Christa Daryl Slaton

Democracy beyond the information age: 21st century political communication

This article asserts that modern representative democracy was never intended nor designed to function as a democracy and that progress in the past two hundred years has come from the persistence of citizens operating outside established hierarchical power structures. A transformation of modern representative democracy is underway and information and communication technology (ICT) is a key component in the evolution of more participatory democratic governments. The failings of modern representative democracy are highlighted by the decline in voting turnout rates and a high level of dissatisfaction with and distrust of elected political leaders. While advances in technology and the expansion and availability of information can hinder and harm efforts to advance democracy, this article seeks to balance the discourse by emphasizing the potentials and benefits and by seeking solutions to problems in the representative systems. This is approached through the examination of four areas of enormous innovation and experimentation in utilizing ICT to develop new forms of greater citizen participation within representative democracy and for creating more effective direct democracy: voting from home, scientific deliberative polling, electronic town meetings and direct democracy activities. The main conclusion is that ICT has aided forces that favour a stronger infuence by citizens in representative government which is already in the process of being transformed as nations move towards the global economy and citizens insist on more self‐governance.

Book Review: King, Cheryl Simrell, and Zanetti, Lisa A. Transformational Public Service: Portraits of Theory in Practice. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005

Cheryl Simrell King and Lisa A. Zanetti’s book Transformational Public Service: Portraits of Theory in Practice is first and foremost a call for change. They are advocates of a more democratic and less privatistic society and argue that new tools are needed for public servants that will put them in closer touch with citizens. Only through collaboration with the diverse citizenry and the reconnection of “the knowledge of expertise with the knowledge of experience” and common sense, King and Zanetti maintain, can the public interest be determined and promoted. The authors stress that public administrators should not only be concerned with how to implement public policy, but they should also ponder why they administer policy and who benefits from a given policy. The core of the book features eight engaging and daring public servants whom they call transformative administrators. To be classified as such, one must: (a) recognize that power relations are socially and historically constituted and the assumptions that privilege certain races, classes, and gender should be challenged and changed; (b) understand that facts cannot be isolated from values or normative assessments of the world–in other words, one’s values and experiences color one’s observations; (c) recognize the potential for all citizens to be democratic philosophers who can utilize their own experiences to collaborate in creating new ways of thinking and acting in the world; and (d) appreciate how mainstream thought has the effect of reproducing and reinforcing the status quo. In sum, King and Zanetti assert that a “critically enlightened and sympathetic administrator” (p. xi) can act as an interpreter and facilitator, as well as a transformative agent by helping others articulate concerns, voice needs, and implement community-developed strategies for change. The tasks before these transformative public administrators are daunting, yet rewarding. Greg Coleridge, an administrator from Ohio, explains the difficulty of practicing transformational public administra-

A Tale of Two Movements: ADR and The Greens

In the past decade, we have been intimately acquainted with the problems, and suffered some of the growing pains, of two important global movements, what some call the “Alternative Dispute Resolution” movement (or ADR) and what many know as “The Green” movement, or in Germany as “Die Grunen.” Each continues to expand in size and impact. Each is a substantial shift in process. Each has great potential to transform how society is shaped in the future. And each is plagued by a variety of splits amongst its theorists and practitioners, differences in what is conceived to be its ideology and how to best make that ideology work in the “real” world.