[liberationtech] Drezner's Guide to Thinking About Civil Society 2.0

[Katrin Verclas]

We have access to the journal.  Do let me know offline if you would  
like to read the article in its entirety.

Katrin


On Nov 10, 2010, at 4:17 AM, Rebecca MacKinnon wrote:

> http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/drezners-guide-thinking-about-civil-society-20
>
> Drezner's Guide to Thinking About Civil Society 2.0
> Nancy Scola | November 9, 2010 - 12:28pm | Email This!
> Tufts international relations professor and master blogger Dan  
> Drezner has a paper in the latest issue of the Brown Journal of  
> World Affairs that lays out constructive ways for us to start  
> thinking about the impact of the Internet on the relationship  
> between the "state" and civil society around the globe. Weighing  
> what modern connective technologies mean for what the U.S. State  
> Department* calls, in the context of its so-called Civil Society 2.0  
> initiative, "social good" organizations against what the mean for  
> the ability of totalitarian regimes to control their people, Drezner  
> suggests that they often mean more of the same, whatever that same  
> might be:
>
> It would seem, therefore, that the internet merely re-inforces the  
> pre-existing dynamics between states and non-state actors. In  
> societies that value liberal norms -- democracies -- the internet  
> clearly empowers non-state actors to influence the government. In  
> arenas where liberal norms are not widely accepted -- interstate  
> negotiations and totalitarian governments -- the internet has no  
> appreciable effect.
>
> Actually, more than having "no appreciable effect," Drezner  
> concludes a bit later in the piece that networked technologies might  
> actually have a deleterious impact in oppressed lands once things  
> have moved past a sort of magic window of the first round of  
> protests, something we saw in Iran where the regime in Tehran  
> started using tools like Twitter and blogs to track down dissidents  
> and start to turn the wave of public opinion back their way. Things  
> look a bit different in places where, like China, an regime that has  
> restrictive tendencies also would really like to use the Internet  
> and mobile and all the rest to boost their country's economic  
> activity; there, there's a bit more of an opening, because it's  
> nearly impossible for a country that wants to exploit the web to  
> impose a perfect regime of censorship at the same time. To boil it  
> all down, the Internet might seem like a global organism, but its  
> meaning and potential differs tremendously depending on the real- 
> world relationship that already exists between human creatures and  
> the governments under which they live.
>
> Seems obvious. But Drezner thinks that Hillary Clinton's very Civil  
> Society 2.0 initiative lacks such an awareness. Drezner calls them  
> "misperceptions," and puts them as an unwarranted assumptions that,  
> first, all these social tools primarily benefit "'good' groups" and,  
> second, that the most major thing standing in the way of "digital  
> liberalism" is that bad governments keep their people from the  
> Internet.
>
> On that first point, though, at least  this FAQ sheet (pdf) from  
> State's Tech at State project implies that they're busy picking  
> winners. The very idea is to equip NGOs and other civil society  
> groups with better tools and practices to better balance out the  
> power dynamic between them and the state. The risk of doing that, it  
> seems, is that it ups the odds that repressive regimes are going to  
> simply up their game, doing whatever it takes get better at doing  
> the web and all its affiliated technologies. But that ship has  
> likely sailed already. The trend is towards networking the world,  
> and it seems to make sense to consider who benefits from that wiring  
> as its own distinct question. That approach still very much requires  
> an understanding that dialing up Twitter in the context of Iran is  
> very different than setting up people with mobile phones in Mexico  
> -- or that meddling in Mexico City is different than doing it in  
> Juarez, Mexico. Drezner, for his part, seems worried that this whole  
> new "civil society 2.0" approach to diplomacy and development is a  
> bit undermature when it comes to appreciating the multitudinous  
> variations of life as it's lived across the planet.
>
> Alas, Drezner's illuminating piece is available only to subscribers  
> to the Brown Journal of World Affairs, or you might get lucky  
> picking up a copy in your local bookstore. Or, should you have  
> access to a university journal database, there's that route too.
>
>
>
> -- 
> Rebecca MacKinnon
> Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
> Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
> Cell: +1-617-939-3493
> E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
> Blog: http://RConversation.blogs.com
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmack
>
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Katrin Verclas
MobileActive.org
katrin at mobileactive.org

skype/twitter: katrinskaya
(347) 281-7191

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