Page 254 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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CY101-Bimber
August 14, 2002
A Brief Comparison with Other Nations
understanding as well as to coordinate more directly the behavioral ele-
ments of collective action.
Even more so than in the United States, empirical conclusions about
the relationship around the world between changes in the properties of
information and political processes or structure must be drawn care-
fully, because of the early stage of the evidence. This is true for both
individual-level effects and organizational effects. At the individual level
in particular, it is yet unclear to what extent the U.S. pattern exists else-
where.Itislikelythattherelationshipbetweenchangesintheinformation
environment and participation rates that is so weak in the United States
may prove stronger in other political systems. 15 The strength of this re-
lationship is likely to be a function of the constraints on opportunities
for political participation in prior information regimes and of the extent
of state dominance of political communication. In systems similar to
those of the United States that have long traditions of opportunities for
civic engagement of various kinds, reasonably transparent government
processes connected to competitive private media, and a reasonably long
history of universal or near-universal suffrage, contemporary develop-
mentsininformationtechnologymayleadtolittleinthewayofexpanded
individual-level participation. In systems with weaker traditional infra-
structure for political organization and more highly constrained tradi-
tional media systems, individual-level effects may be greater. In nations
that remain media-poor and which have had fewer opportunities for en-
gagement, the best comparison with the United States may be the first
information revolution rather than the contemporary one.
For these reasons, fewer individual-level effects may emerge in
Australia, Great Britain, Germany, and Canada than in former Soviet
republics and parts of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. However, the
effects of new, more open media in many countries will be regulated to
a large degree by the success of their states to control communication in
new technological environments. China provides one of the best exam-
ples of formidable state efforts to prevent new communication channels
and flows of political information from providing novel opportunities
for political organization, but many other nations are also attempting to
exert as much control over new media as old. In Laos, for example, the
government issued an “Internet Decree” in 1997, aimed at preventing
market-based organization or citizen-driven political activity using new
15
Dana Ott and Melissa Rosser, “The Electronic Republic? The Role of the Internet in
Promoting Democracy in Africa,” in Ferdinand, ed., The Internet, Democracy, and
Democratization, pp. 137–156.

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