The Political Economy of Informational Democracy

By Michael A. Peters.

Published by The International Journal of Learning

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Article: Print	$US10.00
Article: Electronic	$US5.00

Information has always been central to accounts of democracy from its early modern formulations where the emphasis was placed on the necessity of an informed citizenry through to more recent movements like that of open government which began in the 1960s. This paper analyses the concept of informational democracy examining the links between the two concepts. First, it traces the utopian moment that links information and democracy; second, it analyses the new paradigm of cultural production; third, it develops an argument for ‘informational political capital’ that rests on the supposition that the growth of the transparent State is associated with cyberdemocracy and a kind of governance based on collective intelligence; finally, it plots the nature and limits of information indicating how information and information theory, despite the utopian moment, emerges from military intelligence (breaking codes, deciphering messages, encoding information, resolving conflict of sources etc.).

Keywords:	Information, Democracy, Political Economy, Miltary Intelligence

The International Journal of Learning, Volume 14, Issue 6, pp.29-36. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 521.280KB).

Prof. Michael A. Peters

Professor, Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Chicago, Illinois, UNITED STATES

Michael A. Peters is professor of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2005). He held a chair as research professor and professor of education at the University of Glasgow (2000-2005) as well as positions as adjunct professor of education at the University of Auckland and adjunct professor of communication studies at the Auckland University of Technology. He is the editor of three international journals: Educational Philosophy and Theory; Policy Futures in Education; and, E-Learning. He is the author or editor of over thirty books, including most recently Deconstructing Derrida: Tasks for the New Humanities (Palgrave, 2005), Building Knowledge Cultures (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Why Foucault? New Directions in Educational Research (Peter Lang, 2006), and Edutopias: New Utopian Thinking in Education (Sense, 2006). His research interests include educational philosophy, education and public policy, social and political theory.

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