Politics is about power, information is an instrument of power and IT has given us the most effective information systems we have ever had. But they are not equally available to all, and could shift the locus of political power yet further away from ordinary citizens. ‘Democracy’ is a word with many different meanings: until this century it was often a term of abuse, meaning ‘mob rule’. Today, it is widely appropriated as a mark of approval – or of self-justification. I shall be using it in the restricted sense of ‘representative democracy’, and more particularly to denote the forms and styles of government current in Britain, in the USA, and in some other Western countries.

The will of the people

Representative democracy requires the consent of the governed, as expressed in the occasional election of representatives to local and national assemblies. Great emphasis is laid on this right to vote and on successive enlargements of the franchise to include women, those young enough for military service and the poor. Politicians congratulate themselves on giving so many of us the opportunity to participate in our own governing. Certainly we are able to make our views known to them by refusing to re-elect; but that method of protest has the defect of being sporadic, infrequent and less-rewarding than you had hoped.