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23 Governance: An Int'l J. Pol'y, Admin, & Institutions 1 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/gvnanlj23 and id is 1 raw text is: Commentary The Liberal State in a Digital World PAUL STARR* THE IDEA THAT WE ARE-or should be-moving from an indus- trial age government to an information age government is a staple of political rhetoric. But has the information age significantly altered government in the liberal democracies? And if it has not yet done so, should we expect the liberal state to change in any fundamental way, or be entirely replaced, because of the chain of consequences set in motion by new technology? Since the early development of computers, there have been, broadly speaking, three phases in thinking about the potential of new technol- ogy to improve government. Beginning in the 1950s, the application of digital technology to the public sector was conceived of as automation and the hope was mainly for greater efficiency and control in govern- mental operations. A second phase, dating from the 1980s and rising to a climax in the following decade, pitted two alternative visions against each other-privatization and reinvention-each premised on the idea that the information age made traditional forms of public administra- tion obsolete. Finally, in the most recent phase, digital democracy has become a central theme of visions of new forms of governance based on the diffusion of cheap computing and online communication. Each of these phases has brought some notable but far from revolu- tionary achievements, and that is what we should continue to expect. Digital technology does enhance some features of democratic govern- ment, but the fundamental problems of democracy are not susceptible to technological solutions, and the same developments that strengthen some democratic capacities degrade others. In this new environment, it will be a struggle just to maintain some of the minimal conditions of political accountability that democracy requires. *Princeton University Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 2010 (pp. 1-6). © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK. ISSN 0952-1895