COVID-19 and Democracy’s Plumbing
Pay attention to distribution mechanisms in politics.
Folks like Ben Franklin did, and that’s why we have post offices and libraries. It turns out that you can’t have a robust political democracy if only the wealthy can afford to communicate through letters and learn through books. Without libraries and post offices, the wealthy control the production and distribution of ideas and even if you universalize suffrage, everyone else’s vote simply becomes the flesh with which the wealthy exercise power.
Democracies need to develop infrastructures and bureaucracies to distribute power into the world, else the government’s power, while appearing to represent the people, will flow though non-democratic institutional relations.
Even at the most superficial level, if we only think of democracy as voting, we know that if we only have one polling place and we place it in a wealthy neighborhood, then even if voting is supposedly universal, those in that wealthy neighborhood are going to disproportionately access and benefit from the “universal” franchise.
Even for goods that are supposed to be equally accessible, the distribution of the benefit is going to depend on the shape of the infrastructure set up through which the benefit is dispersed. Furthermore, since many of the goods aren’t neutral, if one sector gets access to the good easier and faster than the other, then the first sector can use it to exploit the others. The nightmare scenario with the way the first bailout was structured is that large companies set-up to take advantage of the money flowing through the banking system will be advantaged to raid smaller companies who are still trying to fill out the paperwork.
Any state that is serious about securing its citizens a benefit needs to engineer the plumbing to ensure that the benefit reaches everyone at the same time and to the same effect.
But for the most part, we are bad about thinking about the institutional conditions that sustain a proper democracy.
It’s not just that COVID-19 halts civil society, but it also puts a stop to political activity. There are local elections happening all across the nation, and campaigning has been taken online, which is inadequate in 50 different ways.
As it stands, who benefits from the COVID-19 shutdown in terms of electoral politics depends on the civic and communications infrastructure that was in place prior to the shutdown. Much of this flows through dues paying organizations, and power in these organizations usually entails being a steady contributor. How does this all shake out? Good for the wealthy.
Canvassing is functionally banned, so the only people who have access to information and controlling information are those steeped in institutions. This COVID-19 world is structured to be fundamentally regressive because establishment actors have a disproportionate amount of power through access to established communication infrastructures, e.g., email lists.
The conditions of grassroots organization, something I think is very important for a functioning democracy, have been laid waste. However, one of the tasks of good governance is making sure that everyone gets the information, and since the rights that go into a democracy are more than just about voting, in addition to mail-in ballots, you need informed voting. Part of responsible government bureaucracy has to be concerned with making sure information about candidates and platforms goes out universally.
That’s not facebook. That’s not twitter.
Let me tell you, if I were Mayor of Athens, Ga., where I live, and I think Kelly Girtz should listen up, I’d understand that this is a political crisis and not merely a social one, and know that the county government has one of the most extensive email databases in the county.
I think that an email should be sent out to every citizen with candidate statements of 500 words. The county actually does have decent plumbing to do this. To be honest, if it were me, it would be a weekly email blast where every candidate answered the same question in 300 words until the election. And I’d throw in a one time paper copy of the candidates statements mailed out to every household. That would be expensive, but democracy is expensive, and relying on antecedent institutional communication structures, e.g., church emailing lists, is de facto oligarchy.
People think I’m joking when I say this, but conservatives understand that power flows through institutions, so they take building institutions and material and cultural supply chains much more seriously. Whereas liberals don’t understand production. They act like food grows in grocery stores and that citizens are born rather than made and formed. This is one reason why I’d rather have a Left made up of lapsed conservatives rather than lapsed liberals. Lapsed conservatives know that they were made conservative by their traditional institutions, and take institutions seriously as a means of building, sustaining and wielding power; liberals assume it happens by the magic of individuals acting without order or compulsion.
Power travels through institutions, and how power travels matters.
The result is that anytime there is a competitive program that is “open to everyone”, the benefit will flow to the people attached to the strongest, most functioning institutions. And one of government’s primary responsibilities is supplying the bureaucratic plumbing so that everyone, not just the connected, can benefit equally its power. For more reading on this, check out Matt Stoller’s new piece on the bailout.