by njacknis
After ten years as Chief Information Officer of Westchester County, NY (a million people, just north of New York City), I joined IBSG mostly specializing in government, below the level of the natio... More about njacknis
Pushing Back Against Web-based Citizen Engagement
A recent blog on the Personal Democracy Forum -- http://personaldemocracy.com/node/7322 -- opened with a quote from Clay Shirky that “All the rhetoric, including - I'm embarrassed to say - some of mine, has assumed in the past that democratic legitimation is itself enough to regard aggregate public opinion [online] as being clearly binding on the government. I've changed my mind.”
The author, Pete Peterson, then goes on to express considerable skepticism about the various efforts to engage citizens, partly on the grounds that these engaged citizens have not really added much of value to the public debate. And he ends with a quote from the late political scientist and US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan “Civic Engagement is a device whereby public officials induce non-public individuals to act in a way the public officials desire.”
This is one of a number of recent pushbacks to the movement to make government more inclusive through use of the Internet. Are these criticisms valid?
My own view is that average citizens can contribute in two ways -- by reporting observations from the field that provide valuable feedback to political leaders and also by providing creative ideas. But I wouldn't expect that the percentage of brilliant ideas per megabyte will be any different for the general public than it is in most professional legislative bodies -- that is, great new ideas are still pretty rare.
More generally, is Peterson missing the point? Is public participation itself valuable, even in the absence of brilliant bits of wisdom? I would think that democracies should encourage the opening up the public forum to as many voices as possible, based on first principles.
Comments
This is the crucial issue - and it's the dichotomy between "What does the citizen want from Government" - to which I think the answer is absolutely as little interaction as possible, and "What can the citizen contribute to Government" - and I fear that Nick's point about "the absence of brilliant bits of wisdom" is all too true - from my viewpoint, I very seldom see constructive feedback / comment / insight - what I generally see are the naysayers - who will probably continue to naysay whatever happens.
posted over 2 years ago