The information technology revolution is transforming business and the economy, leading to the creation of entirely new markets and the transformation (and sometimes destruction) of old ones. Its consequences for politics are more subtle but equally profound. New technologies—including most particularly the Internet but also advances in telecommunications, in cryptography, in database and data-mining techniques, and other innovations—are not leading to the immediate and radical transformation of politics as some predicted. But they are demonstrably reshaping key areas of political activity, including electoral campaigns, political participation, and interstate relations.
The most important—and controversial—area where information technology and politics intersect is the Internet. The Internet in its early years appeared unlikely to be consequential for politics. Its core user base was restricted to academics and researchers who were comfortable with the often technically demanding tools that were required to access it. However, the advent of the World Wide Web, which was initially based on the simple text formatting language hypertext markup language (HTML) and a set of associated protocols, made it much easier for individuals without technical skills to use the Internet. These individuals could use browsers such as Mosaic (released in 1993) and Netscape Navigator (released in 1994) to access online content easily. The decision of the U.S. government (which still effectively had final say over important aspects of the Internet) to allow commercial use of the Internet further helped to precipitate an explosion in online activity.
Early debates about the political consequences of the Internet focused on whether it would weaken the power of states. Many prominent early adopters of the technology were strongly libertarian and embraced the technology because it seemed to offer a solution to the problems of government censorship and control. Over time, these debates gave way to a rough empirical consensus as it became increasingly clear that governments were both willing and able to regulate new information and communication technologies. Thus, for example, claims about how the Internet rendered censorship nearly impossible were undermined by the ability of states such as China and Saudi Arabia to shape their domestic communications networks in ways that made censorship easier (although far from perfect). Ready access to new forms of cryptography did not empower individuals, although it did help foster e-commerce. Indeed, new information technologies potentially empowered states to do things that they would previously have had difficulty doing. For example, cheap storage and vast increases in computer power allowed states to collect and order vast amounts of data about their citizens and perhaps to mine the data for interesting and otherwise nonobvious relationships.
The resurgence of the state, together with the more ready availability of empirical data, has transformed debates about the impact of new information technologies on politics. Rather than making broad arguments about whether new technologies are likely to result in secular changes to the political system, scholars are beginning to try to identify more specific mechanisms through which these new technologies may have particular consequences for specific areas of politics. Some of these mechanisms are beginning to become apparent but have as yet received little academic attention. For example, the vast increase in the availability of technical information about government and politics is surely affecting the balance of political power, yet we know very little about who is accessing this information and how they are using it. The political consequences will be quite different depending on whether the information is used by ordinary citizens, by specialized actors, or by partisan operatives. Other mechanisms have attracted more attention. Much work has been done on how the Internet affects politicians’ electoral strategies, and work is beginning to emerge on its consequences for citizens’ political attitudes. Scholars are also beginning to examine broader forms of politics, asking whether the Internet affects nondemocratic countries’ prospects for democratization and about the degree of political interdependence between states in a globalized world. The rest of this article will briefly survey how information technology is affecting political polarization and electoral politics in the United States and how it is affecting international interdependence and the politics of democratization. This provides at least the beginnings of an overview of how political scientists are beginning to take account of the impact of information technology on American politics, international relations, and comparative politics.
Political Polarization
There is consensus among scholars of American politics that the past few decades have seen more polarized politics, although scholars disagree about whether this polarization results from the interactions of parties and politicians or from deeper divisions in the electorate. A significant body of recent work has explored the extent to which greater media choice helps spur polarization.
The basic logic of this argument is laid out in Markus Prior’s 2007 book Post-broadcast Democracy. Prior uses data from cable television to argue that increased media choice allows individuals with little direct interest in politics, who tend to be moderate in their views, to avoid exposure to political information more easily. This makes them less likely to become mobilized around political issues. In contrast, people with a strong interest in politics, who tend to be more partisan than the average, can consume political information more easily, making them more likely to become mobilized along partisan lines. Thus, politically apathetic moderates are able to escape politics more easily, whereas politically interested partisans have more opportunity to consume political information and hence to engage in political activity.
The Internet provides a much greater profusion of choices than does cable television; thus, we may expect it to have even starker consequences for polarization. As a result, scholars such as Cass Sunstein (2001), in Republic.com, have explicitly worried that the Internet is likely to lead to increased balkanization and polarization. Sunstein argues that the Internet leads to less cross-exposure between people with different points of view and hence weaker tendencies toward moderation and mutual tolerance. He uses experimental data from social psychology to underline his claim that people are likely to adopt increasingly extreme positions when they talk only to others who share their points of view.
The empirical data appear to offer at least some support to Prior’s and Sunstein’s arguments (even if they have little to say about the normative concerns underpinning Sunstein’s fears). Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance (2005) have shown using network data about hyperlinks between blogs (the most important online forum for political discussion in the United States) that blogs are clearly polarized. Left-leaning bloggers tend overwhelmingly to link to other left-wingers, while right-wing bloggers link overwhelmingly to other right-wingers. There are similarly sharp differences in the kinds of nonblog content that left-wing and right-wing bloggers tend to link to. Henry Farrell, Eric Lawrence, and John Sides (forthcoming) find that blog readers are demonstrably more polarized on topical political issues than consumers of traditional news media (including viewers of obviously partisan networks such as Fox News).
Even so, Eszter Hargittai and her colleagues (2008) find no evidence that this polarization is increasing over time, and they use qualitative data to point to the existence of real (albeit only occasional) substantive discussion between left-wing and right-wing bloggers. This suggests that blogs are more than mere echo chambers, even if bloggers’ arguments are largely conducted along partisan lines. Furthermore, there are also online spaces that are not as directly polarized where people are indeed exposed frequently to differing points of view; Wojcieszak and Mutz (forthcoming) find that hobby discussion forums regularly lead to political discussion and expose people to others with differing points of view.
Electoral Campaigns
Information technology plays a key role in electoral campaigning, especially in the United States. Data mining, micro targeting on the basis of extensive electronic data, and Internet communication are important components of the political consultant’s toolkit. Yet the role of these technologies has changed dramatically over time and can be expected to change further. Bruce Bimber and Richard Davis (2003) studied the role of new technologies in the 2000 election by examining largely static candidates’ Web sites. By 2004, Democrats had begun to explore the Internet’s potential for electronic fund-raising, while Republicans sought to combine traditional social networks with micro-targeting techniques borrowed from advertising. In 2008, both major party presidential candidates tried to build participatory Web sites that would spur activist involvement and to create online systems that would integrate information from volunteers with other forms of data to allow more sophisticated targeting of voters.
Political scientists have had some difficulty in keeping up with this breakneck pace of developments. Nonetheless, they have begun to arrive at some provisional conclusions regarding the consequences of new technologies for elections. First, and most important, there is no evidence to date that the Internet itself plays a major role in mobilizing voters. Experimental research by David Nickerson (2007) finds no evidence that targeted e-mail affects either voter registration or voter turnout. This is not to say that online activity has no consequences whatsoever for participation. Donald Green and Alan Gerber find that MoveOn.org’s mobilization efforts in the 2004 elections had a statistically significant and positive effect on voter turnout. MoveOn.org consists of a skeletal organizational structure combined with a massive e-mail list; while it did not use e-mail as a form of voter contact, it certainly used e-mail to organize the volunteers who then made face-to-face contact with potential voters.
There is clearer evidence that information technology is consequential in allowing politicians to gather information about voters from various databases and use it to narrowly target advertising at likely swing voters. Sunshine Hillygus and Todd Shields (2008) argue that new data-mining techniques have helped politicians to find and use “wedge issues” that are aimed at realigning voters who disagree with their party on one or more key issues. By analyzing voters’ consumption patterns, media choices, and so on, it may be easier to identify “persuadable” voters and send them specifically targeted messages that are designed to stop their voting from their usual party and, ideally, defect to the other side.
Electoral fund-raising in the United States is being transformed by the Internet. Typically, candidates have had to turn either to major donors (who may want quid pro quos) or to mailing lists of smaller donors, which are expensive and difficult to maintain. In contrast, the Internet allows candidates to raise money from small donors with very little overhead. The evidence suggests that this may have impressive consequences. In the 2008 presidential campaign, the Democratic candidate Barack Obama attracted literally millions of donors to give via the Internet and hence found it to his advantage to forgo public matching funds that would have limited his overall fundraising. While the Internet has greatly increased the pool of potential donors, there is little empirical evidence available as to what these donors (especially small donors) look like, as compared with previous generations of donors. However, on the basis of raw numbers, it is likely that large donors and individuals able to bundle large numbers of donations together are likely to be less influential than in the past and that insurgent primary candidates with little support in the party machine will find it easier than before to raise sufficient money to put together a serious challenge.
Global Interdependence
One of the most important themes of international relations scholarship over the past thirty years has been the increase in interdependence between different countries. States increasingly find that their policy choices are intertwined with the choices made by other states, creating incentives to manage unwanted side effects through a variety of bilateral and multilateral arrangements. As Suzanne Berger (2000) has argued, this has led to increasing controversy as international relationships have come to impinge on sensitive domestic issues. New information technologies have considerably exacerbated these tensions, potentially undermining previously existing national bargains regarding pornography, gambling, intellectual property, and controversial political content. States that seek to limit their citizens’ access to these goods may find it difficult to prevent citizens from accessing this content via overseas Web sites. This is particularly likely to be a problem for democracies (such as the United States) that have ruled out the kinds of far-reaching controls over Inter net communications that author itarian regimes frequently impose. Such states may seek to defend their values, and indeed spread them, by pressing private actors that are present in multiple jurisdictions into service on their behalf. Such private actors may extend the effective reach of states beyond their own jurisdictions. However, by the same token, they may impose adjustment costs on other states, presenting the problem of interdependence again in a new form.
The U.S. domestic gambling regime is an excellent example of how the Internet exacerbates problems of interdependence. While many states within the United States allow gambling, federal laws that restrict gambling across state lines have been interpreted as banning Internet gambling. This prompted gambling operators to open operations overseas in jurisdictions such as Antigua, the United Kingdom, and Gibraltar that were accessible to (and marketed to) U.S. citizens but that were beyond the effective reach of U.S. authorities. These operations proved highly successful, presenting U.S. authorities with a clear challenge to their authority.
The U.S. response was to use private actor intermediaries to seek to reimpose controls on U.S. citizens’ online gambling. U.S. authorities forced financial intermediaries (such as credit card companies) and carriers of advertising (such as cable television and U.S.-based Web sites) to stop cooperating with offshore gambling operations targeted at the United States. In late 2006, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that cemented this regime, making it unambiguously clear that financial institutions that cooperated with illegal Internet gambling sites were breaking the law.
These measures have had only limited success. While they have certainly made it more difficult for U.S. citizens to gamble online, they have not stopped them. While hard data are difficult to come by, there is strong circumstantial evidence that illegal Internet gambling is thriving in the United States. Not only is it difficult for financial intermediaries properly to monitor the relevant transactions, but financial institutions have incentive to do only the bare minimum that the law requires of them. However, they have clearly imposed substantial adjustment costs on third-party jurisdictions. Antigua, which had been home to many offshore gambling companies, saw its local gambling industry collapse as a result of U.S. sanctions and sought remedy at the World Trade Organization, with some success. The United Kingdom saw billions of dollars wiped off the value of UK-listed companies and significant burdens placed on UK-based financial services firms that had little choice but to comply with the U.S. regime if they wished to retain significant contacts in the United States.
In summary, the U.S. response illustrates how states may respond to problems of interdependence in ways that exacerbate these problems for other states. As the Internet and other forms of global communication place continued pressure on sensitive domestic bargains concerning social values, we may expect to see more tensions like this emerge.
Democratization And Information Technology
There has been much discussion among media and policy elites about the possibility that the Internet, cell phones, and text messaging will further the spread of democracy. Most famously, former U.S. president Bill Clinton claimed that liberty would spread in this century “by cell phone and cable modem” and that trying to control the Internet was like trying to “nail Jello to the wall.” However, although there is some evidence that information technology has been used by democracy activists, there is remarkably scant evidence that this technology has played a decisive role. While journalists describe, for example, the 2009 political unrest in Iran as the “Twitter revolution,” the preliminary evidence suggests that Twitter (an online communication tool) did little to help organize protests on the ground. Cell-phone text messaging did play a significant role in coordinating action in prodemocratic revolutions in the Philippines, the Ukraine, and elsewhere, but there is no way of showing that these revolutions would not have taken place, or would not have been successful, in the absence of these technologies. In a detailed examination of eight cases of authoritarian regimes, Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor Boas (2003) find that the Internet and related technologies are not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes. More recent work by Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Jonathan Zittrain, and their colleagues (2008) finds that the Internet has become increasingly balkanized, as governments in both authoritarian and nonauthoritarian regimes have succeeded in filtering Internet access for their citizens.Thus, early optimistic suggestions that the Internet was sliced freedom have turned out to be badly wrong.
Indeed, the aggregate evidence suggests strongly that the causal arrow runs in the opposite direction. Helen Milner (2006) finds strong evidence that differences in regime type explain many of the lags in Internet diffusion. Authoritarian governments are less likely to allow the Internet to be easily diffused within their borders both because authoritarian leaders fear the consequences of open communication and because powerful domestic actors (such as telecommunications monopolies) are in a better position to impede developments that might hurt their profits.
However, there is some reason to believe that the Internet, along with other communications technologies, may foster increased democratization over the longer term. Marc Lynch (2007) suggests that the Internet is less important because it empowers democracy activists to foment revolution than because it allows new “public spheres” of citizen debate and discourse, which are not under state control, to emerge. Historically, such public spheres have been linked to increases in government accountability and, perhaps, the eventual adoption of democracy. Rebecca MacKinnon’s (2008) work on the Internet in China provides some support for Lynch’s arguments; she finds that Western efforts to protect Chinese dissidence on the Internet may be counterproductive and suggests that benign neglect, which would allow less overtly political forms of debate to flourish, may be the better approach.
Conclusion
Measuring the impact of new information technologies such as the Internet on politics is still a work in progress. However, over the past ten years, there have been significant advances in our understanding of the consequences of these technologies. A set of initial debates that concerned very broad questions of the state and politics has largely been replaced by a set of more specific debates surrounding more particular consequences of the Internet for specific aspects of politics.
This is genuine progress. While early arguments helped set the tone for later discussions, they were for the most part conducted without the benefit of good data and information. By focusing on narrower mechanisms of change—and bringing good empirical information to bear on these mechanisms— we are finally making some genuine advances in our understanding of how information technology affects politics. This is not to say that scholars should refrain from tackling the large, secular questions of how these technologies are coming to reshape politics, but they will be doing so on much firmer ground if they build up from micro and meso-level mechanisms and data. That the study of the Internet and politics is becoming more prosaic is by no means necessarily a bad thing.
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