Democratic Structures in Cyberspace
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The challenge, then, given our account of problems plaguing American democracy, is to find a way to reinvigorate civic and political norms and associations. That kind of reinvigoration likely requires a structural change in the way our government conducts its political affairs: “[i]t is not enough to call for an intensification of voluntary association without reimagining and remaking the institutional context in which voluntary association takes place.”52 A variety of solutions have been proposed to democracy’s perceived problems. A theme that informs this paper is that government cannot be effectively improved unless the social norms underlying political and civic activity are first cured of the problems just discussed. A proposed solution’s potential for success should accordingly be judged by how well it can foster, encourage, and reinvigorate those social norms. The same concerns should be paramount when judging proposals for the governance of cyberspace. While it is difficult to say that social norms on the Internet are in decay,53 it is not difficult to predict that a structure of governance which does not foster political and civic norms will eventually suffer problems akin to those undermining American democracy. What follows is a list of questions with which to examine a proposal for governance, whether in real space or cyberspace. It by no means exhausts the store of relevant questions, nor is the relative weight each question should be given in any context clear. Each category has a central, key question, as well as a number of subsidiary ones.
One potentially promising response to the challenges democracy faces is deliberative polling. Developed by Professor James S. Fishkin of the University of Texas, deliberative polling “attempts to model what the public would think, had it a better opportunity to consider the questions at issue.”55 The structure of the poll is relatively simple. A random sample of an electorate is selected and polled on an issue. The sample is then brought together and immersed in the issue, “… with carefully balanced briefing materials, with intensive discussions in small groups, and with the chance to question competing experts and politicians.”56 After this intense period of deliberation, the sample is polled, and the result is, hopefully, “… a representation of the considered judgment of the public.”57 Deliberative polling is explicitly aimed at fostering civic social norms to improve government: “[d]eliberative polling is premised on the convictions that democratic governance is improved by wide-spread and thoughtful dialogue about political issues.”58 It fosters each of the social norms we have been discussing. It produces a well-informed,59 deliberating mini-populace, engaged and participating in a political process. The poll is also designed so that each participant has equal access to materials and equal opportunity to speak. Fishkin designed deliberative polling as a “different form of opinion polling,” a way of discovering an ideally participatory public’s opinion.60 But it does more than an opinion poll. Deliberative polling does not merely predict what public opinion would be in an ideal society; it also prescribes opinions and views in real societies. That is to say, a deliberative poll has “recommending force.”61 It can be used before elections and referenda to inform the public at large and it can be used in other instances to inform elected officials of what truly informed public opinion would be. Participants have thus not been required to reach a consensus or a majority decision; the distribution of views in a sample has been informative, as has been the relative change between participants’ views before and after their immersion in the deliberative poll. Deliberative polling has not been used as a direct decisionmaking tool. If deliberative polling were to be used to decide issues rather than to merely inform decisionmakers (whether voters or elected officials), we might require a different sort of outcome, something closer to a unanimity. A decisionmaking deliberative poll might, accordingly, closely model juries, in the emphasis would be on building consensus among the participants.
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