Demosophia

The Blogospherical Enhancement of Political Wisdom

Glenn Reynolds' TCS article on blogging reminded me of the role played by political parties, and the primary reason they evolved in the 18th Century: to act as "reputation pools." The problem confronted by voters is the reciprocal of the problem confronted by candidates. Absent some systematic way to hold candidates accountable for the campaign promises they make, voters have no reason to believe them. And because candidates can't make credible promises it's difficult for them to differentiate themselves from their opponents and to gain a vote advantage. Strategizing by thinking forward and reasoning back, confronts candidates with a dilemma. Clearly it is necessary to have some sort of institution that can maintain discipline over candidates at a level of rigor required or demanded by the voters (but no more). The logic is similar to the logic that led to the Rule of Law, by which elites voluntarily chose to establish institutions that constrained them, in order to quell feuds. And political parties representing groups of governing elites fit the bill, not only because they could hold candidates to some sort of account, but because they also have a clear incentive to do so: to manage their own credibility with voters and collectively become a sanctioned ruling elite. (Called a Schumpeterian Democracy, for David Schumpeter who initially described it.)

Professor Reynolds observes that it is the "emergent quality of networked referral and critique that makes the blogosphere more than the sum of its parts." And I would also submit that this conforms to a pattern. Like the other emergent phenomena of the past, such as political parties and the rule of law, the maintenance of reputation and status is acceded to by the participants themselves for their own benefit, with the verdict rendered ultimately by others (in this case the readers).

Note, however, that this doesn't replace those other institutions so much as it modifies them. Glenn observes that blogging won't replace conventional news media so much as it will "evolutionize them" by changing the way people use other media. They have begun to operate as a critical factor in the competition between media sources for readers and subscribers. But there is no reason to stop there.

The media pundit Kathleen Hall Jamieson has been making the case for some time that the media can play a more useful role in the electoral process, and has suggested various institutional changes that would facilitate such a role. But the problem is that the "watchers" (the media) have no incentive to watch with any greater care than their watchers demand of them. And on another level the basic problem is that political parties only have an incentive to clamp down on their members to the extent that the voting public demands it. In other words, they also have a countervailing incentive to avoid scrutiny and maintain some latitude for themselves. One might call it maintaining "freedom and license" within the bounds that allow them to compete effectively for votes. And while that may not be their only interest, it's the only interest that can be assumed by voters without the usually uncheckable assumption of virtue.

What we need is a way to provide voters/readers with the equivalent of corrective lenses for their political vision, insight and wisdom. And we happen to have a tool at our disposal that may do just that.

So, to extend Professor Reynolds' analysis, the blogosphere changes the level of resolution with which we are capable of seeing the media, which changes the level of resolution with which the media wants to see the political process (already demonstrated in a number of cases, including the cleanup of the Howell Raines distortion of the "paper of record"), which in turn may change the level of resolution at which political parties feel compelled to maintain their reputation pool free of memes and other detritus of speech and deed. And one might reasonably hope that the utility of such a compound corrective lens for human capacity might come to have both a microscopic and a telescopic function for our fundamental resource: the wisdom of the people.

It's a lot to ask, I know. But the early signs are promising.

Posted by Demosophist at October 22, 2003 05:23 PM | TrackBack