There is, of course, the huge problem of avoiding "talking shops" being ignored and tools like e-petitions lacking deliberation. The mind slightly boggles at how government might be made formally accountable to virtual and informal popular deliberation although some folk have hopes of concepts such as "liquid democracy"--but I suspect, much as with open source organisational structures, it may be difficult to extend these beyond their originary contexts. I think what people are reacting to here, however, is the topical focus of the e-petitions--perhaps you're right and opening out space for debate on this (or similar) sites would change the focus and tone. On the other hand, given the "rubbish in, rubbish out" rule, unless people are exposed to a greater variety of informed opinion, perspective, and socio-economic models in media and education *and* some sort of real (and sobering) political *experience* it's difficult to imagine how more relevant and effective debate is likely to develop? These critical perspectives used to originate in extra-parliamentary mass political organising and percolate gradually through formal political theory and into the broadsheets. I agree with you entirely that *this* independent organising is the magic ingredient. Activities such as free collective bargaining or agitating for electoral reform addressed structural issues of importance to the participants and effected real economic and political redistribution--it also focuses the mind on realpolitik rather than cosy "common-sense" --well, nonsense. I'm inclined to feel that one could not, "top down" as it were, create the perfect tool for participatory or direct democracy. Effective ICT political tools seem more likely to be developed as a way of facilitating the focused activities autonomous organisations. If the stop-the-war coalition (or someone else) had made more use of the potential of their website a couple of years ago, and hooked up with human rights organisations over the PTA etc, we might be looking at a somewhat different scenario now. But this, of course, brings us to people's fears of surveillance of politicised (well, all) digital activity and other material difficulties for political organising in the UK at the moment. Again, there are issues beyond what constitutes an effective ICT tool to consider. In short, I don't know if you can generate political activity in the same way as you can get people swapping video clips and second lives. Social interaction for entertainment may work on an entirely virtual plane, but I don't think political economy is likely to do so? Paula Stephen Coleman wrote:
I don't share Wainer Lusoli's apparent delight at the arrival of the Ten Downing Street e-petitions tool. From a political perspective, one might ask why citizens are being urged to petition the Prime Minister, when the UK's system of government is not presidential, but parliamentary. More significantly, this technology has been built so that people are only allowed to sign petitions, but not discuss them. Unlike the Scottish Parliament's e-petitions, public deliberation is prohibited. This leads to a narrow notion of democracy without discussion in which petitions can claim neither representative nor deliberative legitimacy. >>From the perspective of internet research, this is an interesting illustration of how political design can undermine technical potential.
Contrast this with the great tradition of political petitioning that has existed in Britain since the late thirteenth century. The Chartists of the mid-nineteenth-century did not make a political impact by collecting signatures, but by holding mass meetings to discuss the cause of their petition. Imagine iif the Chartists - or the disarmament movement of the 1960s - had been allowed only to plead with the Prime Minister rather than assemble, deliberate and develop their own convictions.
Citizens sending petitions via this new e-tool should be encouraged to subvert its intended restrictive use by setting up an alternative web space in which propositions can be openly discussed and revised.
Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication, Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds
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