Information & Legitimacy

In this research initiative we look at the role information plays in legitimizing governance and power. This may sound perplexing at first, but quickly becomes clear when we look at two hotbeds of political change.

The first is how the workings of politics are changing, especially in the Western world. A limited set of established intermediaries, including well-known newspapers and television channels, together with the political elites would control much of the information flows on politics in societies. Among other things simple economics, the investment necessary for creating and disseminating information, made it an elite club. Today, millions of people run their own digital printing presses, publishing blogs, contributing to wikies, creating media remixes, or aggregating meta-information that quickly highlights emerging trends. This has brought with it a renaissance of the metaphor of a "market place of ideas" or deliberative visions of "New England town halls" - and fueled a sense that more information flows automatically improve democratic processes.

The second is how societies have reacted to shocking abuses of power: The US response to Watergate was the passage of watershed freedom of information acts. Transparency and information was seen as the natural and effective antidote to government corruption. Similarly, the abuses of power in the private sector - from Enron and Worldcom to Maddoff - have resulted in a whole wave of additional transparency norms. Here, too, transparency and information is seen as a the appropriate response to misbehavior.

But is it? Is shaping our society into one in which everybody can find out everything about anybody - an egalitarian version of Bentham's panopticon - the best possible solution we can come up with? How exactly does information legitimize power and governance, and what are its limitations and weaknesses? These are some of the questions we hope to address here,