- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 July 2009
- Article history
When the Maoist-era prime minister of China, Zhou Enlai, was asked to assess the impact of the French revolution, he famously responded "It is too early to say". Mulling over a spirited Henry Jackson Society/ Delib/ Messagespace debate on "The internet: saviour or corrupter of democracy?", I am tempted to answer in a similar vein.
It wasn't that the panel – Nick Robinson of the BBC, Michael White of the Guardian, Paul Staines of the Guido Fawkes blog, Peter Kellner of YouGov and Grant Shapps MP – failed to engage with each another. Staines and White, in particular, had several sharp exchanges that required the diplomatic finesse of Robinson and chair Danny Alexander to keep under control. But while this added to audience amusement, it rather distracted from attempts to engage with the core issue.
This was perhaps best highlighted by a lengthy debate between Robinson, Staines and White on the relative merits of print, broadcast and internet media. Their competing visions of accountability, veracity of sources and reliability of end product – while interesting snapshots of the world the media inhabits – were better suited to a debate on the respectability and effectiveness of the fourth estate.
Kellner and Shapps did their best to refocus the discussion, illustrating that the nature of wide-ranging concepts such as the internet and democracy remains in the eye of the beholder. Kellner, using his polling experience, argued that internet direct democracy threatened to lead to the tyranny of the masses. Internet referendums would be crude tools of public opinion on narrow subjects, blurring the lines of responsibility for our representatives and also proving difficult to overturn should they produce flawed policy results. In essence, they would distract from the need to consider policy-making in the longer-term strategic context. Which I daresay might appeal to politicians increasingly used to advocating quick-fix solutions to assuage public opinion.
Shapps, one of the bright young things of the Tory party – and a noted utiliser of online campaigning and communication methods – welcomed the advent of online democracy as essential for the modern parliamentary representative. By strengthening participation and consultation, and by increasing political transparency, it can only assist MPs by informing their decision-making. It would be profoundly ironic if the power of the whips, rumoured to be under consideration for transformation under the post expenses-gate reforms, was to be replaced by that of the internet. We do, after all, remain a representative democracy. At least in theory.
There was even a very brief discussion on the role that the internet can play in undermining authoritarian regimes abroad. Recent events in Iran reflect the duality of the position. On the one hand, the internet enabled citizens to gather, spread news and reveal the true nature of the mullahs' repressive response. On the other, the ease with which the authorities shut down most electronic activity does not bode well for the future use of the internet as a tool of democracy. Try telling China's leaders that the Great Firewall should be torn down, for example.
All this suggests that the relationship between the internet and democracy continues to evolve. While we have some idea of how online mediums have altered our political and participatory landscape, some 10 years into the internet age we have yet to fully comprehend how this will play out into an established order – if indeed that term is possible to comprehend with a medium in perpetual motion such as the internet. So while we know that the cosy clubbable world of the political and media elite – where information was the preserve of the few, decisions the realm of the fewer and scrutiny conducted through a carefully reflected news conduit – has been transformed, we don't yet know what will replace it.
Perhaps the current dog-eat-dog world, where an army of citizen bloggers such as Staines beats off what White termed the "dead tree media" in a race to the next scandal and exposé, in order to demonstrate the moral superiority of the ruled over the rulers, will remain the order of the day. Or maybe the former will become so seduced by the power that they now hold that they will become modern victims of Lord Acton's famous truism. The genteel online discussion and consultative forums championed by Shapps might prove to be the ultimate victor. But then again, they could be branded as pointless talking shops – the Marxist "window dressing" of the internet democracy age – if they become captured by special interest groups, as we have seen in US politics through organisations such as Moveon.org.
One thing is certain. If you would have said two years ago that politicians would soon be falling over one another in the rush to "tweet" constricted messages of no more than 140 characters several times a day to keep in contact with their "followers", you would have been laughed at. Which just goes to show that with the internet, anything remains possible.
The Cif debate on democracy and the internet will continue with pieces by Paul Staines of the Guido Fawkes blog and the Guardian's Michael White