Page 256 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Dahl’s Equality Proposition
DAHL’S EQUALITY PROPOSITION
If information abundance tends to facilitate collective action, then im-
portant normative questions arise, especially regarding political equality.
In Democracy and Its Critics, published in 1989, Robert Dahl concludes
his evaluation of democracy with an intriguing argument that antici-
pates questions about the Internet and equality. For Dahl, the pursuit of
political equality is not simply a political end in itself, but rather a means
to freedom and self-determination, which are the ultimate objectives of
democracy. He rejects the view that advances in equality must be paid for
in freedom. Instead, he justifies a set of democratic arrangements that
advance equality because they serve “freedom, human development, and
human worth.” 18
Dahl approaches inequality as the product of the uneven distribution
of political resources of three major kinds: those that permit violent
coercion, those stemming from economic position, and those involving
knowledge, information, and cognitive skills. As to the first of these, Dahl
prescribes arrangements needed for civilian governance of military and
police. As to the second, he defends a conception of market democracy,
rejecting the assumption that citizens in the market are simply pro-
ducers or consumers of goods, freely entering into economic contracts
absent relations of power or authority. He would require economic
arrangements to be “instrumental not merely to the production and
distribution of goods and services but to a much larger range of values,
including democratic values.” 19
It is the third and last category of unevenly distributed resources that
concerns us here: knowledge and information. This obstacle to equality
Dahl views as the most formidable of all. 20 Even more than the polit-
ical power that derives from economic position, the political power of
unevenly distributed knowledge and information constrains the achieve-
ment of equality, he argues. “For I am inclined to think that the long-run
prospects for democracy are more seriously endangered by inequalities
in resources, strategic positions, and bargaining strength that are derived
not from wealth or economic position but from special knowledge.” 21
The locus of informational inequality lies in two interconnected
phenomena: (1) the increasing complexity of public policy and gov-
ernment action; and (2) the rise of institutionalized policy elites and

18
Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989),
p. 323.
19 20 21
Ibid., p. 324. Ibid., p. 333. Ibid.
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