To my amazement, I've gotten through three years at Hampshire College. I kept having to pinch myself at graduation yesterday to confirm that will in fact be my fate in a year's time. The next step is Division III, which for those if you non-Hampshire types, is kind of like an honors thesis on steroids.
I've got the crazy idea that I'm qualified to attempt to write mine on new political trends in the 2004 election cycle. The basic idea is to find a campaign internship (still haven't firmed that up yet, if anybody's got any great leads...) and use it as a jumping off point for some kind of comparative analysis.
My first attempt at a description is below (click the "continue reading" link). Feedback is more than welcome, it's urged.
Anyhow, the two practical implications of this are:
Though we are still nearly six months away from November, this election cycle has already proven to be a remarkable one, seriously departing from some previously established political practices. The spectacular rise (and precipitous fall) of the Howard Dean campaign – and the unprecedented manner in which it occurred – stands out in particular as a sign of an elections process which is being significantly altered by technology-enabled innovations in fundraising, media, and grassroots outreach, to name a few.
Campaigns which have become increasingly professionalized, television-driven, and dependent on a select group of wealthy donors are being shaken on all three points. A renewed focus on grassroots voter contact is once again placing a premium on volunteer involvement. New communications mediums are challenging and interacting with traditional paid media in a variety of ways. And small first-time donors – many of them recruited over the internet -- are a growing source of funds in the post-McCain-Feingold era.
Commentators have given this inchoate trend a variety of names – “new politics,” “high-tech/high-touch,” “open source politics,” “personal democracy,” and so forth – but few disagree that it is changing the political landscape.
Moreover, it is so far taking shape primarily as part of a revitalized progressive political movement which is forceful, committed, and angry, and in some ways autonomous from existing organizational structures, especially the institutional Democratic Party. This was most obvious with the Dean campaign, but continues with MoveOn.org, various political blogs, and perhaps even with Dean's own post-campaign organization, Democracy for America. And the techniques pioneered by the Dean campaign are now being picked up by a variety of campaigns (not all of them progressive) at all levels, with varying degrees of success.
As such, I would like to ask three basic questions:
1) What factors – social, political, legal, technological -- have given rise to these changes?
2) How, why, and by whom are they being advanced?
3) What is the impact on this election, future elections, political actors (individuals, organizations, and institutions), and the health of American democracy?
Using a campaign internship as a jumping-off point, I wish to explore these from a comparative perspective. I am particularly interested in considering the overlapping perspectives of participants (e.g., bloggers, grassroots leaders, donors), campaigns and candidates, media/political commentators, and academics (political scientists). I will expect to draw on academic literature from political science (elections, political parties, and voting behavior), political sociology (social movements and social capital), and history, but also on emerging literature about communications technology and social change.
Finally, I do not engage in these questions as a disinterested observer, but as an active-but-critical participant in the political formations I am studying. I ask them not just because I am intellectually curious, but because I believe that there is great potential for progressive political forces in the tools, techniques, and methods in question.
Rough sketch of intermediate writings/research/notes to be produced: