Comments on: Interpassivity: Your pleasant alternative to believing in political participation

By: The interpassive public — Adrian Monck

The interpassive public — Adrian Monck — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:57:27 +0000

[...] Ratcliffe reffed a great term the other day: interpassivity. (He got it from Slavoj Žižek.) Interpassive is a [...]

By: Mitch Ratcliffe

Mitch Ratcliffe — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:25:44 +0000

I don’t think that one can argue that there would be “too much democracy” if everyone participated, from the perspective that it would strain government. The decline in communication costs and the rising efficiency of crowdsourcing of information and its organization suggest that the problem isn’t one of excess, rather the need for new approaches to expectations. We don’t have a realistic basis for expectations about what will happen when we send an email or sign an online petition as compared to the well-established (and still debatable) value of casting a vote in an election.

Simply to say that government can’t handle the volume is to relieve the government of the responsibility it took on to be responsive to the people. There’s a lot of work to do, and we need to be aware that a new social contract is in the works. It has always been so since the Enlightenment, because society is a work in progress, never a completed accomplishment. At the same time, people shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that simply clicking on a button or sending money to a campaign is the full range of their participation in government.

By: Adrian Monck

Adrian Monck — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:02:47 +0000

Participation is a tough one.

What do you make of the argument of Huntington that too much participation is unproductive, and places too much strain on govt which cannot meet participant expectations?

By: Mitch Ratcliffe

Mitch Ratcliffe — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:10:47 +0000

“Real” participation would entail both the benefits you suggest and responsibilities and roles that translate into real power in the political process beyond simply voting, which is just a ritual in this formulation of the argument. I’m not saying that this is the only way to understand it, but that it exposes a key issue I’ve been trying to articulate—we need a broader theory of participation than before the barriers to communication were lowered.

I wouldn’t say modern democratic politics demonstrates that people are willing to make the Hobbesian deal, only that it is one of the trades they are willing to make. You are correct about the importance of economics to that sense of security. It is no longer merely, “Keep me alive, sire, and I am yours.”

So, for now, “real” participation remains not completely defined for me. A placeholder for a significance I am still trying to explain.

By: Adrian Monck

Adrian Monck — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:29:24 +0000

With you almost till the end. What is ‘real’ participation? Doesn’t modern democratic politics demonstrate most people’s willingness to makes the Hobbesian trade of freedom for sovereignty? The only rationale is that security is now expressed in economic rather than purely military terms.