School of Social and Political Sciences
- School of Social and Political Sciences
- SPS seminar series
- The Pathology of a Listening Government
The Pathology of a Listening Government: The Coalition and the Internet
- Professor Stephen Coleman, University of Leeds
- 7 February 2013, 4.15-6.15, B/B/002
- Chair: Charlie Trotter, SPS Student
Interview with Professor Coleman
Seminar presentation recording
Seminar synopsis
This presentation will consider the ways in which the current UK Coalition government have used digital technologies to engage citizens in the policy process. Before being elected as Prime Minister, David Cameron said that ‘‘By harnessing the wisdom of the crowd, we can find out what information individuals think will be important in holding the state to account’. Indeed, the Conservatives promised to use the Internet in radically new ways with a view to harnessing ‘the wisdom of the crowd’. Soon after the formation of the Coalition government in 2010, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, stated that the new government intended to preside over ‘the biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832’.
The presentation will focus upon the failure of the Coalition government to adopt innovative uses of online public engagement in policy-making; the non-deliberative nature of the few exercises in online participation it has promoted; its timidity in consulting citizens about far-reaching policy changes; and the options that will face its successor, if it is to utilise the democratic potential of the Internet.
Professor Stephen Coleman
Stephen Coleman is Professor of Political Communication at the University of Leeds, Honorary Professor in Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
His main research interests are i) methods of political engagement; ii) uses of digital media in representative democracies; iii) intersections between popular culture and formal politics; iv) political efficacy; v) citizenship education; vi) political aesthetics, performance and rhetoric; viii) literary and dramatic representations of politics; and ix) forms of deliberation and decision-making.
Recent books include How Voters Feel (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Connecting Democracy (MIT Press, 2011); The Media and the Public (Blackwell, 2010) and The Internet and Democratic Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2009).