Are “the people” a problem for technology to solve?
One of the benefits of the Internet has been the increased ease with which citizens can learn about their governments. Just as important has been the increased opportunity to tell elected representatives and public officials, along with their hired guns in federal, state, and local bureaucracies, just what they think.
Technology has given democracy a second lease on life.
But that doesn’t mean that politicians aren’t fighting back. And finding service providers and consultants to help them.
According to Michael Cohen, co-founder of Peak Democracy, Inc., online public comment forums can have awful consequences for politicians. They may fall prey to the dreaded “Referendum Effect.” This malady, Cohen explains, is
the loss of decision-making autonomy that government leaders incur when a community expects decisions to be based solely on the majority opinion of public feedback. More specifically, the Referendum Effect occurs when public feedback usurps the decision-making independence of government leaders.
Note the assumption here: government leaders should be “independent” of the voters.
Another way he counsels the International City/County Management Association “to minimize the Referendum Effect is to exclude the word ‘vote’ from the user interface – as the ‘v-word’ can create an expectation that feedback with the most votes wins.”
Cohen ends with an offer: “To learn more about the Referendum Effect and ways to prevent it, contact Mike@PeakDemocracy.com.”
Cohen is more than willing to advise how to keep pesky citizens from actually having an effective voice online. If you want to keep yours, meet his e-realpolitik with e-vigilance.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: Robert J. O’Neill, Jr. (roneill@icma.org) is the executive director of the International City/County Management Association, which published Cohen’s comments.
12 replies on “Those Pesky Online Citizens”
“…Another way he councils the International…” Paul, you mean “counsels”
Dear Paul, I respectfully disagree.
The worst of all governments is the tyrany of the majority. We initially had a constitutionally limited republic. The key word is limited.
We are not in the majority.
In the current realpolitik, the majority is agreeing with the progressives to plunder the minority. An easy system and habit to establish as long as you always promise a benefit to over 50% and tax or burden less than 50%.
This is the end stage as predicted by Bastiat in “The
Law”.
Thanks, Ward.
John — The politicians are fleecing the minority and offering goodies to the majority, but the majority of the people are NOT voting for these goodies. Note both Obamacare and Bush’s prescription drug benefit. Plus, the ICMA is not advising local gov’ts on how to avoid spending, but on how to spend as they darn well please without having to listen to the voters. That won’t lead to less spending but more. I don’t blindly trust the people, but I trust them a WHOLE LOT more than i trust the pols. Especially if the pols aren’t checked by the people in a democratic way.
Who introduced democracy into the discusion.
It was supposed to be a representative republic.
ONE (just one) of the problems with the Internet voting is that one can vote (as the old Chicago saying goes) early and often.
The Internet allows one to use any name (ie. the email giants, like yahoo; gmail; hotmail; etc) allow anyone to open an account, with any name. Don’t believe me–try it.
So, for example, I can open 15-20 or more accounts, and vote, each time, as a different person.
To prevent a sharpie from checking where the vote came from ( the site, I think-I am not a techie)-one can go to a library; their home, etc and use different computers.
It is really interesting that the age of the TV set has passed, and with the worldwide web, people tend to make their own experience. It is just like life. Life is recursive, right? (: But what we see is that user-generated content is enjoyed as much, or more, than expensive, pathetic studio offerings.
This is proving to be a shock to the elites in academia, the me-jah, in federal positions, and in entertainment. It appears as if these elites are having a great difficulty in being honest with themselves. For example, this self-appointed “thought leader,” Michael Cohen, whom Paul Jacob has expertly spotlighted, shows just how impossible it is for elites to admit to themselves that all they had was a captive audience, and when given a choice, people ignore them.
I’ve sent Mr. Cohen an E-mail message, “The way I see it, the greater control that the public has over America’s only native criminal class, the better. What we don’t need is a political class having `autonomy.’ They are already too arrogant.”
Maybe a lot of others ought to send similar messages, too.
Cohen joins the rent-seekers living off money from others, by selling to politicians something they don’t need, but want because they don’t want to be bothered by voters, nor subject to speech exposing their acts.
But the folks we should be angry with are politicians who want to “restrict free speech” as this is what Cohen is advocating.
If someone can’t handle the pressure (from voters), they shouldn’t be in the pressure cooker.
The peasants are revolting.
If California bankrupts and gets a federal bailout, I am going to start campaigning in my state for us to go bankrupt absolutely as soon as possible. Big advantage to the states that crash first, while the national system is still afloat.
Paul and Others,
Thanks for reading and critiquing my blog post on the referendum effect.
Your feedback has made me realize that I my article needs to be more precise in explaining that the referendum effect is only a problem when the public hearing feedback is not representative of the community.
Therefore, I posted a more comprehensive article on GovLoop.com:
http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/public-hearings-can-create-an-influence-distortion-field-but-this
Thanks again for your feedback.
Mike
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