Information and the New Movements for Citizen Participation

The rise of new participatory citizen movements for consumer and environmental protection, peace and social justice are grounded in an almost intuitive understanding of the persuasive power of information. In many affluent economies, such as those of Western Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan, the overarching strategy of these citizen movements has been to manipulate information and, in turn, to change prevailing views of what is rational. Thus, their chief mode of operation consists of assembling, restructuring, deploying and amplifying well-validated information and, then, with varying success, infusing this new data with the political power to affect social and economic decisions. Since I am a participant in, as well as a chronicler of, these movements, my observations are experientially and empirically based. Therefore, I make no claim to objectivity in this review of the innovative concepts, strategies and tactics of such citizen movements and their significant contributions to the political processes in advanced, complex societies. While such movements are now gaining strength and sophistication in many countries, this paper will focus on those in the United States—which Daniel Bell has described as the first postindustrial society—where it seems that the goals and values of the citizens are undergoing the most rapid and qualitative changes.