Monthly Archives: June 2011

the best thing Mubarak did was shut down the Internet

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(Berkeley, CA) Yesterday, I heard two different American colleagues quote a story by the same Egyptian democracy activist. First, he said, there was lots of online activism against the Egyptian regime: people commenting, posting links, and “liking” each others’ comments. Then, when the Mubarak government blocked the Internet, the online advocates went onto the streets. And it was their street protests (combined with the nonviolent reaction of the army) that toppled the regime. Bottom line: “The best thing Mubarak did was shut down the Internet.”

I suspect the first phase of Internet activism was essential, for a particular purpose. It let everyone know that there was a potential mass movement. The inability to tell whether other people are at the point of acting is often a barrier to popular action. Still, even if you know that other people are angry, you can’t tell from their Tweeting and Facebook-posting whether they would actually put their lives on the line. Not knowing, you may fear to act.

That impasse had to be broken by a decisive signal that it was time to revolt together. And Mubarak (ironically) gave the signal by shutting down the Internet. It was a particularly powerful signal because all the energy that people had been expending online had nowhere to go–unless they went into the streets.

The lesson for dictators: don’t suddenly shut down the Internet. (Although the situation in Egypt may never be replicated exactly.) The lesson for activists of all stripes: you need a powerful signal and incentive to move people offline, once you have critical mass of supporters. If there is no dictator to provide the signal for you, you’ll have to find a way to do it yourself.

Rosa: A Novel and The Death Instinct

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(Berkeley, CA) Two recent novels that are impossible to avoid comparing are Jonathan Rabb’s Rosa: A Novel and Jeb Rubenfeld’s The Death Instinct. Both are set in the immediate aftermath of World War I in a great city of a combatant power (Berlin and New York, respectively). Both involve mass murder, terrorism, and a political conspiracy. Both include cameo appearances by major historical figures: Freud and Madame Curie in The Death Instinct; Einstein and Käthe Kollwitz in Rosa. Both involve revolutionary ideas: psychoanalysis and communism. Both foreshadow the horrors that will follow in the 20th century. In both cases, the protagonist is a tough urban detective who gets sucked into politics for the first time as he tries to solve the original crime. A beautiful but troubled waif plays a significant role in each book.

Since the comparison is unavoidable, I must say that Rabb’s novel is far better. The characters are much more complex, the issues more serious, and the emotional pull much stronger from Rabb’s flawed protagonist than from Rubenfeld’s idealized heroes.

on the equality-efficiency tradeoff in democracy

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On a flight to California, I am reading Xavier de Souza Briggs’ important book Democracy as Problem Solving (MIT Press, 2008), plus a set of yet unpublished chapters by diverse authors on similar themes. They are making me critical of a basic distinction in political theory. Often, we think that a process is “democratic” if everyone has an equal voice or impact–or at least an equal right to have an impact–on public decisions. Government is “efficient,” on the other hand, if it works well, generating public goods and reducing public “bads.”

These two values may conflict. Mussolini is said to have made the trains run on time. I am on a plane, so I cannot check whether that is true, but if it is, it would be an example of efficiency without democracy. On the other hand, an endless meeting may be democratic but is not efficient. Given the complexities of administering large institutions, it seems that democratic values should predominate when major decisions are made (usually in elections and legislation). Efficiency should become paramount at the phase of implementation or administration, when the people’s will is enacted by professionals.

That is a standard theory, but here is the problem. What people actually talk about and try to accomplish when they participate democratically is solving problems. Politics is not a sport, in which rival teams compete for the love of the game. It is a purposive activity that matters only to the extent that problems are solved. A democratic process that is totally inefficient is worse than annoying and discouraging. It is actually a kind of contradiction. People can’t come together as equals to solve problems but not solve the problems. The proper measure of “democracy” encompasses efficiency as well as equality.

Several points follow. First, if there is a tradeoff between equality of voice and efficiency, the conflict is internal to democracy. We may sometimes have to bite the bullet and reduce equality to enhance efficiency, in the name of democracy. On the other hand, if we value both, we should work to reduce the tradeoff. When equal voice enhances efficient outcomes, we have a clear win.

Second, there is no good reason to distinguish between legislation and administration, or deliberation and implementation, or talk and work–because all these are problem-solving activities. The same pair of values, equality of voice and efficiency of outcomes, should be maximized at all times. Concretely, that means promoting public engagement in administration as well as in law-making unless efficiency suffers excessively as a result.

Finally, I would like to register a small resistance to the rhetoric of “problem-solving.” Political action can be directed at solving problems, conserving what exists, exploiting new opportunities, defining common identities, or creating goods. If we insist, we can call all those purposes “problem-solving,” but I think the word “problem” invokes too narrow a set of issues.