[Air-L] "The Case Against Mass E-mails: Perverse Incentives and Low Quality Public Participation in U.S. Federal Rulemaking"

[Stuart Shulman]

Folks,

Can you help me disseminate this article, which is free via the Web? For
theorists, I offer a "theory of perverse incentives" and for environmental
sociologists, there is my perhaps now familiar case against the mass email
movement targeting US regulatory agencies.

~Stu

"The Case Against Mass E-mails: Perverse Incentives and Low Quality Public
Participation in U.S. Federal Rulemaking"

http://www.psocommons.org/policyandinternet/vol1/iss1/art2/?sending=10820
(free guest access available)
 Abstract

Large-scale e-mail campaigns are a staple in the modern environmental
movement. Interest groups increasingly use online mobilizations as a way to
raise awareness, money, and membership. There are legitimate political,
economic, and organizational reasons for doing so, but these gains may come
at the expense of a more substantial and efficacious role for citizens who
wish to use e-mail to engage in public participation. This paper situates a
close examination of the 1000 longest modified MoveOn.org-generated e-mails
sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about its 2004 mercury
rulemaking, in the broader context of online grassroots lobbying. The
findings indicate that only a tiny portion of these public comments
constitute potentially relevant new information for the EPA to consider. The
vast majority of MoveOn comments are either exact duplicates of a
two-sentence form letter, or they are variants of a small number of broad
claims about the inadequacy of the proposed rule. This paper argues that
norms, rules, and tools will emerge to deal with the burden imposed by these
communications. More broadly, it raises doubts about the notion that online
public participation is a harbinger of a more deliberative and democratic
era.

*A few sound bites:*

"This article looks at the practical and policy impact of mass e-mail
campaigns. It focuses theoretical and empirical attention on the
competing—and yes, perverse—incentives for large-scale citizen input to the
regulatory rulemaking process. It is akin to perverse satisfaction, I argue,
to cathartically exercise a right while inadvertently destroying it."

"In what follows, I introduce the theory of perverse incentives in the
context of interest group-initiated mass e-mail campaigns about U.S.
regulatory policy. Stated bluntly, the logic of collection action many
scholars my age and older grew up with is dead. The Internet killed it."

 "Some studies of interest group lobbying carry forward out-of-date
assumptions found in much of the canonical lobbying literature (e.g.,
grassroots lobbying is costly and time-consuming, subject to unavoidable
free-rider problems when the benefits are widely dispersed). These
assumptions reflect a pre-Internet landscape. The collective action thesis
(Olson, 1965) cogently captured the increased difficulty of organizing
members as the group size grew larger. Olson’s truism, however, is being
updated in ways that fail to recognize that the old constraints on
collective action are less of a factor (Esteban & Ray, 2001). If Olson’s
logic of collective action is a less viable theory, the rising role of
electronic grassroots lobbying may prove to be one of the key reasons
(Lev-On & Hardin, 2007; Davis, Elin, & Reeher, 2002). Twenty-first century
studies of interest groups must start with the assumption of reduced
organizing costs and shifting incentives as opportunities for laptop and
hand-held participation multiply."