TECHNOLOGY AND ELECTORAL REPRESENTATION

1
TECHNOLOGY AND ELECTORAL REPRESENTATION Andre
B. Niemeyer
Abstract
Electoral Representation
Elections
Generally, the strength of legislatures rests
partly on how representative it is of the
electorate. Highly representative legislatures,
which tend to be strong legislatures, usually
boast in the accessibility of the electorate and
legislators to each other and the transparency of
the legislative process and outcome. My research
attempts to identify and assess the role of
technology in shaping accessibility and
transparency, especially in developing countries,
where the growing popularity and advancement of
technology raises the prospect of significant
changes in electoral representation.
WEBSITE
SOCIAL NETWORKS IN POLITICS
In the state of Pernambuco, a sample of 500
political ads revealed an insignificant use of
the internet for political purposes 3.4
mentioned a website, with the majority making
reference to static pages where the candidate
simply states his platform.
Technology
Under the reign of technology, numerous social
networks have undergone change. And since
political networks are simply a particular brand
of social networks, there is no reason why
political networks should be immune to these
changes.
REGIONAL PHENOMENA
Of the many significant factors surrounding
electoral representation, technology is peculiar
in its ability to increase the size and the
connectivity of social networks (e.g. Myspaces
200M accounts and Facebooks 35M users), as well
as in its ability to make information available
with, for instance, over 2B web pages on the
world wide web. Social accessibility and
transparency of information have taken radically
different forms under the reign of technology.
The scarce mention of a website on a political
campaign points to a serious difficulty for the
research, namely, the challenge of compiling
enough data to produce objectively significant
reports about the relation between technology and
electoral representation.
CORRELATION HINTING CAUSATION
And as political theory suggests, they arent.
According to some (for example, Gary Cox and
Sebastian Saiegh) electoral representation hinges
partly on the accessibility between the
electorate and their elected officials, on the
one hand, and the transparency of information, on
the other. We thus have a one to one relation
between technology and electoral representation
insofar as accessibility and transparency are
concerned.
INTERNET ACCESS
In a population of 301M, roughly 69.1 is an
Internet user.
Conclusions
In a population of 190M, roughly 22.4 is an
Internet user.
ACCESSIBILITY
COMPILATION OF DATA
As to accessibility, the reasoning goes roughly
as follows. For the elected official, increased
accessibility allows him to rally support and as
a result gain political bargaining power. And for
the electorate, it allows them to communicate
their concerns to their politicians and, as such,
it meets a condition for representative
governance.
The scarcity of data in Brazil raises the biggest
challenge to a quantitative approach to analyze
the relation between technology and electoral
representation. Yet another challenge is to adopt
an uncontroversial method to objectively measure
electoral representation. Thus, the aim to
adequately assess the relation between technology
and electoral representation faces both an
empirical and a theoretical difficulty.
Nonetheless, the task to overcome the lack of
data has proven to be less tenable (or at least
more arduous) than the task to reach theoretical
agreement.
CELL PHONE ACCESS
In a population of 301M, roughly 77.7 has a cell
phone.
TRANSPERANCY
In a population of 190M, roughly 52.6 has a cell
phone.
And as to transparency, the reasoning is much the
same. For the electorate, increased transparency
of the political process and outcome , say,
permits the public to respond appropriately to
conduct in the legislative government.
Cell-internet difference US - 8.6 Brazil -
30.2
Department Political Science Advisor Scott
Desposato