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NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Social networking sites are versatile vehicles for articulating views of a society or of sections of it. Thus politicians and other decision-makers cannot remain indifferent to views being posted on these sites. They need not always take the expressed opinions seriously but they cannot be ignored.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, has recently spoken about the problems being created by these sites for those who are responsible for governance. Speaking in Singapore on Wednesday, Mr Bloomberg said, Social media is going to make it even more difficult to make long term investments. Mr Bloomberg said this in the context of urban development and added, We are basically having a referendum on every single thing that we do every day. He pointed to the difficulty of taking a decision in the face of constant criticism and with the prospect of an election process looming. Before any comment is made on these views of the mayor of the Big Apple, it should be noted that he is no stranger to social media and is not hostile to it. He has his own Twitter account with a following of around 2,30,000.

Mr Bloomberg, intentionally or otherwise, may have hit upon one of the fundamental issues facing democratic governance. Social media have made democratic polities more accessible to direct interventions by the populace. Social media are as close as it is possible to get to vox populi, the holy grail of democracy.

In developing society, and even on occasions in the democratic world to which Mr Bloomberg belongs, modernizing projects cannot always ignore the opinion of those who see themselves as victims of the projects. To take an example with a contemporary resonance: Calcutta has many markets that are old and have outmoded electric wiring; these markets are a fire hazard. But any attempt to modernize them will entail closing them down for a period of time and that will result in the loss of livelihood for a number of people. No political leader dependent on the electoral process can risk taking such a decision unless he wants to be a martyr for a cause. To enable such a project a degree of coercion like in China, Singapore or in other parts of East and Southeast Asia may be needed. Development and democracy often do not intersect. Mr Bloomberg was perhaps drawing attention to this when he spoke of a daily referendum.

The mayors comments also pointed to a tension that lies at the heart of liberal political theory: between State and civil society. The rights and interests that constitute civil society are often in conflict with the power of the State. The emergence of social media has only heightened the tension because the networking sites offer a direct articulation of the views of civil society. Democracies, both at an intellectual and a practical level, have not addressed this problem. It is possible that Asian perspectives on the matter may differ from the Western one.

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Source: The Telegraph (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120324/jsp/opinion/story_15286606.jsp#.T22sKNVIvYQ)

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Social media heightened tension between State and civil society