Technology and politics

Over recent years we have seen how disruptive the internet can be for industries like newspapers or music labels. What if it can be equally disruptive to power? What if parties, governments, even states, face this same level of upheaval over the coming decades?

There is no doubt that the internet is being used to both deliver and drive change, whether significant or superficial. But even at the scale of major economic sectors like the music industry or movie production, the changes so far only scratch the surface of the upheaval to come.

The internet will have a far more profound effect – not just on industries or even the global economy, but also on how human organisation is structured.

It will change the way in which power is exercised, affecting the people and organisations who compete for it and wield it, as well as the institutions through which they do so.

This will require reform of the modern polity and its links between citizens, politics, government, state administration and geography.

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Imagine a world where a civic-minded organisation such as mySociety has built tools that allow people to register and run their own political parties, automatically registering names and logos, recording donations, checking donor names against the electoral register and submitting accounts to the appropriate authorities on the required dates.

These are parties which would need nothing but this virtual presence and the cost of the deposits required for a candidate to stand in election.

What if Amazon-style search and filter tools help more people find out about these parties, perhaps through a central database running from the same website that has been built to help create them?

What if there are 250 parties like the Pirate Party, each getting 0.1 per cent of the vote in a general election?

How does a Parliament or a Congress claim legitimacy if the major parties are elected on 20 per cent of the vote rather than 40 per cent or more?

At this point the internet really will start to fundamentally affect politics. And states need a new way of ensuring their legitimacy if there isn't to be a real crisis.

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So much of the theory of e-government, e-politics and e-democracy is written by those with a background in technology, and otherwise positioned in silos.

Civil servants and consultants with vested interests in their contracts think about e-government, parties and politicians about e-politics, parliaments and electoral authorities about e-democracy. The tightly focused research of academia also fails to consider the bigger picture.

There is little by way of a coherent overall look at the issues and trends and impacts that technology is having on the body politic as a whole. These essays aim to fill some of the gaps, and place the whole issue within a broader consideration of the impact of the internet on political organisation and participation.

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This series of essays examines the impact of the internet first on political parties, then on political systems and participation, and finally on the sovereignty of states and the distribution of global power.

While the first part is based on analysis, the second veers towards speculation and the final part enters the realm of science fiction. But the intention is to set out a routemap to the far future for the changes the internet will force on the practice of politics in its broadest sense.