From September to November 2007, I was Managing Editor of a short project for the highly-regarded online poltics magazine openDemocracy.net.

Focussing on a project run jointly by the European Commission, Stanford University and polling company TNS, within two days of landing the job I was in Brussels attending the launch of the Tomorrow’s Europe deliberative poll, around which the dLiberation blog was to revolve.

Over the next two months, I produced a broad range of content focussing both on the poll itself (a unique experiment in multilingual deliberative polling, bring together people from every EU member state in the European Parliament in Brussels to debate the future of Europe, the language barriers broken down by scores of professional interpreters, and barriers to understanding overcome through access to teams of experts from all political persuasions), with contributions from senior academics, politicians and journalists from all backgrounds and opinions.

The project would go on to win me the Jury’s Commendation in the UACES-Reuters Reportin Europe Awards 2008.

Times Literary Supplement
No.5409, 1 December 2006

Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communications Technologies
By Andrew Chadwick
Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford, 2006
ISBN 0-19-517773-8

(unedited text)

In the age of the Internet, news management has become increasingly difficult for politicians who, just a decade ago, could generally control most aspects of a developing story with relative ease. These days, maintaining a cozy relationship with Fleet Street alone is not enough to stop news getting out, as individual citizens with computers can ignore D-Notices and the libel laws with apparent impunity, spreading rumours of affairs just as easily as they can provide point-by-point critiques of speeches, policies and White Papers.

More determined activists, meanwhile, can use web technologies not just to organise real-world protests more easily than ever before, but also quickly mobilise like-minded individuals in concerted online attacks against politicians and organisations with whom they disagree. It can work the other way – MoveOn.org notably raising millions of dollars and funding numerous television adverts in support of the Democrat party in the 2004 US Presidential elections. Yet most politicians have thus far seen more threats than potential in the Internet – which might explain why so few MPs have strong web presences.

Andrew Chadwick, head of the Political Science department at Royal Holloway, has with his ‘Internet Politics’ aimed to provide a near-comprehensive overview of the vast array of approaches to political engagement online in a logical, largely jargon-free textbook format. Rather than focussing just on the professional politicians, he rightly acknowledges the impact of individual activists, web developers and citizens in driving new ideas and ways of involving anyone and everyone more closely in the public sphere. If anything, professional politicians have at best been playing catch-up to the amateurs, at worst entirely misunderstanding the potential benefits – as did Jack Straw in July 2006 when criticising TheyWorkForYou.com, a professional-looking amateur site giving quick and easy access to MP’ voting records and speeches that works much better than the official Parliament.uk website.

Starting with an overview of the Internet’s development – providing vital context for understanding just why it works in the way it does, how far it has managed to permeate society, and a realistic picture of its impact to date – Chadwick goes on to discuss various key issues in detail. His choices, ranging from ‘e-Democracy’ to the difficulties of regulating such a broad and ever-changing medium are all excellently explained. They more than adequately cover the prime concerns of all those using the Internet for political projects, be they individuals or governments, with few major omissions.

The only problem is – and this is an obstacle that no book on the Internet will be able to overcome – that no attempt to provide such a summary of even a small aspect of the world wide web can ever hope to be fully up-to-date. The first website only went live in August 1991, and the web is still so fast moving that even just a year ago the video sharing site YouTube, now one of the most popular on the net with more than 100 million daily hits, was practically unknown, indeed not even officially launched.

Since Chadwick’s book was written Britain has seen its first weblog written by a serving cabinet minister and its first interactive online public policy consultation using the user-edited ‘wiki’ format – both launched by David Miliband, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Both have been criticised at least as much as they have been praised, while the latter was swiftly withdrawn after online sabotage by critics of the government. In the same week at the end of August 2006 that Miliband’s wiki came under attack, other web users were able to republish a New York Times piece that had been blocked to UK readers due to its legally and politically sensitive information about the controversial alleged plot to blow up airliners.

Also potentially problematic is the bibliography’s reliance on ‘old media’ sources – largely articles and books written by other academics working in the field. Yet when it comes to the Internet, the experts are generally mostly amateurs or enthusiasts working in their spare time, and few have seen their writings in print. Although web addresses swiftly go out of date – as those citing European Union websites found in May this year when the organization suddenly switched to the .eu domain – the lack of bibliographical references to some of the detailed online discussions of the issues that Chadwick has identified seems odd.

Chadwick is evidently more than aware of these limitations. The majority of his book underlines the lack of consensus on how to proceed with online political projects of whatever level of professionalism. With the web still being developed without any real guiding hand, with no effective systems of regulation, and with no proven models for online success in any area – be it commercial, political or personal – it is hard enough to keep track of recent developments, let alone predict the future paths of apparent trends. As he states in his conclusion, ‘If making predictions about the Internet’s role in shaping political institutions is difficult, thinking about the future of Internet policy issues is almost impossible.’

Chadwick has therefore sensibly set up a companion website to expand on and continually update this intelligent and considered textbook. Inexplicably, however, although the site is mentioned in the preface and Chadwick seems fully aware of the inbuilt obsolescence of the print version of his study, no URL is given, nor is it listed in the bibliography. The address is www.andrewchadwick.com and, used alongside the book, promises to be a fascinating resource for both students and political actors alike.

He really just doesn’t get it, does he?

“A new contract between the state and the citizen setting out what individuals must do in return for quality services from hospitals, schools and the police is one of the key proposals emerging from a Downing Street initiated policy review.”

Does he even get what the “social contract” is all about? It’s one of the fundamental ideas underlying the British political system, not to mention the birth of modern concepts of liberty and liberalism. Blair’s decision to bring it up – though in a deeply, almost offensively garbled manner – shows once again that his understanding of political theory is rooted firmly in the 17th century. And not the right bit, either: this is Hobbes, not Locke.

You see, the fundamental things that Blair’s missing are that

• a) the social contract is a theoretical concept to explain the development of political subjugation and interrelationships, not a physical, legally-binding piece of paper of the kind he’d have us all sign
• b) the social contract is not imposed upon the people by the state, but upon the state by the people, outlining just what government owes its citizens in order for them to continue to owe the government allegiance

Ignoring the royalist Hobbes (the interpretation of whose theories is, in any case, fraught with ambiguities), in the past, the concept of the social contract was generally advanced from below – the people giving away some aspect of their rights to the state, usually in return for guarantees from the state of protection, order and such like. When contract theory began to advance was usually at time of crisis – during and after the English Civil War, following the deposition of James I at the Glorious Revolution, during the French Revolution and during the American War of Independence. On each occasion, the concept of the social contract was used to demonstrate that the state had betrayed its side of the bargain, not that the people owed more to the state.

Of course, a written social contract could work fine, were – say – the state to agree that if it failed to provide adequate policing, schooling etc. then the citizens affected would no longer have any obligation to pay taxes. But the Blair version of the social contract is a complex and inconsistent beast that seems merely to heap yet more obligations on to the citizen, while removing responsibilities from the state based on the actions of individual citizens. At a glance, and assuming some logical consistency and, well, common decency and reciprocity within the plan, removing obligations from the state might sound like a good thing to some – small government and all that – but this is Blair we’re talking about. Please note the ominous words in that Guardian report,

“what is expected from citizens (beyond paying taxes and obeying the law)” (emphasis mine)

This is not about reducing the size and scope of state/governmental control, but increasing it – because nowhere is mention made of us mere citizens (well, subjects, actually) gaining anything new out of this proposed contract system.

In the original concept of the social contract, the benefits were obvious – peace and security rather than anarchy and chaos. The suggestions of what these new contracts could be made to do include conditions on access to the NHS, to education and even (implicity) to the police’s protection. Blair’s cunning concept of the contract is to reduce the state’s own obligations while increasing those of the people, so that it will be the people to blame when everything comes crashing down – for not upholding their end of the deal.

To an extent, this is a logical offshoot of Blair’s constant efforts to shift the blame throughout his time in office – be it Scottish and Welsh devolution (giving the new executives just enough power to be able to blame them when they cock it up, but not enough so that Downing Street can’t claim a hand in their successes), the localisation of public spending and law-making (again, enough power to blame the councils for tax hikes, but not too much so that central government can’t claim to be the source of beneficial reforms), the whole idea of allowing hospitals and schools to determine their own spending priorities and the like.

Tony has rarely been directly responsible for the failures of the last nine years – he’s always made sure there’s a slight buffer between him and having to take responsibility for his decisions. Even to the extent of (it would seem) trying to set up his mate Lord Levy as fall guy for the loans scandal, and ensuring his other mate, Lord Goldsmith, fixed his legal advice to support the Iraq war to allow Tony to simply say “but the lawyer said it was right, blame him”.

With this new cunning plan, however, (especially with the idea of “individual contracts between parents and schools” implying microscopic levels of detail), Blair would finally divest himself of all legal responsibility towards the people. Anything goes wrong, any public service fails to get delivered – “ah, but you didn’t abide by the terms of your contract”.

Once again, it seems, Blair needs to update his political philosophy library. Rather than this silly fixation with Hobbes, he should get up to speed with Locke, Rousseau, and the American Revolutionaries. Perhaps, most importantly, he should take heed of Proudhon:

“What really is the Social Contract? An agreement of the citizen with the government? No… The social contract is an agreement of man with man; an agreement from which must result what we call society.”

Because, as Rousseau pointed out, with the social contract what is created is a collective will and a collective, mutual responsibility:

“Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole”

What Blair is proposing, in forcing a literal, physical contract between the state and individual citizens, is a destruction of this collective obligation between citizens. He is proposing the destruction of society itself.

Update: A Blair and Hobbes footnote

A passage from Chapter 15 of Jonathan Israel‘s superb Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2001), on Hobbes’ conception of liberty – which bears some striking parallels to Blair’s apparent belief system:

“In Hobbes, liberty of the individual is reduced to that sphere which the sovereign, and laws of the State, do not seek to control: ‘the liberty of a subject, lyeth therefore only in those things, which in regulating their actions, the sovereign hath praetermitted’…

“All participation in the political process, the making of law, and forming of opinion is hence excluded. Hobbes indeed disparages the republican, or positive, concept of freedom… Such liberty he deems antithetical not only to monarchy but to political continuity and stability, accusing those addicted to such ideas of ‘favouring tumults’ and ‘licentious controlling the actions of their sovereigns’. The political liberty republicans extol he considers a ruinious illusion, a mythology manipulated by agitators and factions for their own ends, to undermine and weaken the sovereign.”

Replace “republican” with “liberal”, you’ve pretty much got Blair’s attitude…

(Originally published at Europhobia.)