Danny Finkelstein argues well in the Times that politics are getting more fragmented and less controlled:

In his book The Long Tail Chris Anderson points out how the market for, say, books has in the past been constrained by the shop shelf space available to display. Online shopping has abolished this constraint, allowing a much larger range of books, many dealing with topics of niche interest …

Something very similar is going on in politics, too. Large centralised political parties were created because of the existence of the mass media. To make any political impact, an idea or an individual had to find a spot in the limited shelf space provided by the big media giants. This prompted individuals to organise themselves into tight, uniform groupings with a professional staff shaping their message for media outlets. 

From this relationship between the media and politicians arose our current form of closed politics. And not all of its features are undesirable, by any means. It is a highly effective way of organising politicians in order to pass legislation. It enables the business of government to be carried out effectively … For voters, many of whom just want to get on with their lives, closed politics reduces the cost of decision making … 

But whether this system has advantages or not is irrelevant – because the information revolution makes its continuation impossible. The replacement of the monolithic mass media with a much messier, much freer market in information changes everything. The media is fragmenting and taking Parliament with it.

And see also this good piece by Stuart Sharpe on how the blogosphere might have handled the Parliamentary expenses scandal information differently (and better?):

Most importantly, however, if the information had come out through Wikileaks and been freely available to all, it would be verifiable. We’ve had to take The Telegraph’s word on many of their expenses stories – and several times they’ve proved themselves undeserving of such trust …

My previous posting described how certain FCO allowances anomalies rambled on long after the original rationale for them had been forgotten.

This is the same for government, but on a scale so vast it’s easy to miss it – a bit like being in the shadow of Mt Everest and fretting about trees blocking the view.

There are three rival ideas about government:

  • that it comes from Authority which is Just There (but, if you insist, God-given). This explains Kings and Queens who originally were the powerful people best capable of bashing other powerful people into submission but then acquired legitimacy of different shapes and sizes. That idea took (literally) a heavy blow in this country when Charles I’s head was chopped off, but it lingers on in much of the world including across the Middle East and in a bastardised form in places like Cuba and N Korea
  • that it comes from the Will of the Collective. This emerged from the French and Russian Revolutions. It makes claims to legitimacy which are hard to argue with ("let’s do things in the interests of everyone!") but its methods usually end up being anything but collective, with a self-appointed ruthless few pronouncing on what the Collective Will in fact is. See Stalin, Hitler, Old/New Labour, Polly Toynbee passim
  • that it comes from the Free Will of Individual Citizens. This emerged from the English/Scottish/American Enlightenments. Government is the way citizens outsource decisions affecting them all to a smaller group, aka democracy. Lots of different ways of doing this. The problem is that the systems set up by citizens start to grow and grow, increasingly seeing government as basically being about themselves, not about citizens. They then try to redefine government in post-democratic terms of Authority which is Just There and/or Will of the Collective (Westminster MPs, EU passim).

So why is Danny Finkelstein mainly right?

Because technology does numerous new things which have never ever been possible before:

  • it allows collective mass participatory analysis and decision-making in real time
  • it exposes abuses and distributes the examples at lightening speed
  • it gives people a way to remonstrate with leaders directly and in huge numbers
  • it ignores distinctions of class, colour, gender, nationality – everyone is in a quite new sense ‘equal’
  • it lets people choose directly the issues they think are important and how they decide on them
  • it shoves out of the way those who claim to speak for the Collective Will and allows New Bottom-up Collective Will(s) to emerge spontaneously
  • it erodes Authority which is Just There
  • above all, it encourages Authority which is Earned

All this is obvious. What is unclear is how exactly the erosion and collapse of existing arrangements set up in different times under different visions of Authority will happen.

The current political parties in the UK sense the uneasiness of their position but are not able to articulate an agenda for reform on the scale required (not least because they know that the way the EU works is a massive problem in all this).

The European Union pretends to ignore the whole issue:

"You said No in your Constitutional Treaty referendum? Tsk. Have another one which says Yes. And in the meantime we’ll carry on as we wanted anyway"

Russia is defaulting back to a grim Stalinist Authority which is Just There, to the point of trying to confiscate history.

The USA under President Obama is attempting an ambitious synthesis of a new Awesome Authority which is Just There (Obama) + Will of the Collective (Obama). But the numbers don’t look too good.

In short?

Politicians round the world are delivering policies and legitimacy as defined in earlier times.

This model in all its current forms is inherently unstable.

But unstable things can wobble for a while before they finally topple over.

Will the leaders of the future come from those who best prepare for that final toppling?

Or indeed from those who lead the way in pushing down the current pack of cards?

Those who offer a Plan?