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Synthesis of Background and Major Themes                        
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Public Interest Network Project
October 03, 2003
Larry Boyd

A Synthesis of the Background and Major Themes of the Public Interest Network Project  

The Dark Shadows of Political Philosophy on Contemporary Thinking about Democracy

Philosophical discussions about "democracies" reach back to the ancient Greek city states.  These little democracies involved assemblies of small numbers of eligible participants now described as "direct democracies."  More recent examples are the New England town hall assemblies.  The legacy of these discussions for thinking about large-scale systems has not been altogether positive.  Instead of emphasizing the potentially positive effects of participation on the polity and the individual, these little democracies are generally held high as "proof" that wide citizen participation in decision-making in large-scale systems is simply impossible.  The argument against high-levels of participation in large-scale systems became known as the "scaling problem," which says, in effect, that there are no real-life space or time dimensions big enough to enable large numbers of to stand up and express their preferences and arrive at a consensus through deliberation.

Another legacy of political philosophy from the past centers on the "nature of man" and this too casts a shadow over contemporary thinking about citizen participation in government.  The unmistakable message from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to Reinhold Niebuhr to Thomas Hobbs to Edmund Burke is that man is so depraved or mentally deficient or just plain ignorant that government by elites is necessary to protect the masses from themselves. Democracy in large-scale systems became the object of serious discussion only a hundred years or so ago with the invention of representative government, but it carried with it the heavy baggage of pessimism about human nature and the need for government by the few.  Democracy is not possible because the general public lacks the necessary characteristics to govern itself - and even if people were qualified, participation would still be mechanically impossible in large-scale systems because of the scaling problem.  These themes endure under various guises even today.  As might be expected, they are often brought out to support the claims of elites to power and to support arguments against greater citizen inclusion.

The Two Faces of Democracy in Representative Government: Freedom and Equality

The two major concerns of modern democracy are in one form or other "freedom" and "equality" -- and often "freedom versus equality."  Freedom involves the number and diversity of issues and choices allowed in the decision arena.  Robert Dahl calls it public contestation.   "Equality" boils down to the number of people in that arena (participation).  Much of the discussion of large-scale democracy plays off these two "ingredients" in "models" of democracy derived  from combinations of choice (high and low) and participation (high and low).  All of the resulting models but "liberal democracy," which is high on choice (freedom) and low on participation (equality), were pretty much ideal constructs, because they didn't exist in any pure forms, least of all in a system high on both freedom and equality.  But, the mere idea of a "democratic" (high participation) system kept people either defending it or attacking it.  Critics focused on hypothetical questions about what would happen "if" participation were greatly increased and generally came up with dark images of tyranny by the majority and anarchy.  Much of this concern was ideological and depended to a considerable extent on political dispositions - progressive or reactionary.  In response to colonial repression, the new American government highly valued freedom and the right to dissent and wrote the basic freedoms into the Constitution by amendment.  The problem that plagues American democracy to this day is that while participation would be meaningless without choices (liberty), liberties are quite meaningless if the government acts contrary to the public interest and citizens do not have the means by which to express their preferences through participation.  

The Checks and Balance Theory of American Democracy

A matter of grave concern among theorists focused on the conditions under which the American liberal democratic system or "Republic" might degrade into a tyranny of the minority or the majority and what could prevent it from doing so.  The so-called "pluralists" of later times argued that multiple institutions or power centers would check over-reaching powers.  Our founding fathers were pluralist in the sense that people were protected from tyranny by the "balance of powers" structure of American government.  James Madison even spoke of the utility of multiple "factions."  The implicit assumption of the pluralist model was that each power center was independent and had sufficient power alone or in alliance with other centers to check over-reaching power centers.  In effect, the system was assumed to be naturally balanced by countervailing powers in such a way that tyranny was impossible.  To some extent, this "theory" was the political counterpart of the "invisible hand" in the market place.  

By the late 1960's social scientists began to seriously question whether the balance of power model really described reality and were concerned that the model tended to perpetuate the status quo.  The concern over the ontological status of the model was easily addressed by adding, "dynamically balanced," which could reflect the more populist view that the goal of every democratic system is to become more democratic.  That is, a healthy system should move gradually in the direction of more choice to more people.  Benjamin Barber refers to "America's mixed heritage" and calls this "democratic populism - reflecting the progressive impulse" as compared to "republican limited government - reflecting realism."  In the American experience, despotic government was feared the most and so the question was what maintains stability if it is not the Constitutional balance of powers?

Mac Weber had proposed that the institution of capitalism itself acted as a powerful check on excessive government power and the bureaucratization of decision-making.  This theory was conditioned by concerns for the "iron law of oligarchy" (supposedly always at work in large organizations) and other "anti-democratic" processes.  Interestingly, the founding fathers were silent on the relationship between commercial interests and democracy, but it is not surprising given American antipathy for British cartels.  In an important sense, this new balance of power anticipated the day when corporations would be recognized as a major wielder of power in the American political system.  Not only could it check government actions (presumably on behalf of citizens), it could dictate what the government does.  

By the late 1980's the interests of the government began to look more like the interests of corporations and concentrated wealth than the interest of the populace.  Democratic scholars began to identify both the causes, such as dependence on TC ads, campaign funding, and so forth, and the consequences, such as the constriction of debate (freedom) and participation - and a step in the direction of tyranny.  The questions for democratic theorists and political pundits once again became "What can be done to save democracy?"  

The Search for Solutions to Sick Democracies

The general awareness that a check on the government and corporate power would have to come from an independent source and that the only independent source was the people led to many elegant proposals for increasing participation.  Some proposed constitutional and structural reforms, while ignoring the fact that the vested interests of a status quo system would block all such efforts.  Others spoke of deliberative democracy in which groups deliberated issues and published the results.  But, how are people inspired to participate in these groups on any significant scale?  Still others looked to changing civic society and political culture to increase participation.  But, how could that come about when civic society and political culture are generally acknowledged to be reflections of the system?  Some relied on the schools, but that has the same problem of reflecting rather than changing the system.  And so by the early 1990's, it was quite clear that democratic theory had hit a brick wall.  The only solution to a sick democracy was more democracy (participation).  But, the status quo system was not about to risk their vested interests to bring more people into the system.  Besides, was not extended participation impossible?

Democratic Theory at the Turn of the 21st Century - Glimmers of a Solution?

That brings us to about 1996 when the Internet came of age and a few visionary people began to see the glimmer of some help from technological innovation.  For example, David Held, in his second edition of "Models of Democracy," 1996, proposed, "A second domain of experimentation in expanding the democratic public realm lies in developing 'voter feedback' mechanisms on central public issues."  "These experiments could be designed to improve the process by which citizens form political judgments and to enhance the mechanisms whereby 'professional politicians' are informed about citizens' views and priorities.  Examples might include e-mail access to public 'fora,' special Internet 'noticeboards' to create debate and survey opinion on troubling matters."

The Cyberspace Populist Rebellion

In 1998, in response to the attempt to remove President Clinton from office, Moveon.org dramatically came on stage, followed by a flood of similar Internet-based public interest advocacy nets.  This was truly the beginning of an extraordinary grass roots phenomenon in the United States.  Meanwhile, discussions of this new kind of democratic participation mushroomed on the same medium, only the participants in this discussion were not generally political scientists or democratic scholars.  These early techno-democrats were mostly Internet-savvy professionals and technicians talking about an interesting application of their wares (social nets in this case) - and doing what people in little democracies do - which is to talk about issues of common interest (in this case about being heard in the political system).  The general theme running through these networks is that participation "emerged" from the bottom-up rather than being designed and implemented from the top-down.  An early example of this kind of discussion was around a paper actually composed using the new WIKI technology called "Emergent Democracy" by Ito.  By this time, it was abundantly clear to us that our early speculation about this phenomenon containing the long sought solution to the central problem of large-scale democracy might well be becoming more than speculation.

Political Significance of the Uprising on the Internet?

The significance of grass roots nature of this ground-swell phenomenon is that it anticipates the all-important question.  "Why should this 'solution,' if that is what it is, work any better than other grand schemes?  One answer lies in its spontaneous-emergent dynamics.  Ironically, that answer is that it is not a scheme.  No one designed or even foresaw this remedy.  It was simply the result of pent-up anger toward the government and the demand to participate that was "released" by the Internet and the fortunate coincidence of skilled and insightful "peer-leaders" who could see that the role of leadership in this kind of phenomenon was to facilitate.  Therefore, this participation did not need the establishment's sanction or even its blessing.  Its legal foundation is the sovereignty of the people in the American Constitution authority, the 1st Amendment, and the right to assemble and to petition.  In a more immediate sense, it is working, because political actions were made so comprehensible, simple, convenient, and fast by the Internet and the emergent technologies of the new advocacy networks that even the busiest professional could take action.  This may well be looked back upon as the age of the public interest network entrepreneur and the five-minute activist.

There is another important reason why this natural remedy should work.  High levels of participation are not unusual in politics.  However, except for rare convulsive movements, such as the public uprising against the Vietnam War, high levels were not to be found at the national level.  It is at local levels that participation is and always has been high.  Recognizing this, we can see that the great Internet grass roots rebellion did not come out of nowhere. The Internet and new public interest technologies brought down the barrier between participation in local and national (and global) politics. In other words, the force was there all the time - albeit silenced by the national political system.  "Grass roots" captures the spontaneous nature of the national political movement on the Internet, but it quite literally describes the local origins of the disposition to action.  In an important sense, the applications of Internet technology to the public interest made a village of national politics.

Here to Stay?

Observers and critics are going to ask whether this phenomenon is here to stay.  If we mean by that will the technologies endure, the answer is obvious and momentous.  Like any other major technological development or invention, once out of the box there is no putting it back.  If we mean will the grass roots phenomenon in cyberspace continue in intensity, in particular, after the current cycle of public pent-up anger simmers down, theory alone cannot answer and only time will tell.  If we mean will this phenomenon evolve into a permanent new political institution, then we first have to define what is meant by "institution."  If we simply mean an independent force, then we might argue from the irreversibility premise that it is already a political institution.  However, if we raise the bar to include a codified technology, self-awareness as something bigger than a single advocacy net, high levels of connectivity among advocacy nets (perhaps with umbrella organizations), and high levels of awareness of and responsiveness to A-Nets in other parts of the system, then we have empirical questions involving both space and time.  Finally, if we are asking whether the underlying dispositions to take actions are here to stay, we can look to local levels to see that high levels of participation have been relatively constant.  In an important sense, the Internet and facilitating technologies of public interest nets have simply solved the scaling problem and brought the levers of participation at the national level to the fingertips of citizens.

The 64 Trillion-Billion Dollar Question

If by asking whether this new democratic technology "works," we mean is it effective, then this too is to an important extent an empirical question.  In an important sense, this is "the" question and it is in many ways the most difficult to empirically answer.  The level of analysis is the system and the ultimate question is whether the public interest network does check insurgent power centers and restore the health of the system.  It is like asking, "Do labor unions work?"  Does the media as watchdog work?  Do commercial interest groups work?  For that matter, it is like asking does the Senate work.  We can do conventional outcome analysis and determine whether certain campaigns were "successful."  However, aside from the problem of defining "success" in such analyses, it will be difficult to determine whether "unsuccessful" campaigns (perhaps as an aggregate phenomenon) act as future deterrents ("checks") to over-reaching power grabbers because of the costs and bad publicity.  Also, we won't know the extent to which the campaign (or battery of campaigns) affected public opinion and indirectly affected the future actions of policy makers.

The Nature of "Proof" in This Project

Ultimately our arguments are going to depend to a great extent on success stories, on evidence of massive and growing numbers of public advocacy actions, accurately predicted trends, supportive experimental outcomes, and plain old-fashioned logical argument.  In other words, we must tell a story about a new kind of democracy that makes sense in current and historical context and is consistent, compelling, prophetic, and robust in the sense that phenomena are not easily explained by alternative and contradictory premises and propositions.  If it is done well it will invite criticism and new research and new data.   

Watchdog or More? The Development of Public Interest Network "Programs"

Investigating whether the public interest network achieves it purpose, which is to restore the health of American democracy, raises another set of important questions.  Among these is the question whether this new political force will act primarily and perhaps exclusively as the people's "watchdog" in the system or whether it will initiate programs and reforms.  For example, deliberative polls and deliberative citizens groups were highly developed concepts in the 90's, but they were really only dreams because they visualized the mechanisms for participation, but not the means for implementing them.  The Public Internet Network offers means for making them a reality.  Consequently, major programs like citizen's deliberation task forces and citizen's deliberative referenda might be initiated in the future.  I suggest that we include at least two demonstration "experiments" along these lines in our research and demonstration project.  

Is Structural Reform Necessary?

Watchdog functions and special programs may not be enough to restore health to the American political system because the imbalances are profound and basically structural and that these structural imbalances favor those in power in government and corporations and handicap or threaten the viability of the public interest network.  Consequently, the Public Interest Network may have to be used to seek political reform as in changes to electoral rules and amendments to the Constitution.  For example, one can imagine support for those groups and individuals who have been calling for proportional representation.  Proponents of proportional representation argue that PR is the only way to get people voting and involved in politics and point to New Zealand as an example.

A Second Layer of Reform?  Changes in the Economic Infrastructure

It is not beyond imagination that the public interest network may go beyond political (structural) reform to economic (infrastructure) reform.  We know that concentrations of wealth are typically the result of past power configurations and processes and that the concentration of wealth means the concentration of political power.  An example of increasing public recognition is energy policy that is dependent on fossil fuels.  The production of fossil fuels is organizational intensive and therefore vulnerable to monopoly.  This infrastructure and corporate monopoly directly or indirectly drives all American domestic and foreign policy.  Instead of attacking bad energy policies piece-meal, one can imagine the public interest network launching a great campaign to support decentralized and renewable energy sources with the long-term goal of breaking the current hold of the oil and government partnership.  The theoretical foundations of this front might be works like Natural Capitalism.  Other examples might be more focused on transportation or medical care.  I have this as a "second layer," but it could easily be argued that it should come before political reform.  But, of course, this assumes the viability of the public interest network.  

Democratic Theory Entering a New Phase

The more that the emergent Internet-based groundswell of public participation appears to contain the sees of a permanent phenomeon, the more democratic theorists and political consultants will want to know exactly what it is that advocacy nets do.  What are the general guiding principles of the technology?  What are the major objectives, targets, strategies, and tactics?  What is the relationship between leaders and participants?  To what extent are A-Nets specialized?  What is the relationship among A-Nets?  

Can a Natural Phenomenon be Nurtured?

To explain this new phenomenon is basic science for many scholars and students of democracy.  For us, it also is applied science in the sense that we want to "codify" the phenomenon so that every new instance of emergent advocacy does not have to learn the principles (and problems) all over again and thereby increase the probability of success.  Some critics may question whether a phenomenon that has a strong "emergent" (spontaneous) dimension be nourished, enhanced, and stimulated from outside?  Once knowing how this phenomenon works, can outsiders accelerate it?  Help solve its problems?  Can supporters of public interest nets help to institutionalize the emergent phenomenon?  Can supporters help to prevent natural pitfalls in the technology, problems originating within the system, and problems imposed by adversaries?  Our anwer to all of these questions is "Yes."  A healthy immune system respond naturally and immediately to things defend against threats to the organism.  But, immune systems can be weakened or strengthened by outside intervention, like changes in life style, environment, physical fitness, therapy, and medications.  We believe that same can be said about participatory democracies.  The more difficult question is how to help the natural mechanism of participation and how to avoid unanticipated negative consequences.

Some Thoughts about Our Situation and This Project

The three of us have a unique opportunity to make a significant and meaningful contribution to the long quest for people controlled political systems.  Together we have the backgrounds, skills, access, and availability to conduct this timely and potentially momentous research and apply it.  It is likely that I left out some important points and insights and it is obvious that I did not document the literature.  However, this extended summary is consistent with Bill's draft paper, my proposal, and miscellaneous materials, except that those other materials start with the problem statement rather than a history of democratic theory beginning with representative governments.

I find that every time I go through this process, I learn something new or get a little different slant on things and I feel in better command of the topic and material.  Another important purpose of these communications is to determine whether we are flying the same way on the same day and to adjust our individual perspectives to achieve the general consensus we should have before publishing anything under our three names.  Of course, part of any significant differences on substance, approach, or plan, may in part be empirical, in which case we can expect greater consensus (or disagreement) as we move forward.

Publishing

We should talk about articles and the possibility of publishing our work in book form.  If Bill can find the time, he might consider taking another cut at his draft paper in a sense as part of the project - to tell the story before the study and about the study and to invite early feedback.  I can visualize a book organized in the same general way as the proposal and having more than enough to fill it.  This too will depend on how the project evolves and prospective publishers, but acknowledging the prospect and the need for such a book would be an additional incentive to do the work.   The publisher of my "Contextual Analysis" book is defunct.  Bill, do you have a publisher that might be interested?  Wes, do you?  Of course, we can always publish ourselves on the Internet.

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