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The Impact of the Information Revolution on Parliamentary Sovereignties*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Ghiţa Ionescu
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Extract

This Rather Cumbersome Title Might Be Easier to understand if it was first explained in which sense the two concepts which it contains are taken here. Thus ‘information revolution’ is taken to mean not only the scientific and technological revolution, which has culminated in the microelectronic revolution, but also the two major geopolitical consequences of the information revolution: ‘interdependence’ and ‘globalization’. The question posed here is how this vast complex influences and changes the functioning, some would say, even the existence of parliamentary sovereignties.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1993 , pp. 221 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1993

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Footnotes

*

This is a heavily revised version of my paper and talk at the Manchester conference.

References

1 François Guizot, Histoire des origirus du gouvtmement représentatif en France, Paris, 1821 – 2. See also Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, Paris, 1985.

2 Harold Laski, Foundations of Sovereignty, London, 1920; Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics, London, 1962.

3 Heidegger, Martin, The Question Concerning Technology, London, 1977, p. 22.Google Scholar

4 This subject has also been treated, even if differently, in the special issue of Government and Opposition, ‘Modern Knowledge and Modern Polities’, Vol. 24, No. 4, Autumn 1989.

5 Habermas, Jurgen, Theory and Practice, London, 1974, pp. 255 – 6.Google Scholar

6 Ionescu, G., Leadership in an Interdependent World, London, Longman, 1991, p. 5.Google Scholar

7 Giovanni, Sartori, ‘Undercomprehension’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 391–3. (Italics in the text).Google Scholar

8 Rosenau, James, Governance without Government: Order and Changes in World Politics, Cambridge, 1992, p. 282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 ‘Le journalisme est un métier qui conduit à tout, à condition ?en sortir à temps’, said Clémenceau.

10 Arterton, Christopher, Teledemocracy, Can Technology Protect Democracy?, Roosevelt Centre for American Policy Studies, 1987, p. 198.Google Scholar

11 From an article by Matthew Parris (The Times, 16 November 1992) on a reporting by Channel 4 on the House of Lords: ‘I agree that the Upper Chamber can be ridiculous; and I share the programme's scepticism about their lordships’ role in our political process. But television is a medium dishonest to its core, and has so many ways of appearing to “demonstrate” what in fact has only been insinuated. When to this is added the cutting away of one visual image into another in order to punctuate the demonstration with a persistent silent sneer; and when, finally, the effect has plainly been achieved by misleading some harmless men and women, some of them too trusting, into believing that they are helping to produce a documentary when in fact they are being used to produce polemic and to make idiots of themselves and their friends in the process … well, I, who cannot be accused of uncritical admiration for the place, was left with that feeling of uneasy pleasure that comes when your side has scored, but by doubtful means.

12 This very felicitous and pun‐like expression was coined but in a very different context by Robert E. Putnam.