Huibert-Aalbers.com

In the fifties, in most countries there was a single TV channel. This made it a very coveted media for politicians, who bitterly fought over control of TV news in order to influence voters. This fight for control of mass media continued until recently. In the 90s there was much concern that a media mogul like Ruppert Murdoch could use his empire to shape public opinion and this fear prompted many democratic nations to pass laws against excessive media conglomeration.

With the advent of the Internet, those fears are quickly fading. There are many ways to get the bare facts and blogs provide countless reactions to those facts. Following a trend that started in the 90s with News channels such as Fox that present the information clearly eschewed toward a particular point of view, it is now very easy to find information analyzed by people who think the same way you do.

Since there will be an almost infinite number of channels, people will have a better opportunity to position themselves exactly where they want to on the political spectrum, instead of having to chose from a discrete number of options, like we do today.

As a result, instead of having two or three large movements competing for power, it is likely that in the future there will be a very large amount of relatively small loosely connected groups of people who share similar opinions. It is hard to imagine that a leader from such a small group could emerge as a leader of a large enough coalition to run a country while maintaining that leadership. However, it is more likely that coalitions will form ad hoc, based on particular proposals.

This leaves me to a simple conclusion. In the future, a system based on political parties will not be aligned with the way people think about or even discuss issues. If we want to preserve democracy in such a world, we will have to change the current system.

One solution could be to ask the people to vote on each major issue through referendums (probably online, to reduce the costs associated with an increased number of elections). That means that the government will have reduced executive powers and as a result is likely to become a technocracy over time.

I do not believe that this is a very compelling scenario because a technocracy could give too much power to non-elected bureaucrats. This would therefore require some mechanism that would maintain the public servants under control and such a system could prove difficult to implement.

Of course there probably are many other options. However, we should start thinking right now about how the internet is changing our society and how this will impact the way people will want their respective countries to be run in the future. This is a nice challenge for the day after election day.