For far too long, getting access to important documents has meant having a very expensive subscription to an exclusive service. This has held true across disciplines, including politics, law, and academia. The Internet is starting to change this, lowering the cost of storing and transferring information to nearly nothing. With the help of pioneers like Carl Malamud and Lawrence Lessig, essential information — whether governmental, academic, legal, or scientific — is being freed from the boundaries set by traditional publishers, whose role as information stewards has too often ignored the interests of the general public, and served the needs of paying specialists.
(Disclosure: I’m happy to say that Professor Lessig is on Sunlight’s Advisory Board, and Public.Resource.org is a Sunlight grantee.) (more)

In academia, via FGI, it looks like Harvard is embracing standards of open access for academic research in their Arts and Sciences departments. This is great news, as they seem to be asserting their role as agents in a broad intellectual sphere as more important than their role as agents in the academic publishing world. There is a difference between the business of publishing research and the process of actually taking advantage of that research. Access to even college course material is developing online.

Similarly, Carl Malamud, Lawrence Lessig, and Public.Resource.org have staked a claim in the realm of public access to legal research, as they recently announced the release of "substantial part of all federal cases." Their work similarly helps to distinguish between the functional world of real people needing access to research materials and the walled off publishing companies that have long held exclusive access to the materials they produce. Let’s not be naive, however, publishing companies like West have played an essential role in providing information to a broad and paying legal community that couldn’t function without their institutional role as managers of legal information.

So where’s the middle ground? Where does the clear public good of broad information access begin, and where does the public domain end? How does one negotiate the terrain of digitizing public information that has some degree of copyright asserted over it?

Mr. Malamud gives us real perspective on his attemps to realize the proper place for public information, as he lets us see into the negotiations surrounding his work, posting his correspondence with Thomson North American Legal along with the court documents his team has digitized. Among my favorite passages (pdf):

He has also posted the company’s reply, and publicresource’s press release of the collection’s release.

I’m hoping that his work with creating broad public access to legal research materials and historical national documents leads to a better relationship between citizens and legal and legislative information.

Access to a history of Supreme Court decisions puts us one step closer to gaining a comprehensive public view of all of the important aspects of legal research, and being able to see the relevant documentation of public policy from its inception and legislative consideration to its implementation and eventual interpretation in the courts.

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(From the Open House Project blog.)

I’m reading Politics in Time by Paul Pierson (link), and am struck by how little academic political science seems to affect government policy and political discussion. I find political and social analysis incredibly stimulating, especially given how tiresome I find the current presidential punditizing.

I’m particularly interested in Pierson’s purportedly novel conception of how political institutions develop over time, apparently filling the gaps that other models fail to address. (He sets his conceptions against "historical institutionalism" and "rational choice theory".) His analysis is abstract enough to be rigorous and challenging at first, but takes a broad enough view that he can abstract common elements out of disparate systems in a useful, applicable manner. He seeks to "explicate different ways in which things happen over time in social life, drawing attention to processes that are unlikely to be visible without specifically addressing questions of temporality" (p. 10). (more)

In reading just the first few chapters, I’m surprised at how well the concept of "path dependence" maps onto congressional reform efforts. A concept I would probably have referred to as a "positive feedback loop", path dependence is self reinforcing behavior — development whose onset disproportionately influences further development. Basic examples that come to mind are both debt and wealth, which tend to feed off of themselves.

Pierson applies path dependence to economic theory, illuminating situations that may be well explained by examining self reinforcing structures. For example, various national economies develop divergently, and, rather than taking advantage of each other’s successful strategies, produce very different situations. "Once in place, institutions are hard to change, and they have a tremendous effect on the possibilities for generating sustained economic growth. Individuals and organizations adapt to existing institutions. If the institutional matrix creates incentives for piracy, North observes, then people will invest in becoming good pirates. When institutions fail to provide incentives to be economically productive, there is unlikely to be much economic growth." (p. 27)

Pierson argues that the political sphere is particularly subject to self-reinforcing behavior (aka positive feedback, path dependence, or increasing returns). He outlines four mechanisms that render the political particularly influenced by whatever the current state of affairs is. They are: "(1) the central role of collective action; (2) the high density of institutions; (3) the possibilities for using political authority to enhance asymmetries of power; and (4) its intrinsic complexity and opacity… Each of these features makes positive feedback processes prevalent in politics". (p. 30)

Each of these mechanisms seems to easily map onto Congress in a useful way.

Collective action problems make feedback loops because both politicians and constituents (or any political actor) are largely unable to act alone, and must constantly assess the winning strategy, and what is perceived as the winning strategy. This privileges existing organizations, giving established parties, coalitions, and institutions the distinct advantage of clearing the first hurdle of viability. When effectiveness can be found in groups, and groups are hard to form (and political organizing is insufficiently agile), then those groups’ existence will tend to exhibit self reinforcement. The Internet, and blogging, however, are a productively destabilizing force, giving ad-hoc coalitions and unproved institutions an equal voice, where reputations matter less than well sourced convincing arguments. The Internet also reduces the amount to which political activism involves collective action problems: there is a rather low barrier to participation (digital divide notwithstanding). Broader participation and competition means greater alternatives, leading to more agility and easier transitions, meaning we’re less likely to stay stuck on some self-reinforcing pathway.

A dense realm of institutions similarly exists around Congress and the federal government; they sort of approach being the essence of the institution, the defining meta-institution, comprised of departments about departments, creating the conditions for all other institutions. With such far-reaching work, this complex of institutions will be justifiably risk-averse, weighted down by the seriousness of their task, and the high price of failure. The sheer mass of institutions at play gives reform a much higher cost (and renders them path-dependent.)

Third is the "possibilities for using political authority to enhance asymmetries of power." Congress is full of power begetting itself, as is government generally. Societal expectations and checks and balances are supposed to help define the terms of the equalibria controlling this power. The legislative and executive periodically switch in dominance, as do the parties. The incentives created by elections are enhanced by an information-empowered electorate, helping to reign in self-reinforcing political power structures.

The last political mechanism of path-dependence is "its intrinsic complexity and opacity." Complexity and opacity make political institutions and agents less susceptible to any societal pressure, which is more likely to be mediated through sympathetic agents (the media, lobbyists). While complexity is often necessary, and has a high cost of shedding (see #2, institutional path-dependence), it can be countered by information availability. In other words, while Senate procedures provide an effective shield against criticism for questionable votes only as long as those procedures are hard to explain. Insofar as Congress is inscrutable, it’s less likely to feel real pressure, and more likely to reinforce itself. Insofar as the Internet helps make Congress scrutable and transparent, pressure becomes productive.

I’m looking forward to going through more of Pierson’s research, finding it similarly helpful to Harvard’s Transparency Policy Project or Congress’s own best attempts to survey itself.

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Paul Blumenthal just came across this document from the GAO, transcribing a pithy speech by the Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker (the head of the GAO). Transparent Government and Access to Information: A Role for Supreme Audit Institutions provides a neat tour of the advantages of transparent public administration, from the viewpoint at the top of the nation’s leading accountability officer.

(more after the jump.)

I (obviously) think the whole document is worth a read. It absolutely reinforces my belief that built in mechanisms of accountability are essential to a functioning democratic government, that the public should be involved in and aware of their oversight, and that the scope and effective administering of such oversight programs needs to continue to evolve as government grows and changes. Endemic oversight mechanisms should be especially encouraged by the increase in citizens’ potential as government watchdogs and participants in policymaking that the Internet brings.

To shape the development of policy that encourages robust and effective public (and administrative) oversight, we should be attentive to the themes of transparency that resonate throughout the current policy and governmental landscape. For example, where should the line be between public and private, in a legislative setting? What is the proper scope of a FOIA law? When is classification appropriate? When should lawmakers or industry use discretion in deciding what to disclose, and when should government set a standard policy?

A few academics at Harvard have been considering exactly these questions, and have a series of papers drawing helpful parallels and making broad conclusions about how to effectively administer good transparency policy. (see especially the papers at the bottom of this page.)

I’ve just started digging into the details, and so far the first paper I’m reading is stuffed with detail. (I have to quote more selectively here; the papers are copyrighted.)

In the United States, nutritional labeling, public school report cards, restaurant grading systems, campaign finance disclosure, toxic pollution reporting, auto safety and fuel economy ratings, and corporate financial reporting are among scores of transparency systems created by federal and state legislators.

…Government-mandated disclosure plays a unique role in supplementing and correcting the private provision of socially relevant information.

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this, and the other papers. Academia, advocacy, and government should be better connected.

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