Governance.com: Democracy in the Information Age

Overview

Advances in information technology are not only changing the social landscape of society, they are significantly shaping the political world as well. The decentralization of information sources and exchanges is fostering new types of community and different roles for government which are explored in Governance.com, edited by Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye Jr. It is the fourth book in a series copublished by the Brookings Institution Press and the Visions of Governance in the 21st Century Project at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The contributors, drawn largely but not exclusively from the Kennedy School faculty, examine the impact of technology on basic institutions and processes of governance, including representation, community, politics, bureaucracy, and sovereignty.

Joseph S. Nye Jr. opens the volume, placing the information revolution in historical context, hypothesizing about the likely impact of the "third industrial revolution" on governance at international and local levels. Arthur Isak Applbaum and Dennis Thompson examine the information age from the perspective of Madisonian democracy. William Galston examines the Internet's impact on community and civic life. Writing from a political perspective, Pippa Norris investigates the Internet's part in political activism, and Elaine Kamarck and David King analyze the Internet's role in political campaigns. Jane Fountain, Jerry Mechling, Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr. examine information and power in bureaucratic structure, financing, and world politics.

With a mix of healthy skepticism and recognition of information technology's significance, the contributors endeavor to "provoke thought and further research about the ways in which the information revolution is transforming our institutions of governance." Governance.com will offer an important window on the challenges and promises of 21st century government.

The contributors, all from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, unless noted otherwise, include Joseph S. Nye Jr., Arthur Isak Applbaum, Dennis Thompson, William A. Galston (University of Maryland, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy), Pippa Norris, Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, David King, Jane E. Fountain, Jerry Mechling, and Robert O. Keohane (Duke University).

ELAINE CIULLA KAMARCK is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is former director of the Visions of Governance in the 21st Century Project and served as a senior policy adviser to former Vice President Al Gore.

JOSEPH S. NYE JR. is dean of the Kennedy School of Government. He is also coeditor, with John D. Donahue, of Market-Based Governance: Supply Side, Demand Side, Upside, and Downside (Brookings, 2002), Governance Amid Bigger Better Markets (Brookings, 2001), and Governance in a Globalizing World (Brookings, 2000).