[Air-l] Petition Tony Blair, online that is

[Paula]

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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