The Affirmative Argument

The Question

"Resolved: The Internet enables citizens to have a greater voice in politics and is, on balance, already a tremendous force for strengthening participatory democracies around the world."

Quick Link to The Negative Argument

The Argument in Favor of the Resolution:

Introduction

Experience has shown that in order for participatory democracy to thrive, there are a number of necessary ingredients that a society must exhibit. Among these are a strong, unbiased, truthful media, fair and balanced elections, a politically engaged citizenry, a citizenry educated on political matters, transparency and accountability, and economic democracy.

It is our contention here that the internet has the capacity to, and in certain circumstances already has, improved the health of participatory democracies along each of these metrics. In other words, as compared to a world without the internet, the world with an internet is more conducive to participatory democracy.

Although there are a number of arguments that the internet enhances democracy in a more general sense, our focus here is on the effect the internet has on the power of individual citizens to influence the democratic political process.

A Strong, Unbiased, Informed Media

Democracy cannot work without abundant, readily available information. If elected leaders are to be held accountable to the wishes of the people, the people must know what the leaders are doing. The privately owned media (defined here very generally as widely available information sources) has long served as a watchdog of the government, and as the most important supplier of political information to citizens. The internet enhances the power of individual citizens to leverage the reach of traditional media outlets, and also to serve in the watchdog and information spreading roles themselves:

• By aggregating potentially inflammatory or interesting stories, Global Voices raises the likelihood that one of those stories will become viral on the internet, or be noticed by the mainstream media. Therefore, Global Voices gives a lone, otherwise insignificant blogger/activist/witness the power to tell other citizens about an issue in a way that she could not have done before the advent of the internet.
  • Assuming leaders know but do not care about the problem (or are causing it themselves) the faster a story becomes salient to a significant portion of the public, the sooner a 'tipping point' will be reached when people demand change in a voice loud enough that leaders must listen.
  • Assuming leaders would care but just don't know about an issue, this new ability of individual citizens to put out an alert will result in faster action. It's easier to fix problems when they're still small.
• In countries without an unbiased media, or a media that is controlled by a corrupt government that limits the freedom of media to tell citizens things the government does not want them to know, bloggers can fill the gap in terms of the watchdog and information-spreading functions.
• While Shirkey's curve does point out that there are still a few dominant players in the information market, many of these players are individuals. One popular blogger can reach more people than a billion dollar newspaper empire. That's a lot of power for an individual. And it is possible that in a place with corrupt media, the lone blogger will be the only voice of truth that people can trust, and he'll have enormous power over the political process.

Fair and Balanced Elections

As a definitional rather than an aspirational matter, true democracy entails elections that are actually decided by the voters, in which the best-suited candidate can rise to the top and be elected.

• The internet makes it possible for an outsider or a fringe-party candidate to spread his message, even if he starts at a severe handicap because he is not supported by an established political machine or wealthy donors that favor tried-and-true incumbents. Websites and email are basically free, which means that any candidate can spread his message if it's one that people are willing to read.
  • For example, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus is running for office, and trying to use the internet to harness the grass roots. Click here for more. See his open letter here.
• As for the fairness of elections, see the Transparency and Accountability section below.

Engaged Citizenry

In a system that is ostensibly run by the people, more engagement by citizens is better. The internet can be used to encourage individuals to become more active, and enables those who are active to be more effective.

• Citizens become engaged when they come to believe there is a serious problem that needs addressing. Seeing is believing. The internet enables single witnesses to 'show' everybody else the truth using firsthand accounts via YouTube videos. Liars, criminals, bullies and tyrants lose plausible deniability when everybody sees them committing their crimes. The citizenry then mobilizes against what they now believe is a violation of rights. That was not as easy before the internet. But even then it was extremely powerful (e.g. Rodney King video and the incredible public reaction to a perceived injustice in the form of the Los Angeles riots). That effect is magnified with the internet.
• The internet enables individual activists to become super-activists. (see Palfrey's "classical and jazz" argument, that the internet enables people to do better what they were otherwise doing.) Those who were already engaged are able to reach more people and spread their message more effectively using blogs, email lists etc. What could have only been done by a huge organization can now be done by one highly motivated individual.
• The internet enables far-flung individuals to combine on big projects (for example, Wikipedia) which, because so many people have a vested interest in them, become accurate and popular. As Wikipedia has done for the world of encyclopedias, so a political communal project could become a 'public forum' on the internet where everybody can participate in the political debate. Even non-elite citizens can participate in this kind of forum, taking the power and focus away from the few talking heads that have heretofore dominated political discourse.
• The internet greases the wheels of political activity by otherwise un-engaged citizens. For example, there might be voters who are unwilling to walk door to door to campaign, but are happy to send emails to their friends. Or they might be unwilling to go to the effort to stamp an envelope to send a donation, but will click on PayPal. Citizens who have a 'day job' no longer have to sacrifice those other activities, because political involvement is so easy and efficient on the internet.
  • Such low levels of involvement may not seem like much, but when aggregated across (potentially) hundreds of millions of people, it adds up.
  • Once such people have been brought into political involvement, they may develop a taste for it, and become more active. They will at least be more motivated to vote, bringing up voter participation numbers.
  • Even people at a low level of political engagement may find themselves on email lists (such as the annoyingly active one run by Moveon.org. While an individual may have initially become involved because of one small issue, they may be exposed to other interesting issues in these emails, and might become further involved. (see Sunstein's argument about the need for a common space where people will be exposed to new ideas. Email lists can serve this function).
• The very structure of the internet means that it's unlikely there will ever be any sort of centralized control structure. Instead, individual members of the community that might have wanted to be involved before, but were afraid, are now emboldened to generate input both freely and openly. They may feel more comfortable to expose their political ideas on the internet – especially if their ideas contradict policies/rules of their current government.
  • It is the tech firms (usually American) that enable government censorship and surveillance online. Individuals like MIT's Richard Stallman have the power to develop and disseminate software that prevents/thwarts government attempts to control political thought online. Without the internet, anti-establishment individuals would not have as much power to unclog the channels of political discussion. Interestingly, China has adopted the GNU Linux operating system, leaving their filtering and surveillance vulnerable to individual subversive action.
• While it is hard to break into the club of top bloggers described by Shirkey, people do. There is a much more active revolving door in the blogging world than in traditional media. All the individuals in the long tail of Shirkey's curve have an incentive to educate themselves on political matters and get involved, in hopes that they'll be the one to have the power of the big bloggers. Even those that don't make it will be more engaged in the political process. On balance, it's better to have more people paying attention to politics and honing their argumentation skills. The internet causes this to happen.
• If voting can be done through internet, the number of voters will increase greatly since people tend not to go to cast their vote at the designated poll if it inconveniences them to travel there. But if people can log on and vote from their office, they are far more likely to do so. (See e.g. Geneva eVoting Project).

Educated Citizenry

In a system where citizens are running the country, its important that they know what they're talking about. The most obvious advantage of the internet is its ability to quickly and cheaply educate citizens about political matters.

• Even in countries where the government tries to restrict the educational function of the internet through censorship and filtering, individuals can circumvent those controls, enabling other citizens to be educated about things the incumbent government doesn't want them to know. It's a tit-for-tat that would have never been possible before the internet. Before, the secret police had only to destroy the printing press, and that put a stop to the production of subversive educational materials in that place. The ability of individual hackers to disable government censorship is an enormous power that individuals did not have before the advent of the internet.
• Even as China and other countries try to "let in the light while keeping out the flies", a few flies are getting in. It only takes a little bit of information in the hands of the right people to get other people talking, breed discontent, and cause change. A little education goes a long way.
• As we talked about in class on February 13, perhaps the most effective way to campaign for a cause is by word of mouth. Individuals with Live Journals are able to "speak to" and perhaps educate friends and family all the way across the country, or around the world. That kind of discourse is important for a democracy. We may never know whether or how it changes votes, but it's good that people are discussing political issues. Again, a little bit of education is better than none, and can have a profound effect in the hands of the right people.
  • Even if votes aren't changed in the short term, the development of this inter-personal discourse online helps lay a foundation for a time when it may matter more. For example, if a big event happens, there will already be a network of inter-connected bloggers and their readers in place to get the "real" story out, mouth to mouth, in a way that people trust. And it will be a tool for mobilizing people to demand change.
• The country/world is a lot smaller than it was before the internet. Before the internet, one might have theoretically cared that control of the government came down to one close senate race in Virginia, but one might not have known about it. And even if one knew, there was not much you could do about it on the afternoon of November 7 if one was in Oregon. But now, people can educate a huge amount of interested people very quickly. And in turn, those people can become involved by sending money, VOIPing people in that area etc. The internet allows the whole country to participate in what used to be purely 'local' elections by educating people that those elections are important.
• The internet makes it easy to find information online. From the Pew survey, it seems that people are relying more on the internet as their source of political information [1]

Transparency and Accountability

• Any individual who happens to know the truth can break the story. The major networks can no longer act as bottlenecks to stop important stories from getting out there (if the networks are in bed with the interested parties). For example, Senator Allen's macaca comment is said to have derailed his campaign because the internet enabled it to be seen by so many people who were outraged by it. There is no evidence to support this, but it is possible that a network might overlook something like that in hopes of garnering favor with a candidate, but could be pressured into making it a big deal by the tidal wave of interest online.
• The internet enables extensive and fast fact checking. A person at a town hall with a candidate could have her laptop open and check voting records as the candidate answered a question, and expose the lie right away. Even if this doesn't happen often, candidates will know it can, and will be scared into being more honest and transparent.
• Flip-flopping will be exposed. Romney and McCain can't get away with their recent flip-flopping because we have video footage of them holding opposite positions. The internet makes it extremely easy for individuals to expose the lies to others.
• Politicians respond to polls. The internet enables much faster and more widespread polling. Individuals can (when aggregated in a poll) have a more efficient way to respond to the decisions of leaders and direct policy.

Economic Democracy

• The internet provides jobs (e.g. tech-service in India), access to markets, and an ability to acquire and use capital that leads to the emergence of a stronger middle class. People who are not living hand-to-mouth have more leisure to educate themselves, engage in politics, and pressure governments to act in their interests.

Class Discussion Questions

• In what new ways could individuals harness the internet to increase their power in participatory democracy?
• Is the effect of the internet on participatory democracy going to increase in the future, or have we reached its zenith?
• Will the internet have more of an effect on improving democracy in countries that currently don't have democracies or that have new democracies, than it will in countries with established democracies?

Examples to Discuss

• E-Petitions: In England, British citizens can petition the Prime Minister directly online. This system allows millions of British people to say what they want directly to the government. Today, there are more than 1.5 million signatures only for the "Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy" petition. (For more examples of countries adopting e-petition, see Scotland and Germany)
• eRulemaking Initiative: This is an attempt to increase the citizen participation and understanding in rulemaking process by making the process to be easily accessible via internet. This, as a result, gives an opportunity for the citizen to be educated of the current rules and policies and has a potential to encourage citizen to participate more in the rulemaking process by allowing them to provide a comment which in turn will improve the quality of the rulemaking decision.
  • In the US, there is a eRulemaking Initiative launched in January 2003 by Bush Administration establishing the eRulemaking website - regulations.gov – which allows anyone to read and comment on proposed federal. In fall 2005, the newer version of this site was released by incorporating the ongoing development of the Federal Docket Management System (FDMS) which provides the public and agencies access to the entire regulatory docket, including rules, supporting documents, and public comments. (see regulation.gov and whitehouse.gov)
• Online Dialogues: Internet makes it possible to have online interactive regulatory dialogues among large number of people allowing them to discuss any social or political issues with each other as well as with government officials. For example, in 2001, the EPA established an online dialogue project (which won an E-Gov 2002 Explorer Award) on its new draft Public Involvement Policy so that the public can participate and help the officers to determine what kind of revisions to make to such policy. (For more example of public online dialogues can be found at info-ren.org
• Internet is an alternative source of information when the government control and restrict the media freedom over the mainstream media (TV, newspaper, radio etc.) to shut the eyes and ears of the people. For example, it is fair to say that strong criticism on the policies and actions of the former Thai government through various mechanism online (blog, email, IM, video/audio sharing website etc.) was one of the main factors that led to the significant political movements and changes in Thailand last year. Various fact and criticism that could not be found anywhere through mainstream medias are often available online (see hrw.org for an example).
• Perhaps the reason that the campaign websites of Romney, Obama, Clinton, Edwards are so tame and fail to really make use of the interactive power of the internet is that they fear the power it gives to individuals. They realize that the internet has the power to take politics off the pedestal and make it rough, dirty, personal and democratic, like Truman's Whistlestop Campaign of 1948. They don't actually want to interact with the people. They want scripted sound-bites and tame debates.
  • Senator Dodd has invited individuals to submit questions via YouTube, which he will respond to via YouTube. If he were to respond to every question, this might make his use of the internet different from that of the other candidates, and perhaps more personal and democratic. But since his answer will be no less scripted than Hillary Clinton's were for her online chat, it's nothing special. Though Dodd does criticize the other candidates for 'taking at the people' on the Internet, his website is no different.

Other Thoughts

• It's so new that we can't really know much. The best we can do is ask what a democracy needs to thrive, and ask whether that thing is being enhanced compared to a world without the internet.
• Many of these claims are subject to the retort "yeah, in theory that's good, but it doesn't happen." Well, only time will tell. There seem to be plenty of stories from GV about these things happening abroad. Perhaps the internet is a more important tool for developing (or future) democracies, rather than the already-settled democracies of the west.
• It's not like we're going to shut down the internet. It's only going to get more pervasive. So rather than ask whether the internet is a force for democracy, the more fruitful question would be how we can make the internet a force for democracy. We know individuals are empowered in a lot of ways by the internet, especially Web 2.0. Now we need to find a way to use that to empower them in the political sphere.
• Though we haven't focused much on political candidates (since the question focuses on individuals' use of the net to have political power), there are ways in which the internet is changing politics on the other side of the equation.
  • Political candidates seem to think it's a good tool for them, since they have been trying to use it. Edwards, Dodd, Obama, Clinton. It's possible they're just trying to be cool. But maybe they're actually on to something.