What would Samuel Huntington say about Dev 2.0?
There is little question that the advent of technologies like the mobile phone have been a great boon to economic development around the world. But every new technology brings along with it the potential - or perhaps even the necessity - of disruption. Generally, this kind of disruption is usually a good thing, as it helps break up incumbent (and less efficient) firms, or at the very least forces incumbents to innovate. (I'm thinking, for example, of M-Pesa in Kenya.)
But there is no controlling this kind of process, and the disruptions are not limited to economic life. Social activism gets a boost from these kinds of technologies, and we see everything from an African bloggers conference to highly effective environmental activism. In other words, these technologies hold out a special democratic promise. But therein also lies the risk.
Samuel Huntington, perhaps the most noted political scientist of the 20th century, warns of the threat of political decay in his classic work Political Order in Changing Societies:
If a society is to maintain a high level of community, the expansion of political participation must be accompanied by the development of stronger, more complex, and more autonomous political institutions. The effect of the expansion of political participation, however, is usually to undermine the traditional political institutions and to obstruct the development of modern political ones. Modernization and social mobilization, in particular, thus tend to produce political decay unless steps are taken to moderate or to restrict its impact on political consciousness and political involvement.
If we blindly apply Huntington's line of thinking to Dev 2.0 technologies, then we arrive at the painful conclusion that these technologies threaten development because they increase political participation while doing nothing to increase the capacity of political institutions to handle these demands. But I am too much of a techno-optimist to agree with that. The crux of the issue is how these techologies can be used to help empower political institutions to better handle political demands. I am curious to hear readers' thoughts on this - are you a techno-optimist or a techno-pessimist?
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Ryan, disclaimer: this is NOT a provocative question. I am not much of an expert in political science, and I may have gotten it all wrong. But professor Huntington seems to have a knack for milking the most gloom out of stuff. I read "The Clash of Civilizations" and was like, hey, where's the data to back this stuff up? For example is not a proof.
So "to undermine the traditional political institutions and to obstruct the development of modern political ones" does not seem to be a very solid statement. What sort of timeline are we looking at? I suppose the French Revolution must have looked like chaos in 1789, but eventually it did a pretty good job to foster the development of modern political institutions. I am not really qualified for this, but you or someone should run a good bulls#!t meter on this stuff, even before deciding whether we are techno-optimists or techno-pessimists.
Posted by: Alberto Cottica | Apr 24, 2009 6:14:19 PM
To Alberto,
I appreciate the challenge - otherwise, blogging would be much less interesting!
As far as Huntington goes, yes, everything I have read by him is quite theoretical and not backed up by much empirical data. But I think when he wrote the book I cite, political science was only just becoming a data-based endeavor - it was still very much a debate over different theories. In any case, I was just using Huntington to make a point that I think stands on its own, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.
The point is this: my sense is that Web 2.0 plus all the other advances in telecommunications are brilliant at enabling us to express our demands and interests and also at the first stages of aggregating those interests. Where these tools still seem to come up short - at least in the realm of government and governance - is helping institutionalize those interests. This is the difference between the "demos" - rule by the mob - and democracy - rule by a set of institutions, laws, norms, and the like that we agree on through some system that aggregates our interests in a fair way. I think what we need to do is figure out how Web 2.0 can help us do the latter thing better; otherwise, we end up with more of "demos" and less of democracy.
Posted by: Ryan Hahn | Apr 27, 2009 10:00:32 AM