This morning’s hot story on the internet and politics comes from across the pond in England, where the BBC reports that Tony Blair’s departing chief strategy adviser Matthew Taylor says the web is producing a “crisis” in how politicians and citizens relate to each other. Speaking at a local conference on e-democracy, Taylor added:
The internet has immense potential but we face a real problem if the main way in which that potential expresses itself is through allowing citizens to participate in a shrill discourse of demands. If you look at the way in which citizens are using technology and the way that is growing up, there are worrying signs that that is the case.
What is the big breakthrough, in terms of politics, on the web in the last few years? It’s basically blogs which are, generally speaking, hostile and, generally speaking, basically see their job as every day exposing how venal, stupid, mendacious politicians are. The internet is being used as a tool of mobilisation, which is fantastic, but it only adds to the growing, incommensurate nature of the demands being made on government.
Taylor also compared British citizens to “teenagers” and suggested that they could be “caricatured as being increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet capable of self-government.”
Talk about condescending!
I’m sure from the perspective of a politician sitting at the center of what used to be a top-down system of authority, the flowering of public voices online can’t be pleasant. But Taylor ought to realize that he is blaming the public for a system that was designed by politicians to keep the public out, with the result that we think the worst of them. If people seem unruly and disrespectful, maybe it’s because the politicians aren’t using the internet to let them in and share in understanding how government works and can be reworked.
And it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of ways to address this problem. The next “big breakthough” of the internet could be a two-way dialogue between rulers and the ruled that produces a new synthesis in how we govern ourselves. My friend and colleague Zephyr Teachout made some great suggestions in an oped piece this past week:
-In Estonia, the legislature created a web site where citizens can propose legislation; if any proposal gets enough e-votes, the parliament commits to taking it up. We could do the same thing.
-Imagine if politicians held weekly online chats for interested constituents, or tasked their staff with holding online consultations with constituents using public libraries online services?
-How about posting the text of bills online 72 hours before a vote, so we can all peruse them?
Taylor’s screed just blames citizens for doubting his and his colleagues’ good intentions. But unless politicians start taking the lead in using the net to open up the governmental process, they are only going to feel more heat from below.
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