In a TED-talk I watched a couple of weeks ago, Seth Godin argues that the internet has retribalized society by allowing people at the fringes with similar interests to find each other. Basically, the Zappos family blog has brought together shoe lovers, if you like coffee you will follow the Coffee Sage, and if you are an Austrian economist, you will read Coordination Problem. By finding others with similar interests in this way, people who used to be at the fringe of society have moved to the center of their specific social network.
As I was listening to Godin talk, I started thinking about the implications of this retribalization on politics. My first instinct is to think that a larger number of better-organized small groups make for even more rent seeking and redistribution a la Olson (1965), Tullock (1967), and Stigler (1971). On second thought, however, it does not seem like such interest-sharing groups are really involved in political activism or even designed for this purpose. So far, they seem to exist only for informational and socializing purposes. This might be an artifact of their recent emergence. Maybe they just haven’t figured out yet that they can profitably lobby government for redistribution in their favor. It would after all take an act of political entrepreneurship to make that leap from being organized as a social network to finding a politically profitable niche (See my paper with Randy Simmons and Ryan Yonk on Bootleggers, Baptists, and Political Entrepreneurs in the Winter 2011 Issue of the Independent Review). If such groups were to start spreading into the political arena, what would be different about the type of lobbying they might do as compared to the traditional K-Street-type lobbying we have mostly observed so far, and what would be the implications of their different lobbying activities?
First, and most obviously, internet-based groups would most likely make greater use of informational campaigns than existing groups. Rather than contributing to campaigns by giving money, they might use their existing social network to spread information about a candidate or a specific issue. The trend towards internet-based retribalization, which Godin describes, seems to come with an amount of information sharing across group boundaries that is much greater than what is common for non-internet based groups. Everyone is familiar with the importance of social media in many of the recent revolutions in the Arab world. Similarly, you-tube stars have made it into the world of advertising and at least one homeless person has found a job. Such a shift towards more informational campaigns would also be in line with the most recent Supreme Court decision on the issue of campaign finance legislation (Citizens United v. FEC), which effectively removed restrictions on electioneering communications.
A related second point of comparison to existing lobbying groups would be the ability of the new internet-based groups to operate on a higher level of public opinion rather than through direct congressional influence (pre-constitutional rather than constitutional or post-constitutional, see my working paper with Adam Martin on Two Tiered Political Entrepreneurship). Rather than going through the established channels of forming a PAC for representation in Washington DC, internet-based groups could conceivably influence policy making by organizing internet-based protest. While popular opinion might only be a weak constraint on congressional decision making, it does seem to be a proximate cause of policy.
Third, such groups could most likely organize previously unseen fundraising campaigns. Just remember Ron Paul’s 2007 Money Bomb, which generated $4.2 million in one day, making it the largest one-day fundraiser ever at the time. The significance of this point might be limited for fringe issues, for which support remains low. However, if a small group is well connected, it can conceivably overcome the disadvantage of a small member base.
These three potential changes to traditional influence suggest that if more internet-based groups should indeed become politically active, they would make public discourse more competitive (because they would be able to generate greater amounts of funding), less congress-centric and instead driven more by public opinion (because they would affect public opinion to change legislation), and more information based rather than influence based (because their campaigns would be informational campaigns rather than influence or money campaigns). Overall, such a trend towards more competition, more information, and more active public opinion sounds like something that could actually make the world a better place.
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