One of my part-time colleagues has an obsession with the word ‘oligarchy’. He’s a politics student and just can’t seem to get enough of the word. It’s perhaps not surprising that in the modern world someone could get caught up with the word, given that many ‘democracies’ tend to operate oligarchically (is that a word? it should be).
A few weeks ago, the blogsphere was full of analyses of Howard Dean’s campaign to be the Democrat Party’s nominee for US President. They were asking what it had brought to the primary campaign and why when initially so strong, it had failed to win Dean the nomination. In that regard I found this interview with Joe Trippi (Dean’s former Campaign Manager) a fascinating read.
For me, the Dean campaign’s rise and fall isn’t nearly so fascinating as its implications outside of elections. On both sides of the pond, the last few years have shown that it is still possible to gather large numbers of people around single causes. What is now needed is some way of sustaining the energy which gathered for debt cancellation, against war, and on various other issues, feeding that into a more sustained level of local involvement in politics. Responding to apparent defeats and disappointments, remaining engaged.
Heading to the House of Commons to lobby some MPs a year or so ago, my friend Ed and I were surprised to find ourselves in the midst of a crowd of more than a hundred teenagers demonstrating in Parliament Square against the government’s moves towards war with Iraq. Sympathy with their cause aside, it was energising to see so many from a constituency we were told was entirely disenfranchised risking the wrath of school and parents to make sure their concerns were heard. We were excited to see them there and imagine the potential contained within that group, but wondered whether they were prepared for the possibility that the government might not respond to their pleas, whether they had the resources to respond to that and stay involved in reshaping the political landscape.
The internet certainly has a powerful role to play in providing those resources, but it must always remain connected with the physical and local. When we were working on dropthedebt.org and summitwatch.net in the run up to the G8 summit in Okinawa back in 2000 not many people were campaigning online, but we found a surprising amount of interest in the facilities we provided to connect global happenings with local events, and local events around the world with one another. The phenomenon seems to me similar to the connection between the Dean campaigns use of campaign blogs and its use of meetup.com. The blogs are good for dissipating information, but really come into their own when they spur people to local, physical meetings. That way the stories gathered online can be disseminated to a wider base, the digital divide can be spanned, and the issues and positions can be contextualised in each locale.
As Joe Trippi points out, for too long politics has thrived on a succession of one-way media. Pressure groups have formed around particular issues and some people have become involved in political parties, but the process of applying scrutiny to the work of politicians once elected has involved a degree of commitment which most people simply aren’t in a position to make. It will take time to change the shape of politics, but change it must.
It is encouraging to see Trippi and co. setting out to sustain the political involvement they’ve generated. It remains to be seen how much of this (and similar groups such as MoveOn) will remain once the immediate issue of US presidential elections are out of the way for another four years, and how it will connect up with similar movements in other countries.
[On a slightly different note, this Wired article offers a new side to all the e-democracy debates]