A short web article originally based on the presentation
entitled 'Communicative Needs and Preparedness of the Politicians'
given in Finnish in the Workshop of the EPRI-WATCH Seminar
28 November 1997, Tampere, Finland.

by Dr. Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko

Politicians' Roles
in the Information Society

Some Remarks on the Challenges of the Information Age to the Roles of Politicians

The roles of politicians are changing at every level of government. In this short web article I focus on the politicians and the challenges they have to face in the emerging information society.

Megatrends of the Emerging Information Age

There is a huge amount of literature on the changes of the world order, economy, organisational relations and everyday life. The discussion is more and more directed towards the development of information society, and especially to its economic and technological dimensions. In this introduction I attempt a short description of the basic dimensions of this change, and how they challenge the prevailing roles of politicians in the Western democracies. In short, the prevailing tendencies or 'megatrends' of our age can be classified as follows:

Technological and economic systems

  • Changes in the world economy
  • Globalisation
  • Network economy and the restructuration of economy
  • Information and communication technology

    Institutional changes

  • Networked society
  • The crisis of politics and modern institutions
  • Break down of traditional communities and social bonds (and the rise of new ones)

    New ways of thinking

  • Neo-individualism
  • New values and cultural codes
  • Postmodern tendencies in the realm of everyday life

    These changes create a wide variety of new ways of societal mediation, interaction and social relations. The concept of information society reflects this particular change. It stresses the increased flow and exchange of information and the extended use of new digital media. In a more theoretical sense it is about the new informational mode of development to use the term coined by Manuel Castells in his book 'The Informational City' published in 1989. This development results in new modes of interaction, i.e. mediated and aggregated modes of societal interaction. This, in turn, is one of the key aspects to be taken into account when reconsidering the roles of politicians.

    Chaos in Politics?

    Niklas Luhmann has concluded that "things are made chaotic for politics." This is certainly true. He also points out that democracy is not a principle that states that all decisions have to be made as to enable participation. This would lead to a never ending increase of decisional burdens, a gigantic tele-demo-bureaucratization and a hopeless opacity of the power relationships. (Niklas Luhmann: Political Theory in the Welfare State, Walter de Gruyter, 1990, 232-234). Indeed, the identification of the legitimation problem should not make us believe that the corrections can be made merely by increasing the information and communication frequencies. To be sure, much more profound reforms and sophisticated methods are required.

    The dilemma of politics is an instance of the radicalization of modernity, as the British sociologist Anthony Giddens has described the contemporary phase of development in 'The Consequences of Modernity' (1990). The institutions, assumptions, ideologies and environments we created during the long process of modernisation are challenged and 'deconstructed' in one way or an other. Consequently, the political scene is not what it used to be.

    There are many signs of the changing political culture. For example, in the Finnish context Professor Jaakko Nousiainen has identified the following:
    - mobility and fickleness of voters
    - limited interest and involvement of the general public in elections and political processes
    - increased influence of media and mass communication
    - convergence and blurring of political ideologies.

    New Roles for Politicians

    Politicians must face a world in which their traditional roles are challenged on various fronts. In addition, in many cases the old ways of working and thinking do not match with the demands of the dynamic webs of communities, organisations and people. Let's think about some examples. What is happening to politicians'

  • abilities to cope with increasingly complex systems and practices of information society,
  • representational role and its legitimacy,
  • position vis-ā-vis a dramatic strengthening of the forms of direct and participatory democracy,
  • role in the fields of action most affected by networks and adhocratic elements, and
  • if their role as a decision-makers and 'mediators' is challenged by new mediation mechanisms.

    • John Burnheim in his article 'Democracy, Nation State and the World System' (in David Held & Christopher Pollitt, eds., New Forms of Democracy, 1986) has pointed out that the present system promises simultaneously too little and too much: everybody has a say even in matters that do not affect them, and on the other hand, it gives them only a generalized say through voting for a political party or candidate. It does not give people much influence in those matters of importance to them. Burnheim's solution known as demarchy is based on the system of representation of interests and the government by special purpose committees. I am not sure whether such a system would provide a solution or not, but Burnheim at least has introduced the problem. In brief, entirely new forms of democracy must be invented in order to meet with the conditions of radicalized modernity.

    Agenda for Politicians

    Some interesting aspects of our subject matter are discussed in Janerik Gidlund & Bengt Lindstrom (eds.) Det elektroniska närsamhället, 1986 and other related literature. The key point is to find ways both to solve the legitimation crisis of politics and to create new sophisticated methods for articulating and aggregating interests within the political arena. Here some key topics to be discussed:

    Representational democracy
    - elections and electoral behaviour
    - opportunities to influence and participate in decision-making processes
    - the roles of political representatives
    - the role of bureaucracy in decision-making processes

    Changing party system
    - the critique on parties and related institutions
    - the process of medialisation of politics
    - increased uses of marketing techniques in electioneering
    - challenged relevance of conventional 'party mediation' of interests

    New skills in communication and the use of ICT
    - the uses of new information and communication technology (ICT)
    - the emergence of new 'infocracy' with all its varieties,
    e.g. decentralized technology vs. centralized monopoly of knowledge
    - new forms of cooperation and communication
    - direct, participatory and computer mediated influence
    - the extension of opinion-poll democracy to a kind of electronic democracy or multimedia democracy

    Managing with the flow of information
    - the relevance of information and knowledge
    - finding and selecting the relevant knowledge
    - using and applying the information efficiently and appropriately
    - new levels of reflexivity?

    Concluding Remarks

    The field of relevant agents with their power and exchange relations is becoming increasingly diffuse. This is due to the wide range of contextual changes. Politicians are not immune to them. On the contrary, they are at the very core of this transformational process. Politicians' relations to citizens (and voters), business communities and the representatives of interest groups form as such an instance of mediated and aggregated modes of societal interaction. Mass communication, political marketing, electronic democracy and related means of communication are changing politicians' roles. They are to serve as visionary representatives of people and of 'mediators' of people and legitimate policy interventions in conditions of uncertainty and disorganised social relations. Moreover, the changing internal structure of the political sphere has its impact on politicians interrelatedness at different levels of government.

    The key challenges to politicians are

  • to maintain the political sphere and institutions as strong elements of societal processes within European Union under the pressure of market driven megatrends. The realisation of people's will and their civil rights should be guaranteed at every level of government.
  • to make political life and political institutions more responsive and flexible, for example with the help of the improved quality of communication and interaction as well as the creation and application of innovations in democratic practices.
  • to challenge the supremacy of expertise and the establishment in order to develop the political culture which contains more everyday life and participatory elements and, on the other hand, less bureaucracy and 'socio-psychological' barriers.
  • to define the underlying and widely accepted explicit metarules or metaprinciples to be applied to the political systems and policy formulation processes. This should be based on humanity and solidarity rooted in the European traditions. Even the general principles of efficiency, economic growth and distribution of wealth should be based on the metaprinciples of solidarity.

    Along with these general tasks - defending political sphere, creating responsiveness and closeness to everyday life and defining the metaprinciples of solidarity - the concrete measures should be designed and implemented. This work should, I think, be based on the observations of everyday life. The starting-point is to identify what kind of democratic systems and decision-making procedures people prefer, and what kind of political culture they want to live in. There are no ready-made recipes for this. We must invent them - hopefully in communicative dialogue supported by learning and enabling authorities.

    Tampere, 17th December 1997
    Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko