Participatory democracy embodies the notion that an individual can go beyond the purely symbolic act of voting to have a degree of autonomy in decision-making and the ability colonize, and put to use, government resources. We might liken this concept to the ways in which online communities self regulate; the acts of governing their cyberspace are conceived and implemented by users, either high-level senior members or administrators. The instruments of governance are held by the people, a rather vox populi imbued paradigm.
In political science, we learn that one of the enabling conditions, or pre-requisites, of participatory democracy is the process of democratic decentralization; an increase in the scope and depth of subordinate group participation in authoritative resource allocation (to paraphrase Patrick Heller in his 2001 paper, Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre) What this implies is that the state does not recess, but delegates a wider sphere of powers to the lowest echelons of the political community, imbuing them with the resources required to improve their lives. The state retains oversight and an advisory role, acting as enablers of the entire process, rather than active participants in the entire scheme. We see this sort of governance in the Panchayati Raj Institutions of India, which essentially creates venues of village governance with state resources at the disposal of the villagers, and the Orçamento Participativo (Participatory Budgeting Forum) of Porto Alegre.
What would our understanding of democratic decentralization mean when we consider Internet governance? How might these two fields intersect? Whilst I briefly examine these questions, it might be better left to a PHD candidate to thoroughly examine this topic (hopefully I might be able to assume such a role in the coming years!) and it does go well beyond the scope of this blog post to both clarify and list out all the assumptions, critiques, and evidence of success here. I will instead, attempt to provide a vision of what the Internet might look like if democratically decentralized.
With the recent US Federal Court decision to strike down some of the FCC's open Internet rules, we see that Internet service providers, such as Verizon, are now able to capitalize on user trends and open up new revenue streams on the Internet by bundling up access to certain sites in a cable-tv-esque system. This signals a recession of the state, but not in a way that is consistent with the ideals of democratic decentralization. To be consistent, the US Federal Court would have to place the interests of end-users above those of commercial private interests; ISPs included. The role of the ISP would be clarified as one which provides a service as a public good, instead of a luxury good., where it is alright to reap a profit off the provision of services, but the generation of profits is not placed as the first goal of the organization. The idea of net neutrality would place end-users above private commercial interests and enable equal access to all netizens.
Participatory democracy institutions that operate under a democratically decentralized state apparatus form a part of an empowered population, able to voice societal demands for development, and most importantly, able to receive the improvements they decide are most important. If this was the case, the US Congress would pay keen attention to the general consensus regarding the preservation of Network Neutrality, and we would not have seen a Federal Court of Appeal strike down the previous FCC rules. Ideas of what the Internet should look like, or how it should operate, ought to be decided upon by those who hold the end-user interest at heart, rather than the commercialization of the Internet.
If democratically decentralized, states would no longer be able to impose censorship over content and expression on the internet, making it a truly "free" space. However, the state would still be able to engage in surveillance and the prosecution of criminals (pirates, pedophiles and the like), as they will assume the role of an enabler of a safe and clean public space. This dispels the naysayers notion of democratic decentralization leading to a truly anarchic and "moral-free" operationalization of the Internet. Just as the way in which the Indian government provides oversight over its PRI, the various governments of the world would actively engage in policing the code of the Internet for worms, trojans, and other maligned pieces of software that regularly wreak havoc on the end-user. Pause for a moment and envision a world in which the NSA, instead of spying on hundreds of thousands of people, put its computing power to cleaning up the Internet; we would possibly be able to operate on quite a different, and definitely safer, Internet wavelength.
In political science, we learn that one of the enabling conditions, or pre-requisites, of participatory democracy is the process of democratic decentralization; an increase in the scope and depth of subordinate group participation in authoritative resource allocation (to paraphrase Patrick Heller in his 2001 paper, Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre) What this implies is that the state does not recess, but delegates a wider sphere of powers to the lowest echelons of the political community, imbuing them with the resources required to improve their lives. The state retains oversight and an advisory role, acting as enablers of the entire process, rather than active participants in the entire scheme. We see this sort of governance in the Panchayati Raj Institutions of India, which essentially creates venues of village governance with state resources at the disposal of the villagers, and the Orçamento Participativo (Participatory Budgeting Forum) of Porto Alegre.
What would our understanding of democratic decentralization mean when we consider Internet governance? How might these two fields intersect? Whilst I briefly examine these questions, it might be better left to a PHD candidate to thoroughly examine this topic (hopefully I might be able to assume such a role in the coming years!) and it does go well beyond the scope of this blog post to both clarify and list out all the assumptions, critiques, and evidence of success here. I will instead, attempt to provide a vision of what the Internet might look like if democratically decentralized.
With the recent US Federal Court decision to strike down some of the FCC's open Internet rules, we see that Internet service providers, such as Verizon, are now able to capitalize on user trends and open up new revenue streams on the Internet by bundling up access to certain sites in a cable-tv-esque system. This signals a recession of the state, but not in a way that is consistent with the ideals of democratic decentralization. To be consistent, the US Federal Court would have to place the interests of end-users above those of commercial private interests; ISPs included. The role of the ISP would be clarified as one which provides a service as a public good, instead of a luxury good., where it is alright to reap a profit off the provision of services, but the generation of profits is not placed as the first goal of the organization. The idea of net neutrality would place end-users above private commercial interests and enable equal access to all netizens.
Participatory democracy institutions that operate under a democratically decentralized state apparatus form a part of an empowered population, able to voice societal demands for development, and most importantly, able to receive the improvements they decide are most important. If this was the case, the US Congress would pay keen attention to the general consensus regarding the preservation of Network Neutrality, and we would not have seen a Federal Court of Appeal strike down the previous FCC rules. Ideas of what the Internet should look like, or how it should operate, ought to be decided upon by those who hold the end-user interest at heart, rather than the commercialization of the Internet.
If democratically decentralized, states would no longer be able to impose censorship over content and expression on the internet, making it a truly "free" space. However, the state would still be able to engage in surveillance and the prosecution of criminals (pirates, pedophiles and the like), as they will assume the role of an enabler of a safe and clean public space. This dispels the naysayers notion of democratic decentralization leading to a truly anarchic and "moral-free" operationalization of the Internet. Just as the way in which the Indian government provides oversight over its PRI, the various governments of the world would actively engage in policing the code of the Internet for worms, trojans, and other maligned pieces of software that regularly wreak havoc on the end-user. Pause for a moment and envision a world in which the NSA, instead of spying on hundreds of thousands of people, put its computing power to cleaning up the Internet; we would possibly be able to operate on quite a different, and definitely safer, Internet wavelength.
To conclude, the notion of democratic decentralization on the Internet seems almost utopian at this point; the current trajectory of government involvement on the Internet is tending towards the glorification of private commercial interests at the expense of the interests of the end-user. What might be a premature concept right now, I'm sure that as I progress in my independent study, I will be able to conceive of ways in which we might promote this idea of a nexus between political science and Internet governance, in a way that might produce incentives to states in placing more importance on netizens rather than ISPs.
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