Citizen and state: June 15, 1998 issue of New Thinking

June 15, 1998 New Thinking:
Citizen and state

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June 15, 1998

Citizen and state

By Gerry McGovern

It is hard to ignore the impact the Internet has had on politics in the last couple of years. It has been widely claimed that it had a significant role in the Indonesian conflict and Mexico’s Chiapas rebellion, for example. In Indonesia, the students, in particular, were able to use email to help organize themselves. The Chiapas used faxes and email to help focus international media attention on their cause.

Political philosopher and foreign policy expert, Dr. Francis Fukuyama, in a discussion with the Merrill Lynch Forum believes that, “the one area where information technology is probably going to have a vast effect is in citizens' relationships with the state. There are a lot of trans-national, non-state actors today that didn't exist in the past -- environmental groups, for example.”

Lynn Reed, who ran the Web page for the Clinton-Gore 1996 election campaign, made the point to a recent Cox News report on pressure groups that, “email offered the potential for more “sophisticated” communication between voters and politicians. He noted that, “politicians could e-mail a 12,000-word issue paper to voters for a fraction the cost of mailing it. But he conceded that political dialogue in the United States has been a “steady drive in the other direction.”” (Take a bow, television.)

The Digital Age citizen is more educated, demanded of and demanding. Increasingly cheaper communication costs, allied with more flexible communication and information devices such as the Internet, mobile phones, faxes, etc., empower not simply the individual, but the group, to organize and vigorously pursue their goals.

We are thus entering a period of high interaction and potentially high friction between citizen and state. Citizens will want answers not bland assurances. Very little will be allowed to be brushed under the carpet.

This is not all necessarily for the good, particularly the long-term good of society. Today, states are increasingly falling behind in their ability to legislate for the digital age. The Internet alone throws up legislative problems of gargantuan proportions. Issues such as: liability definition, jurisdiction identification, taxation and customs duties, intellectual property protection, data privacy protection, security and authentication, consumer protection, Internet governance, illegal and harmful content.

A central problem in all this is that a large percentage of legislators do not belong in the digital age. They were fashioned in the thinking and politics of the Industrial Age. Many of them have neither the desire nor perhaps the ability to understand our new age sufficiently to legislate properly for it. We may thus be faced with two scenarios: legislators will ignore the Internet, hoping it will go away, or they will implement reactive legislation. Neither scenario is healthy.

So, where is the answer? As usual, the answer can be found by ‘thinking network.’ The Internet allows the company and customer to have a much closer relationship, ensuring, for example, that future products more closely match customer needs.

Let politicians stop running from pressure groups and start truly interacting with them. Let pressure groups go easy on the ‘pressure’ and start also considering the larger issues and longer-term view, rather than their often narrow focus and interest. Then, many minds and much energy can comprehensively deal with the complex issues of our day.

Perhaps politicians can be the ideal ‘moderators’ of democracy online, seeking common focus, consensus and partnership with and between us all.

Gerry McGovern

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We are entering a period of high interaction and potentially high friction between citizen and state.