry out traditional tasks, like raising money and organizing volunteer activity.
• Internet & Citizenship: The Internet allows people to express themselves and to interact with large, powerful institutions – through means that were not possible before. The nature of citizenship, some argue, is changing rapidly. People are developing identities through their online participation that links them to other people in other cultures around the world, strengthening diaspora communities and increasing cross-cultural understanding. Some observers worry that the advent of electronic voting and other forms of e-government may make us lazier than we have ever been before when it comes to political participation. Others fear that we will surround ourselves not with new and challenging views, but rather use new technologies to create massive echo chambers for ourselves where we listen only to like-minded speakers.
• The Emergence of New Technologies: The course will also integrate discussion of emerging Internet-based technologies of relevance to the political sphere, such as blogging, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), podcasting, and social software. These tools enable power to be leveraged at the edges of the network, on a model that makes intuitive sense in the political arena in particular. These effects are reminiscent of the ways that eBay, Google, Amazon, digital music, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) have substantially changed large industries in the commercial arena. The flip-side is the emergence of Internet filtering technologies used by states to limit or block political speech, among other things, online.

Mode of the Class:

The course is based on a theory-and-practice model. Students are encouraged to participate extensively throughout the course, both in terms of discussion in the classroom and in active projects in lieu of traditional paper-writing. The course will also involve out of class online discussion, using a variety of new software tools. The course has no prerequisites, other than a willingness to experiment with new technologies.

Each student will be graded on the basis of class participation (1/3), the group project (a choice of one of four debates) (1/3), and a short written piece, roughly 10 pages in length based upon the debate topic (1/3), which is due by e-mail (please send to John Palfrey, Seth Young, and Rob Kent) by May 11, 2007. The core assignment for the term is to participate in one of four student debates throughout the term. Please choose which of the debates (noted in the syllabus) you would like to take part in. Your job is to prepare an argument that is published someplace in cyberspace at least 48 hours in advance of the class. The format of your online argument is up to you and your team-mates. You will then take part in a debate during class, either for or against the resolution, with roughly two or three students on each side of each topic. There will also be short written assignment due at the end of the term by each student individually, which ought to be grounded in some aspect of your debate topic.

Readings:

There are readings for each week of the course. These readings vary in length, mode and sophistication. The required readings include sections of eight books, none of which is assigned in its entirety:

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (Yale University Press, 2006), online at http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page

Jodi Dean, Jon W. Anderson, and Geert Lovink, Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society (Routledge, 2006), online at http://www.bestwebbuys.com/Reformatting_Politics-ISBN_0415952972.html?isrc=b-search

Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, Access Denied, (forthcoming, MIT Press, 2007).

William W. Fisher, III, Promises to Keep (Stanford, 2004), online at http://www.tfisher.org/.

Dan Gillmor, We the Media (O’Reilly, 2005), online at http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/ and http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/index.csp.

Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World (Oxford, 2006).

Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (Basic Books, 2006), online at: http://codev2.cc/.

Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (2005), online at: http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm.

Many of these books are available entirely online for free as downloads, though of course you can buy or borrow the book from the library. Copies of each one should be on reserve at the HLS library.

Module 2, Economic Democracy: The Politics of Digital Business

Class 8 (Apr. 3, 2007)

Debate #3: "Resolved: United States technology companies should stay out of regimes that force them to sacrifice the civil liberties of citizens as the cost of doing business in those states."

Required Reading:

• John Palfrey & Robert Rogoyski, A Move to the Middle: The Enduring Threat of “Harmful” Speech to the End-to-End Principle (2006), at http://law.wustl.edu/Journal/21/p31PalfreyRogoyski.pdf.
• John Palfrey & Jonathan Zittrain, “Reluctant Gatekeepers,” chapter in Access Denied, (forthcoming, MIT Press, 2007).

Optional Reading:

• Testimony at the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, February 1, 2006, at

http://lantos.house.gov/HoR/CA12/Human+Rights+Caucus/Briefing+Testimonies/.