The spread of the Internet and all the latest
developments in communication technology has led many political
scientists to debate concepts of direct democracy, which could become
realistic under the current circumstances. This essay argues that these
revolutionary technological developments are new tools of freedom
which can liberate citizens from the grip of the propaganda machines
called conventional mass media, which have turned the public discourse
into a carnival show of politicians, pop stars, priests,
fortune-tellers, psychics, prostitutes - and whatever ugly thing there
is in our society, keeping the intelligent and creative citizens
hostages to the choices of the manipulated, ignorant masses. The
Internet, in particular, with its anarchic structure and its ability to
allow full public access to information, can, on one hand, inspire
political participation and political creativity, and on the other
provide the means for a new way of political organizing and thus
lead to the replacement of the present inadequate political system of
representative democracy by a new efficient system of governance.
Unlike
conventional mass media -television, radio,
newspapers, magazines, and films, where a small number
of people have the power to determine which
information should be made available to the mass audience, this new mass medium
which has a
potential worldwide reach, can make every member of the
audience a potential publisher because of its ability for
interactive communication. This
means that the new technology can enable the
individual to stop being a part of the mass and
become a person, who has his own will and his own
ability to shape the society he lives in. The
existence of such a power may stimulate people's
involvement in decision making and
awaken their responsibility, so that they start
thinking for themselves about finding a way out
of the admittedly sick condition of the society
we now live in, which is guided and takes direction not from its
brain but from the lower instincts of the masses. The first step towards
change would be the dissemination of
information, which would make people turn their
back to the bombardment with messages by the
broadcast media monopolies, whose effect is to
drive society into habits leading to environmental
destruction as well as self-destruction. The only
messages people get through conventional media are of
the type: buy garbage, then throw it away and
fill the world with waste, and then get sedated,
so that you won't feel the discomfort caused by
sitting in it! I can't find a more fitting
description for conventional media's content,
when almost all of it is a direct or gray
advertisement of fashion, alcohol, drugs, sick
vanity, and porn-shows in the disguise of art.
But then again, if a few people have control of
who has a voice and who hasn't, and those people
are the friends of the governing party who have
been given licenses to make money by selling
advertising, it is only natural that there can be
nothing else on air but advertisements. This also
explains why the anarchic nature of the Internet which
keeps out this propaganda machine, made it the only channel for all kinds of
information that never made it into the mass
media. This kind of information by exposing the
incompetence of nation-states in performing their
duties and thus challenging their role, made it
evident that the industrial-era model of representative
democracy has eroded and that we need to build
a new system of governance.
The most successful democratic revolution in history,
the Athenian Democracy 2500 years ago, was made possible by a
citizenry that was involved in their community and felt
responsible for their polis and society. The fundamental
presupposition of the ancient Greek political life (as becomes
obvious from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics and
Athenian Constitution) was the absolute priority
of the community, the polis, over the individual.
Citizens enjoyed freedom only in so far as they
participated in the political life of their
community and, through their actions, sustained
its existence and furthered its welfare. However,
membership to such a community was not granted to
anyone, hence the distinction between Polites(=citizens) and Idiots(=privates). Polites
was the citizen who was well informed and could
actively participate in all common affairs, while
Idiots were those not qualified to participate in
decision making and the political process in
general, as these were mostly the uncultivated peasants living in
the periphery of the polis (The word 'idiot' owes its current
meaning to the fact that Greeks considered the Idiots
uncivilized, primitive, apolitic beings). In that
political community, each citizen could directly affect the
decision making process by speaking and voting in an assembly
held more than 40 times a year. This system established some
principles, which modern democracies have followed and this is
the reason why Ancient Athens is generally considered as the
birthplace of democracy, though, in my opinion, the Athenian model was an aristocracy
rather (rule of
the aristoi=worthiest) than a democracy in the current sense of
the term (rule of the
people). Those principles were: a) All qualified citizens
should have the right to vote and hold office, b) The duty of all citizens is to actively
participate in the political process, and c)
Majority votes should make decisions. These exact concepts of
equality, active participation, inclusive nature, majority rule,
and informed opinion are now the basic principles of modern
constitutions all over the world. In practice, however, the
modern states that now consider themselves to be democracies are
run by the process generally known as 'representative'
democracy, where the only thing not happening for sure is
participation of the citizens in decision making. As in Athenian democracy, the basic principle in
modern democracies is that every citizen is entitled to an equal
voice in deciding how they should be governed. In modern
democracies, however, this voice is heard only once every four
or five years, in elections where voters elect those who will
represent them, assuming that it will be the interests of the
constituents and the community that will be served and not those of the party or
the representatives themselves. Well, we all know whose
interests are served after the elections and how obliged are the
winner candidates to respect the wishes of their constituents or
keep their promises during their term in office. The truth is
that even the citizens of the most advanced western
societies have
little or no influence on the decisions affecting their lives. Furthermore, it is not a secret any more that all representative
democracies are run by special-interest groups that are lobbying
governments.
Many advocates of technological liberation are
discussing online the feasibility of an electronic Athenian
agora made possible by digital technology,
and especially the Internet. The main counter argument is that in the small
communities of the Greek antiquity it was easy to have an
Athenian type direct democracy, in which everybody
could participate in the decision making
process. The recent advances in communications technology,
however, have made it possible for huge numbers of people from
everywhere in the world to interact and exchange ideas exactly
as if they were talking face to face. Physical distances are no
longer an obstacle to maintaining direct contact between
the participants in the political process. Effective
communication means are now existent and, even on the scale of
the present global population, the vision of an electronic
Athenian agora could become practical again . People no longer need a representative to express their
will. They can very well express their will directly and this
makes the Representative system redundant. Because, more and more people are now interacting electronically on the Net,
and building virtual
communities independent of location. Cyberspace
is gradually substituting all the public places
such as the public square, the village church,
the park, or the tavern, which in the past served
as places for political gathering and discussion.
Now such gatherings take place on-line
where a new kind of public sphere is taking form,
which transcends geography and national identity. This new
public sphere transcends also all kinds of hierarchies -of race,
class, age, and gender. For
example, by reading the posts in discussion
groups, it is rather unlikely to determine
information such as a user's age, gender,
nationality, or disability. What we see is the emergence of a new public sphere,
that of the
Internet users, where democratic processes are conducted in
the form of a global scale, decentralized public
discourse. In this discourse, everyone is expressing their views
on every imaginable issue of common concern, and this is the
essence of participatory democracy.
All the above examples of participatory
democracy practices, that we currently see on the
Net, are evidence that the new communication technologies enable
forms of direct democracy which could not be practical until
now, because of the problem of size.
Today, it is
possible for millions of people to make every
political decision directly, without representatives, and make their own
contribution to the public debate free of any
form of censorship. New
opportunities and challenges for political
participation make their appearance online every day and make possible the shifting from
the mass-based political model of representative democracy
to a networked one, which will make the
Athenian type participatory democracy a feasible
ideal.
|