[governance] Democracy (was Re: Remarks at UNESCO Closing Ceremony of "Connecting the Dots Conference")

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> The literal meaning of δημοκρατία (dēmokratía), in modern language
> "democracy", is that "it's the people who have the power to rule". This is
> since ancient times seen in contrast to "the rule of an elite", the ancient
> Greek term for the latter being ἀριστοκρατία (aristokratía).

And in that respect none of us really supports "democracy" do we? if it means that 'the people' (and who is that, exactly?) has the power to hang us without trial (it's called lynching in America), suppress minority viewpoints, etc. It's also true that we do have a choice other than elite rule and mob rule: rule of law.  

> How democratic governance, in the sense of that literal meaning, is to be
> implemented in an increasingly globalized and increasingly ICT-based world
> (of which the Internet is nowadays already a rather central aspect, and it is
> widely expected that the centrality of the Internet will continue to grow),
> that is something that requires discussion and consensus building.

Yes, but it requires a hell of a lot more than discussion and consensus building. The definition of a 'people' with the ability to rule requires a substantial institutional infrastructure, as I argued in my last post. But you seem to accept this argument further down in your post so I won't belabor it.

> In fact much of what goes wrong in the governance of national states which
> are democratic (or which at least claim to be democratic) can be blamed on
> the fact that even in such states (despite all the checks and balances and
> other good countermeasures against elites gaining unreasonable power)
> there are often still elites which gain a lot of power and abuse it for their
> own gain; the resulting anger of the people is then exploited by populists.

Interesting that you attribute all the problems with 'democracy' to some small elites, the bad guys, and not to irrational or greedy decisions by 'the people' themselves. So the people can never be wrong, or never be manipulated? 

> The way to improve political systems in order to reduce this kind of
> phenomenon is not to give up on the ideal of democracy, but to implement
> it more effectively, so that there will be less abuse of power by elites, and
> therefore less public anger, and therefore less opportunity for populists who
> will try to exploit such anger whenever they 

I am not giving up on the ideal of democracy, which to me means popular sovereignty. There are two things missing from these overly simple discussion of democratic governance, however.

One is that there is a lot about the internet that we _don't_ want to be centrally governed. Indeed, its resistance to central control is one of the reasons for its success. 

The other is the role of the market. You can't have a complex, post-industrial society without markets, and yet this kind of choice or self-governance is always unpopular with politicians, whether of democratic or oligarchic stripe, because it limits their power. Furthermore, complex market economies introduce a need for expertise in regulation. Regulation or intervention in markets that is politically popular but ill-informed can be utterly disastrous, as various financial crises ranging from the great depression to the 2008 mortgage bubble demonstrate. Greek governments who spent more than they had were very popular with 'the people.' Paying the debt is never popular. Since the Internet is a product entirely of market-oriented, neoliberal policies, I am always curious about this huge gap in the thinking of democratic governance advocates. 

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