Bowling Together
Online Public Engagement
in Policy Deliberation
> About the report
> Introduction
Representation, Engagement and Democracy
> Two-Way Governance
> Connected Citizenship
> Appropriate Technologies For Online Engagement
> Global Case Studies
> References
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Chapter One
Representation, Engagement and Democracy
What is the rationale for online public engagement? If the policy-making process is opened up to greater public involvement, might citizens expect politicians to become creatures of their will? Is there a danger that online engagement will give rise to a form of 'technopopulism', whereby the loudest, best resourced, most confident or most prejudiced voices of the public come to dominate the debate? Might online engagement encourage a form of government by focus group, with crass impressions and half-formed opinions serving as a substitute for rational deliberation? If the public is to enter the democratic policy-making process, is there an acknowledged point of entry and trusted space for debate, or is there a danger of the process fragmenting into countless discourses in which self-interested groups speak to themselves? These are all legitimate questions, frequently raised but infrequently addressed in the literature of e-democracy. These questions need not be approached as if they have only just arisen; they reflect perennial issues in democratic debate and existing political theory can cast some light on them.
Delegation v representation: the Burkean dilemma
Elected representatives are understandably concerned that public engagement in policy-making is a slippery slope to direct democracy and rule by endless plebiscites. It is not as if some of the proponents of online democracy have been shy about declaring such an objective. For example, Dick Morris, former strategic adviser to President Bill Clinton, argues that:
The internet offers a potential for direct democracy so profound that it may well transform not only our system of politics but our very form of government ... Bypassing national representatives and speaking directly to one another, the people of the world will use the internet increasingly to form a political unit for the future. (Morris)
In his famous Address to the Electors of Bristol, Edmund Burke, the 18th century politician and philosopher, stated what has become the classical case for representative rather than direct government:
Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
My worthy colleague says his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps 300 miles distant from those who hear the arguments?
To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience, - these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.
What is usually remembered about Burke's position is his strong rejection of the principle of directly mandated delegation and his claim that representatives should be governed, ultimately, by their own reason and conscience. In contemporary terms, this explains why MPs feel free to ignore the majority opinion of their constituents on votes of conscience. What is often forgotten about Burke's position is his commitment to a representative having 'the most unreserved communication with his constituents', as well as to 'rejoice' in and 'most seriously consider' the opinions of constituents.
Burke was writing at a time when only a minority had votes. He justified such minority franchise in the name of 'virtual representation': the many, it was argued, were represented by the votes of the better-educated and more affluent few. So, the respect that Burke thought should be afforded to constituents was an exclusive and undemocratic respect.
In 21st century democracies the principle of virtual representation is firmly rejected, but the same cannot be said for virtual deliberation. In contemporary democracies there is a tendency for the political agenda to be set narrowly by political elites (including party managers and media editors) and for the majority of people to be squeezed out of the national conversation about politics. Burke would have defended this situation because he considered that, although 'the most poor, illiterate and uninformed creatures upon earth are judges of practical oppression', they 'ought to be totally shut out; because their reason is weak; because when once aroused, their passions are ungoverned; because they want information; because the smallness of the property which they individually possess renders them less attentive to the measures they adopt in affairs of moment.'
Modern democrats would repudiate Burke's wish to exclude the majority from the political discussion, but would have some difficulty locating the point of entry into such discussion within the existing democratic framework. Online engagement becomes relevant in this respect, not as a substitute for elected representatives, but as a way of opening channels connecting them to the many whose voices are not often heard in policy debates. By engaging citizens in the policy-making process representatives, as well as representative institutions, show their (Burkean) commitment to entering into unreserved communication with those who elect them.
Participation v competence: JS Mill's liberal anxiety
Few contemporary democrats would wish to argue with JS Mill's contention that the whole people, regardless of class or gender, 'must be masters, whenever they please, of all the operations of government.' In short, political sovereignty should reside in the people. Mill argued that such power should be exercised by electing deputies to represent them and also participating in discussion about matters that affect them. Not unreasonably has Mill been regarded as one of the key thinkers of modern liberal politics.
But Mill had a serious anxiety about the public's participation in politics:
The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community.
With increased public participation, Mill feared that the overall level of political competence might suffer.
This worry is reflected in the thinking of many contemporary politicians and public officials, who see public engagement in policy-making as a floodgate through which all kinds of ignorance, prejudice and narrow interest could distort the political agenda.
Mill's response to this problem was to argue for civic spaces for discussion in which narrow interests and prejudiced outlooks had to be exposed to other, more reasoned voices. The inherent pluralism of shared public space would serve to broaden the terms of the public debate:
It is by political discussion that the manual labourer, whose employment is a routine, and whose way of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions, circumstances or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events which take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his personal interests; and it is by political discussion ... that one whose daily occupations concentrate his interests in a small circle round himself, learns to feel for and with his fellow citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a great community ... (p.328)
What Mill is recommending sounds remarkably like the case often made for public service broadcasting: let people be exposed to a variety of impressions, arguments and analyses and, whatever their prior predilections, they are more likely to benefit from the plurality of voices and perspectives and feel more like members of a community.
One of the arguments against engaging the public in policy-making is that this will lead to populism and plebiscitary decision-making. But these could more plausibly be seen as consequences of non-engagement: people turn to populist solutions and illegitimate actions when they feel themselves to be outside the political sphere, incapable of making any meaningful impact through democratic means. The antidote to populist tendencies is firstly, the recognition that the public are entitled to express views and be heard in relation to matters that affect them; and secondly, the creation of civic spaces in which intelligent political discussion can be conducted and habits of informed deliberation developed. As Mill put it: 'Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.' (p.329)
Opinion v deliberation: Dewey's rational filter
In her evidence to the UK House of Commons Public Administration Committee's inquiry into innovations in public participation, Anna Coote stated:
I do think that new methods, particularly deliberative methods, of public involvement have added a huge amount to the capacity of organisations to understand citizens and citizens to participate in decisions and to understand what goes into decision-making.
Considering the effects of such engagement upon policy-making bodies, she commented that:
... the experience makes them see the public in a different way. Instead of assuming the public are stupid and ignorant and selfish, incapable children, they wake up to the fact that they are dealing with intelligent adult human beings.
Coote's observation cuts to the root of a prevalent apprehension, not always as candidly stated, about the capacity of the average citizen to grasp the complexity of policy-making. Walter Lippmann famously described the average citizen, trying to comprehend politics, as feeling 'rather like a deaf spectator in the back row, who ought to keep his mind on the mystery off there, but cannot quite manage to keep awake'. Like Mill, Lippmann had serious doubts about the capacity of citizens to perform anything more than the most marginal of roles in democracy:
What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.
John Dewey offered a dialectical response to this problem: it was not that the public lacked the ability to become informed, but that no mechanism had yet been devised for adequately informing the public. Whereas Lippmann saw the public as a slumbering, staggering, thoughtless monster, Dewey's concern was that the public had become an invisible player in democracy:
What, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organised into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?
The 'eclipse of the public', argued Dewey, was a consequence of its bewilderment in the face of political complexity:
The ramification of the issues before the public is so wide and intricate, the technical matters involved are so specialised, the details are so many and so shifting, that the public cannot for any length of time identify and hold itself.
The consequence of political complexity, as Dewey saw it, was the formation of simplistic, often manipulated, public opinion. This analysis was later to be reiterated by Fishkin, who regards opinion polls as almost useless 'snapshots' of public prejudice and ignorance, and Zolo, who considers the burden of complex policy-making as being too much for democratic citizens to bear. For Dewey, the solution lay in creating rational filters through which public information and communication can be channelled:
Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the public will remain in eclipse. Communication alone can create a great community. Our Babel is not one of tongues, but of the signs and symbols without which shared experience is impossible.
Dewey was sanguine about the possibility of establishing a rational and trusted new medium which could facilitate public information and discussion. Could that new medium be the internet, or, at least, a certain, publicly-claimed and protected area of the web which could serve as an arena for civic engagement and deliberation? Blumler and Coleman have argued that the internet possesses 'a vulnerable potential' for this role and that the creation of a 'civic commons in cyberspace' which 'could become part of the democratic furniture: an integral component of the representative system (the Commons) and an open space for the represented to gather and talk (the civic commons.)' (p.5)
Through such public discussion and consultation two benefits could be gained: the public could become more informed, by hearing from one another and from experts; and legislators and policy-makers could become better informed through exposure to the experience and often hidden expertise of the public. As Dewey argued:
No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interest of the few. And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs. The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. The essential need ... is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.
Conclusions
- Engaging the public in policy-making is not a means of diminishing the representative relationship, but of strengthening it. Even in an age when vast distances separated the represented from the centres of decision-making, Burke favoured the 'closest correspondence' and 'most unreserved communication' between electors and their representatives. ICTs provide new opportunities to connect citizens to their representatives, resulting in a less remote system of democratic governance.
- The alternative to engaging the public will not be an unengaged public, but a public with its own agenda and an understandable hostility to decision-making processes which appear to ignore them. By bringing citizens into the loop of governance, opportunities for mutual learning occur: representatives can tap into the experiences and expertise of the public and citizens can come to understand the complexities and dilemmas of policy-making.
- The old dichotomy between experts and the public is false and sterile. Considerable expertise resides within the public (which is made up, after all, of doctors, nurses, parents, entrepreneurs, police officers, social workers, victims of crime, teachers, elders) and the trick is to find innovative ways of drawing out that expertise and feeding it into the hitherto bureaucratised decision-making process. Providing the public with appropriate information about policy issues and utilising public experience and expertise in the process of policy formation, development and evaluation requires the cultivation of a critical and deliberative political culture.
Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation by Stephen Coleman & John Gøtze
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