Michael Margolis and David Resnick, Politics as Usual: The “Cyberspace Revolution” Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000. 246 pp. $25.95 Paper, $59.95 Hardcover.

Reviewed by Kent E. Portney,
Tufts University
<kent.portney@tufts.edu>

When Benjamin Barber wrote in his powerful 1984 book Strong Democracy that “the capabilities of the new technology can be used to strengthen civic education, guarantee equal access to information, tie individuals and institutions into networks that will make real participatory discussion and debate possible across great distances,” he did so with an anticipation of what technology would be capable of doing to transform the American system of democracy into a dynamic set of interpersonal political relations that would strengthen the foundation of democratic governance.  Michael Margolis and David Resnick have written a fine book that examines, some 16 years later, whether this ideal has been realized, tipping its hand in the title telling us that it has not. But if this were the only purpose of the book, it would certainly not be new and would not be the first to come to this conclusion.  What is new and important about this book is the underlying explanation for why the cyberspace revolution has not served its transformative ideal. 

Based on research conducted under the auspices of the University of Cincinnati’s Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, this book combines a review of numerous existing studies with reports of results from the Center’s studies to address a broad array of political issues associated with the Internet and the World Wide Web, along with their various predecessors.  What emerges is a clear picture that political uses of the Internet and World Wide Web have mirrored existing patterns of politics.  The book is organized into nine chapters, with the first serving as an introduction to the overall arguments.  Chapter 2 presents a succinct historical review of the cyberspace backbones, from the creation of ARPANET to its evolution into the Internet, from the development of the World Wide Wide to the emergence of Internet 2.  Chapter 3 focuses on how political parties and interest groups try to use cyberspace.  Chapter 4 provides an outline of how elected officials and government agencies have tried to use the Internet and World Wide Web.  Chapter 5 focuses on the mass media’s political uses of cyberspace, and the relation to public opinion.  Chapter 6 deals with all those sticky political issues surrounding the Internet and World Wide Web, from privacy and intellectual property to electronic commerce and taxation.  Chapter 7 presents a case study of how these policy issues represent themselves in cyberspace – a case study of gambling.  Chapter 8 discusses cybercrime and its policy challenges. And Chapter 9 provides an outline of what kinds of obstacles must be addressed and overcome in order for information technology to positively affect the function of democracy.

Overall, this is a nicely conceived and executed book.  It provides some real insights into the internal politics of the Internet, the political uses of the Internet, and the political and policy issues that affect the Internet.  In all three kinds of politics, the argument is essentially the same.  The Internet and World Wide Web are mere extensions of the broader polity in which they exist.  Although in the early years cyberspace progressed under the illusion that its internal operations could be insulated from the rest of the political world, it didn’t take long for cyberspace to become a reflection of it.  If there is one theme that threads through the book, it is that the reason why cyberspace has come to reflect the larger political system has to do with resources – who controls them and for what purposes. If you teach, or anticipate teaching, a course on the politics of the Internet or politics on the Internet, this book would serve well as a required text. It is readable, well organized, and fairly comprehensive in terms of covering the major issues such a course might include. 

My only criticisms, and they do not reflect fatal flaws in the book, relate to the fact that the book seems to make assumptions about what the Internet and World Wide Web should optimally be used for to usher in changes to democratic governance.  If readers are looking for a thoroughly argued discussion of what electronic democracy should or could look like, they will find this book to be disappointing. It also draws rather broad and sweeping inferences about future uses of the Internet and World Wide Web based on descriptions of past uses.  There is no question that understanding past uses must inform our understanding of the potential for future uses.  But it is certainly possible that, as we come to understand more of what the Internet and World Wide Web are capable of doing, we will become more creative about how to make them contribute to improved democratic governance. For example, while the authors are skeptical that information technology can ever work to increase political participation (and raise the question whether it should), President Clinton’s recent Executive Order to investigate ways of providing on-line voting could make a difference.  And in the context of the technical difficulties associated with voting in the 2000 Presidential elections, particularly in Florida, such alternatives may take on even greater importance. Beyond voting, moreover, we have only just begun to think about and discover ways that citizens’ access to government can be enhanced through cyberspace.  If it turns out, however, that after trying these and other changes we find that nothing has really changed at all, we should not be surprised.  Margolis and Resnick tell us why.