Next Up: Collaborative Governance?

Blurring of boundaries between users and producers, leading to the amateurization of politics [...] Important question: does peer production continue once you get into office?

Enthusiastic volunteers and supporters strengthen campaign messages by adding a personal touch, using their own social capital to further campaign goals. Who among us would not pay more attention to a personal email from a trusted friend versus a generic campaign email?

The speeding up of politics [...]

We see instant reactions to all candidate statements and actions, broadcast throughout the blogosphere. Campaigns are immediately confronted with gaffes, criticisms, and news developments–often before the candidate (or senior staffer) has time to analyze the issue or learn the full facts.

Blurring of the boundaries between public and private, leading to the informalizing of politics [...]

Candidates are recorded constantly, including settings (like private events with supporters) that were formerly considered “safe” spaces for comments geared toward firing up the base. Candidates who once carefully controlled their message between interviews are now faced with seemingly endless “on camera” moments.

The long tail of politics? Because there’s so much more space online, will this lead to a pluralizing or disaggregating of choices? [...]

The web creates an endless sphere for political dialogue, creating a space for esoteric interests to coalesce. This has the potential to draw voters away from, for instance, supporting a major party platform that represents the majority of their views but does not

Trickle-up politics then, is diffused/decentralized, individualistic and rooted in micro-networks, continuous, citizen-based and non-institutional, and based on niche audiences.

For all of the excitement surrounding social web applications in electoral campaigns, we’re just now seeing the first glimpses of what could be–for lack of a better term–Governing 2.0. This should be a logical extension of decentralized campaigning (governing is, after all, the reason we care about campaigns), but what might decentralized, “trickle up” governance look like? Let’s use the U.S. Congress as an example…

The Sunlight Foundation showcases a variety of compelling models for increased government transparency. One of their projects is PublicMarkup.org, where visitors can comment and suggest edits to a piece of legislation crafted by the Sunlight Foundation called the Transparency in Government Act. Instead of trying to find a legislative champion first, this project is “an experiment in online collaboration” by inviting suggestions from citizens before presenting an improved draft bill to sympathetic members of Congress.

This “peer production” (as mentioned above) and “blurring of boundaries” between professionals and citizens marks just one example of what collaborative governance could look like. Public mark-up of legislation on a broad scale would be a stretch. In the very least, interest groups who believe in transparency and civic participation should leap at the chance to crowd-source their legislative ideas; to present to lawmakers a draft bill that has support and buy-in from real Americans before it even reaches Capital Hill. The Sunlight Foundation provides an excellent example in this regard.

But how else might “trickle-up politics” lead to more collaborative governance once politicians reach office?

The “speeding up of politics” trend increases the power of individual bloggers and citizens: anyone is capable of breaking news that will be amplified by louder voices in the traditional and new media. This partially outsources both opposition research–ideally substantive, related to voting records, conflicts of interest, or issue disagreements–as well as positive communications for politicians. No congressional staff could consistently produce the amount and breadth of information on their Representative or Senator’s work that is produced–voluntarily–in the blogosphere every hour. Sure, some of this information will be garbage, but the net effect is enormously beneficial for opening up the process.

The “informalizing of politics” trend is still largely absent from congressional politics, due to strict controls on access within the capital building and congressional offices. While we’ve seen some funny moments when elected politicians didn’t realize that microphones were still on (”Thank you, your holiness. Awesome speech“), politicians are able to control their image and message far more once elected.

Finally, I see the “long tail of politics” trend manifesting itself through increased pressure on legislators to respond to micro-interests. Instead of traditional, broad interests–labor, business, environmentalists, etc–lawmakers are faced with smaller groups of voters who express specific concerns and demands. These voices are distinct from the traditional interest-group clumps, and their nuanced views are amplified online. The web to connects formerly disparate voters with others who share their views, making niche interests harder for elected politicians to ignore.

To be clear, “collaboration” is perhaps the wrong notion. Public mark-up is the one example I gave here that represents a truly collaborative effort (ideally) between lawmakers and citizens. The other trends point to increasing accountability to voters, and power for citizens to focus legislators on specific issues. While we might not WANT voters playing too much of a strictly collaborative role in our legislative process, it’s hard to argue that we don’t want increased accountability, transparency, and participation in government. We elect professional politicians to write our laws and to protect our interests. Collaboration in this sense is not about doing policymakers’ work as much as it is holding politicians accountable to their responsibilities, and helping advance the public debate.

What do you think? What am I missing?

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Poldavo.