(Cross-posted from the Accountable Strategies Blog)
In the lead paper in a series of essays on citizen participation and governance in the March/April 2007 issue of Public Administration Review, one of the leading academic journals on government, R. Karl Rethemeyer puts forth a relatively pessimistic view of the role of the Internet in helping save representative democracy in America. The only problem is he doesn’t discuss blogs.
In "The Empires Strike Back: Is the Internet Corporatizing Rather than Democratizing Policy Process?" (which you need a subscription to PAR to read), Rethemeyer argues that while the Internet has been heralded as a way to involve citizens more directly in representative democracy, it may actually only serve to strengthen the political dominance of special interest groups, lobbyists, and corporate organizations.
"In fact, there is much evidence that the Internet is increasingly a tool of the powerful, entrenched, and organized rather than the unorganized or reform minded," argues Rethemeyer, who contends that representative democracy "may be on the critical list" due to "corporatized" politics.
Rethemeyer bolsters his argument with data from two case studies focusing on adult basic education and mental health "policy networks" in an unnamed state that he names "Newstatia." Rethemeyer’s research appears thorough as far as it goes, but he makes his rather sweeping assertions based on his review of the use of e-mail, instant messaging, and listservs by these policy networks. But what about blogs? The paper says nothing about them.
The jury is certainly still out as to whether national, state, and local political blogsites have had a beneficial impact on representative democracy in their respective spheres.
Rethemeyer notes that the Internet makes it easier to mobilize groups or networks of people to affect elections, in particular. He cites Howard Dean’s successful use of the Internet to raise money during his 2004 presidential campaign. But Rethemeyer found that that use of the Internet did not result in any new members joining either of the two policy networks he studied nor did it create new relationships in terms of communication among the network members. In the case of the mental health network, the core group of Internet users consisted only of key insiders in the executive and legislative branches.
It would seem that we need further study that looks more broadly at the impact of the Internet on representative democracy and at the impact of blogs, in particular. Blogs, such as Daily Kos, may not save representative democracy or even be good for it, but they certainly do welcome new members.