Communications, Power and Governance in Democratisation Conflicts

"[W]e question a characterisation that often contrasts vertical mainstream media with more horizontal and inclusive social media, arguing that a more nuanced view of the political significance of both spaces of communication is required, and one that highlights their interplay and blurs the boundaries between online and offline..."

This paper draws on examples from the countries at the centre of the Media, Conflict and Democratisation (MeCoDEM) project - Serbia, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa - to explore the role of media and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in transforming the relationship between leaders and audience and, as a result, the dynamics among political authorities engaged in negotiation in the political arena. It looks at the role of digital and traditional media in shaping formal and informal leaders' interactions with their own constituencies and a broader audience, by both advancing their messages and narratives and manoeuvring to steer a specific political agenda. It specifically considers the role of power, leadership, and strategic communications in both exacerbating and mitigating violent conflict in emerging democracies.

The paper opens by examining the notion of democratic leadership and the modes of communication through which it is expressed. For example, responsible leaders are able to listen to the grievances of their following and manage expectations, thus contributing to defuse escalating conflicts. Responsible leadership also encourages "voice" as another means of being informed of potential crises. The second part introduces the literature on the interplay of political and media systems, moving beyond normative approaches based on the role ascribed to the media in representative and liberal democracies. The third part examines the concepts of informal authorities, patronage and neopatrimonialism, and the way they provide a lens through which to look at the functioning of institutions and at spaces of interaction in emerging democracies. Here, the paper highlights the importance of communicative practices and spaces and technologies of communication that enable both horizontal and vertical communication, and both to facilitate coordination among members of the same network and funnel demands and grievances to political leaders. The authors then flesh out the notions of hybrid governance and political settlement in order to explain how leaders communicate with each other and negotiate and vie for leverage in the political arena, but at the fringe of democratic institutions.

Next, the paper shifts the attention to the literature on the impact of ICTs, and social media in particular, on forms of mobilisation from below. The authors present two caveats: 1) although the literature on popular protests and democratisation emphasises the importance of civil society organisations in coordinating protests, there is evidence of a critical role of traditional structures of power and leaders in acting as catalyst of collective action. So, they consider cases of political mobilisation in which political and established authorities were able to occupy an intermediary position between protesters and governments in order to steer the protest and further their agenda; 2) digital media increase the possibility of interaction between political actors and citizens, and yet most scholarship on government's communication and media seems concerned mainly with how governments speak but not much with how government listen. The communication literature offers some conceptual tools to examine how social media, such as blogs, are inducing changes in the field of political public relations. However, "the interactive potential of digital media strongly depends on the context of embeddedness and on the leader's capacity to create an maintain avenues of participation open."

The paper continues by discussing how ICTs are changing the interplay of top-down and bottom-up communication practices, enabling the interweaving and mutual strengthening of patronage and technological networks, and what insights can be drawn for further research. As noted here, "[k]eeping communication channels open between the leader and his base makes [it] possible to include other actors in the negotiation. At the same time, the coordination of collective actions from above via mobile phones and other ICTs and the possibility to stay in touch with his clients provides the leader engaged in the negotiation arena with an opportunity to display his clout over their following and his capacity to resort to violence if necessary to increase his political leverage. The level of violence can thus be calibrated to fit a bargaining strategy....ICTs may not only play a role in democratising the political arena, increasing the accountability of the leaders to his supporters, but also buttress neo-patrimonial links, thus entrenching pre-existing power relations."

In conclusion: "this paper has challenged normative approaches to government communication, conflict and democratisation by questioning a rigid formal/informal bifu rcation of both governance and media and suggesting instead the need to take into account hybrid arrangements of governing structures, involving leaders with heterogeneous and, in some case, conflicting agendas. It has also underscored that government communication is a two-way process by pointing out that the key of good governance lies not only in a leader's ability to effectively communicate with his following by virtue of his charisma or his mastery of the political game, but also in his capacity to keep channels of communication open, including listening. ICTs have further expanded the possibility of timely interactions. The other side in young democracies, though, is that the interpersonal relations entertained by political leaders with their followers might be the ossified structure of neo-patrimonial networks cloaked in the comforting, and appealing to Western donors, language of democracy. As emerges from this literature review, despite conjuring notions of public sphere and open participation, the widespread adoption of digital media, and social media in particular, presents problematic aspects that might contribute to reproducing relations of subordination reverse democratic transitions. Further research is required, in the four MeCoDEM countries and beyond, to understand the factors shaping democratic trajectories at a local level and whether media, old and new, are a tool for countering authoritarian drifts, or merely a mirror of pre-existing inequalities and networks."