Politics, Public Policy
& eDemocracy?
Some thoughts and challenges for the
Networked Society

Outline
• The State in Crisis?: a view from the
academe
• Political Campaigning: The Obama
Effect
• Public Policy 2.0: What works; what
doesn’t
• Just what is eDemocracy?

The State in Crisis: Manuel Castells
 Vertical, hierarchical
organisations are
collapsing into
horizontal networks
 Major challenge for
parties, governments and
states controlling the
flow and use of
information [power] in
networks
 Internet, in particular,
is driving growth of
‘informational politics’

Peer Production: Yochai Benkler
 Commons Based Peer
Production:
‚the emergence of a new
information environment,
in which individuals are
free to take a more
active role than was
possible in the
industrial information
economy of the twentieth
century.”

Political Campaigning: The
Obama Effect

US President in 3 easy steps!
 Took messages to existing online
communities
 Empowered individuals to tell the ‘Obama
Story’ on their behalf
 Understood the network effect and built
solid foundations ready to scale
accordingly

The Obama Campaign By Numbers

Insight 1. Long-tail Donations
 Growing trend of micro-financing
political campaigns

Insight 2. Death of the Soundbite
 Voters watched campaign content – all
the way through
 Up to 17 mins per video

Insight 3. Networks vs Campaigns
 Network is more powerful than Campaign
 Messages can spread much faster and effectively
 Networks are resilient, but not nimble
 If you have a network of 5,000 bloggers and one says
something stupid then it’s not the end of world.
However, if you take away the central co-ordinating
point they’re not easily corralled
 Networks and campaigns can be allies, but they
ultimately have cross-purposes
 Campaigns share tasks but not authority with their
supporters

LabList vs ConHome
“Labhome is a community
for people to talk to each
other - LabList will be a
content engine, offering
insight, thoughts, news,
[about Labour].\"

Public Policy 2.0
What works; what doesn’t

Guido Speaks...
‚The Wiki idea is a good one for
collaborative projects.
Politics is not collaborative.
The reality is that politics is
a clash of ideas and ideology
as well as parties. Only a
deluded wonk would overlook
that non-trivial detail.‛
‚Miliband does not really care
what the \"citizens\" think. The
Wiki was a PR exercise in sham
consultation ...”

Just what is eDemocracy?

eDemocracy: a definition
‚making [democratic] processes more
accessible; making citizen
participation in public policy
decision-making more expansive and
direct to enable broader influence in
policy outcomes and keeping the
government closer to the consent of
the governed thereby increasing its
political legitimacy.‛

...but what if...

eDemocracy: an example?
- MPs' expenses, by amount, on a map

If you get it, share it...
Further reading:
 Felix Stalder (2006) Manuel Castells.
 Yochai Benkler (2005) The Wealth of
Networks.
 Dave Briggs http://davepress.net
 FutureGov www.futuregovconsultancy.com
 Extended Reach
http://extendedreach.wordpress.com
 Digital Gov UK on Delicious
http://delicious.com/tag/digitalgovuk

Thank You!

Simon Collister
Head of Digital
Weber Shandwick
www.simoncollister.com
linkedin.com/simoncollister
twitter.com/simoncollister
07971 612857