American Government: New Century Politics

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Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is quoted as saying, "Most people overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in the next ten." If I look back ten years ago, I would never have predicted how much technological changes would have affected my life - in particular, the Internet and email. How has technology affected your life? Do you find it easier to send an email or write an old-fashioned letter? Have you ever looked up a fact on the Internet? Have you ever signed an email petition? Well, these are just some of the ways in which technological change and innovation has affected - and will continue to affect - politics and political participation in the United States.
Now in early America, political information and news came by newspapers and by word or mouth. Americans were a rural people, living far apart and transportation was poor. Receiving information from overseas, for example, took weeks and a famous example is at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 was several weeks after the Treaty of Gent had ended the war. Even during the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 did not reach parts of Texas until two and a half years later. Although, one suspects that various actors had interests here in suppressing the news.
As the country developed, newspapers filled the gap. They were often party papers, published by political parties with a particular partisan slant to the news. In the post-World War II years, television took off and most Americans got their news from TV. The concern here was that three networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - had a virtual monopoly on the TV airwaves. Now political participation takes a variety of forms. It can range from serving in political office to organizing politically to attending meetings to voting to communicating with elected officials. And in early America, the distance between people made participation more difficult.
In the State of Maine, for example, the people voted earlier than the rest of the country, since by the election day around the country, many of the roads were impassible. On the other hand, in early America, much government business could be conducted in face-to-face meetings, such as in the famous New England town meetings.
As the country grew, government became more complex and thus more remote from citizens. And that raised the cost of participation, because participation required more time, more knowledge, more education, more money. Indeed today, the best predictors of who participates in politics are highly correlated to these factors.
The monopoly of TV airways by the three major networks was broken up by cable television. Today, about two-thirds of all American homes have cable television, and it provides a greater variety of information sources. Consider CNN, for example, and other cable TV stations that can provide instantaneous and continuous news. For political junkies, C-SPAN covers government proceedings. But there's still concerns about monopoly. For example, Ben Bagdickian reports that there are six corporations today that dominate all of mass media.
Another change has been the Internet and email, for it provides new ways of gaining political information and for communicating with political leaders and elected officials. There are web pages that are available now for members of Congress, for the White House, for government departments, for most candidates for political office, for political parties, for activist groups and so forth. There are Internet discussion groups which provide loads of opinions and can provide information too. Parties, candidates, activists provide email alerts, tailor news to subscribers and the like. I get a bunch of those and you may too.
What this means is that citizens can be better informed about politics and about issues if they choose to. It means access to government information is no longer restricted to the elite. What does this mean for political participation? Well, it seems like technology can open up the possibility of a major change in the relationship between the government and the governed, and it can do so by lowering the cost of communications. It's now very easy to contact governmental officials. Communication between citizens and their government is as quick and easy as a mouse click.
Theoretically, this may make government more responsive to citizens needs because it can find out about them easily and quickly. It's also possible that the better informed that citizens become, the easier it is for them monitor and protest government action.
It's also easier to organize politically with the new technology. For example, email petitions allow activists to reach large audiences quickly. They can circulate petitions. They can ask the letters to be sent. There's an interesting example that deals with the Girl Scouts. Unlike the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts don't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Members of the American Family Association - a conservative group - protested this Girl Scout policy. But then, an email request went out asking people to communicate their support of the Girl Scout policy.
There's a third possibility that technology and the Internet and email has brought, and that is the possibility for direct democracy. We can now have, technologically at least, direct democracy on many issues. And that is, American citizens could participate directly in key decision-making. You could vote on the Internet. You could hold Internet town meetings. Citizens could be asked questions and participate instantly by email. So, with all this information, do you think it would be a good thing to get rid of our elected representatives and simply have a popular vote on the Internet on every issue?
Well, as appealing as this may be - or this may seem at first - there are some serious problems that we may want to consider. One is it takes a lot of time to be informed. It's not clear people are willing to put in that time. Second, maybe not everyone will participate. Indeed, there's a concern that the highest levels of participation will come from those who hold the most extreme views on a particular issue and they may not represent the views of the majority of citizens. It's also possible that some citizens will be ill or misinformed. If you push around on the Net at all, you know there's a lot of bad information out there. This is particularly a worry as information sources become more specialized through the Net, through targeted email and the like.
Will the Internet allow for deliberation - for debate? Can it replace the benefits of face-to-face conversation and interchange that makes political debate so special? Is the Net to be celebrated for providing more points of view? Or are we possibly concerned that it is fragmenting the public arena of general knowledge, thus limiting debate? Are there sufficient checks on impulsive, discriminatory decisions? Is it simply too easy to just click a response - too remote from others? Also, could it be that there's actually too much information for citizens to process.
Well, maybe this proposal for Internet democracy is too extreme. Maybe we should keep our elected representatives and use the Internet for political communication. Will this give us the best of both possible worlds - representative democracy and an informed and active citizenry? It may. But there are also concerns here about who will use this new technology.
You may have heard of the so-called technology gap in access to computers. Are some people being left behind? Unsurprisingly, many poor people, including many Americans of color, don't have access to computers and the Internet. Even if they do, they and other Americans may lack the knowledge of how to use them effectively to obtain the information they need to participate fully in the democratic process.
There's also the concern that factors that are correlated with high levels of participation - time, knowledge, education and wealth - are likely to be correlated with participation on the Internet as well. That is, it is likely that the same types of people who participated in the pre-Internet days will continue to dominate participation on the Net. The result may be to give the wealthy and the powerful another tool to help them retain their wealth and power.
The challenge of crafting institutions of democratic government to encourage the participation of citizens and reflect their interests and needs is ongoing. Today's computer technology and the technological innovations that will come within the next ten years may provide the tools for increased political participation. What you do with those tools is the challenge of your generation.
Toward a Changing Democracy
Citizen Participation in the New Century
Political Participation in the New Century Page [1 of 2]