The Three Faces of Government in the Age of the Internet and the future of Activism within a condition of shared weakness 

Paper prepared for The New Media and Democratic Elections panel, Re-activism: Re-drawing the Boundaries of Activism , October 13-15, 2005, Central European University , Budapest , Hungary

 

Introduction: The Three Faces Framework

 

The technological revolution of the last decade has spurred a radical transformation in the concepts and matrix of Government and Governance worldwide. The meaning of this radical transformation is encapsulated in a hyphened highly debated and already very popular word: e-government. That hyphen itself can be seen either, positively, as the symbolic link between the past and the future of government institutions or, negatively, simply as the mark of an impossible hybrid.

This paper aims at sketching out the boundaries of the future battleground for political activism within the tightening meshes of the network society. To do so, I initially argue that to understand properly that radical transformation one must first fully comprehend the concept of e-government.

Technically speaking, e-Government or electronic government is often defined as the use of information technology's unique characteristics 1 in matters of governance to enhance and provide a better, more sophisticated, fast and smooth, service delivery to citizens and businesses (US General Accounting Office, 2002: 4; United Nations, 2003: 1; Graafland-Essers and Ettedgui, 2003: 5). On a larger scale though, e-Government is perceived – or advertised – not only as an opportunity for governments worldwide to drastically cut the cost of bureaucracy, and increase its efficiency, but it is also regarded as an invaluable tool for bridging up the gap between the citizens and the executive and the legislative powers. One of the pillars of the ongoing process of reinventing and enhancing democracy in the 21st century, is represented by the difficult goal of re-establishing contact – that is to say trust and dialogue – between the State and the Citizens; within that context, e-government is understood as the key step in achieving such a goal. In fact, as some scholars remark, the marriage of government with Information Technologies will allow the government not only to do “ things that [it] has always done differently [but also to do] new things that it did not do before” ( Margetts, 2003: 13). In the long run, it might bring with it a rich dowry of “multiple [positive] consequences for different aspects of Democracy”, for example “strengthening transparency by publishing official information about regulations, policies and procedures […] or […] stimulating civic activism through public consultation or providing opportunities for citizens to cast an electronic ballot.” (Norris, 2003a: 3)

However, contrary to what most of the literature focuses on, the concept of e-Government does not only signify efficiency gains and economical benefits – for both the government and its subjects. But more distinctively it underpins the changing and thickening relation between government and power in the age of the internet, which is, in my opinion, the most striking, yet complex, element embedded in this transformation.

In this paper, I argue that the e-government revolution, potentially, carries with it two different outcomes: on one hand, in the long run, the overall e-government project could represent a greater and long lasting threat for citizens' life and freedom. On the other hand though, it could be an unrepeatable opportunity to find a suitable answer for an old, yet unanswered question: can human beings find durable ways to seize, balance and control power?

In short, my argument here is that within the wide milieu of a highly advanced technological society , whose backbone is represented by a 24/7 online network of nodes exchanging an unlimited quantity of data, the means of holding and using power radically change as it changes the relation between those who use power and those who are affected by that power. With the help of a three faces framework , I will demonstrate that e-government is not simply the technical enhancement of a government' ordinary businesses, a multiple stages process to achieve the highest quality of service delivery. But instead, from the perspective of power and the network society , it is rather something more complex than that: once the final stage of this long process is reached, that is to say once the virtual government – as I call this stage – is fully operational, we will end up dealing with a more sophisticated – if not an entirely brand new – political creature. A creature with three different faces, that is to say three different ways of relating itself with power. These three faces, however, are by no means to be taken as true descriptions of existing realities, rather each of them is an idealtype , “an intentionally produced mental construct or [as Umberto Eco calls it] cognitive type that is very useful for heuristic and expository purposes, for naming and clarifying the myriad of elements of a complex social reality, even though it cannot be found in such pure form anywhere within the social world itself.” (Keane, 2003: 8. Emphasis added. )

In the first part of this paper, giving a broad overview on how the passage to e-government is understood and/or advertised, I describe its political perspective and expectations, that is to say its technical stages, promises, hopes and problems. In the second part, I illustrate the three faces of government in the age of the Internet. In sum, t he first face is the one that sees e-Government as: 1) as Service Provider or the evolution of the state from the Weberian bureaucratic structure to a new fully digitalized, flexible, truly reliable and open service provider which creates a more friendly relationship between the government and its subjects . Within the context of democratic states, the theory behind this first face is that, while stepping into the digital age and describing this shift to the e-status as a huge improvement for the quality of life of its citizens, governments are in reality, and in a rather seemingly inoffensive way, laying down the foundations for a new environment and a new mechanism of securing the compliance of the willing subjects . To clarify beforehand, I am not here stating that that is the hidden agenda of governments worldwide starting the digitalization of their businesses. Nonetheless, pointing out with Steven Lukes that “the exercise of power does not require being intelligent and intentional ” (2005: 136 – emphasis added ), it is my opinion that the unexpected outcomes of such revolution are potentially shaping up that kind of society.

2) The second face is the one that considers e-Government as the quintessential Digital Big Brother . It is the one more feared by scholars and internet users. In this section, I will argue that the e-government revolution reinforces a state's power over its subjects, providing the government with better tools of surveillance. In other words, the internet seen as a strong amplifier of already existing patterns of authoritarian power . To depict it, I will focus my attention on the People's Republic of China .

3) The third face is the one that sees e-Government as One-among-Many . To be more precise, the global network that serves as infrastructure for the e-government project is owned by no one. Within this context, a government is just one of the many users – by no means the owner – of that infrastructure. Being part of such a network spawns what I call a condition of shared weakness among its users. Focusing my attention on the work of political activist groups and watchdog organizations such as MoveOn. org, DynaWeb , and Reporters without Borders , I will show that this condition of shared weakness can eventually undermine a government's power by making it vulnerable to intrusion and more open to accountability.

 

1) According to Helen Margetts, Professor of Society and the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute, the main important characteristics of Information Technologies are 1) ‘[t]he ability to store huge amounts of information'; 2 ‘the ability to transfer that information within and across organisational units and thereby link them up'; and 3) ‘the ability to perform complex calculations on that information.' (Margetts, 2003)

 

 

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