Ralph D. Berenger
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Middle East governance has seen nothing like it. The information and communications revolution has caught governments in the gap between what they can readily provide in the way of information policies, while securing their sovereignty and security, and their citizens’ hunger for more information, more access and more freedom to benefit from the global communications explosion. This essay proposes a fresh utilitarian look at the components of political will as an important addition to a country’s infrastructure.

Considerable research has been conducted and thoughts have been expressed on the disparity between information-rich and information-poor countries that has resulted in what has popularly has been called the digital divide. Governmental strategies to bridge the communications chasm have been uneven. One reason for this might be misunderstood assessments of a government’s “Political Will” to provide the greatest number of its citizens with the means to join the worldwide information society.

Political Will is defined as the ability of individuals, groups or governments with sufficient and necessary power to protect their interests; and the desire and sustained focus to maintain internal and external tranquility that fosters economic prosperity and a sense of self worth and recognition by others. As described here and applied to the digital divide, political will is a utilitarian construct since it promotes the greatest good for the greatest number (See Mill, 1987) and presupposes the polity will act in a rational way (See Downs, 1957).

Regardless of a country’s standing among its world neighbors, each has a stake in closing the canyon between rich and poor countries, and between the haves and the have not within their own borders. Without political will, no amount of investment in information and communication technology (ICT) is likely to narrow the widening information gap. The cyberscape, though uneven, is far from dismal.

While an estimated 500,000,000 global citizens – the combined populations of the European Union and North America – are hooked up to the Internet, 6 billion are not. At any given time in 2001, North Americans account for 41-57% of the users. The large populations of resource underdeveloped countries and regions such as China, India, sub-Sahara Africa, rural Latin America, the countries in the former Soviet bloc, and huge parts of Central Asia and the Middle East are slowly joining the information revolution.

Not only is access a problem in developing countries. In the United States a sizeable percentage of blacks and Hispanics do not have access to computers or the Internet, cutting them off from the types of efficiencies many governments had hoped to achieve. The same is true in parts of the EU and every major world city. In the United States, where computer adoption rates are high, only 71% of all households were expected to be connected to the Internet in 2005. Here are some other indications of the problem, as found by Berenger (2001) in a literature search of newspapers, magazines and research documents:

The reason for this growing gap between computer-haves and computer-have not is not entirely economic. A survey by the Ipsos-Reid research firm found that a third of the population in a global sample have actively chosen not to go on line. Among the biggest reasons cited were lack of need (40%); no computer access (33%); no interest (25%); lack of knowledge to use it (25%) and the general costs involved (16%). Many of the “information poor” simply do not see access to the Internet as a problem. They are apparently unmotivated to seek information that does not yield immediate economic effect (Cuneo, 2002). Research shows, however, that this passivity toward the knowledge powerhouse of the Internet might well result in a continuing and widening “knowledge gap” that Tichenor, Donohue and Olien found in 1970 that will plague generations.

Despite the apparent ennui among non-users of the Internet, the deepening chasm between users and non-users in any given society is viewed by many scholars as potentially explosive and could lead to a new form of domestic class warfare. Daniel Lerner’s “theory of rising frustrations” takes on an added dimension when applied to the digital divide (Lerner, 1958).

Will those without computer access regard themselves as exploited by those who are digitally connected to the world’s information flow? Will this disparity lead to a form of digital politics among the unconnected? Will Herbert Schiller’s notion of cultural imperalism through “electronic colonization” be affirmed? (See Schiller, 1992, and McPhail, 2003, 2006). So far, data are inconclusive. The fear that this might some day soon be a divisive political issue has been combined with good old-fashioned free enterprise to pull more people into the digital net. Around the globe, governments, companies and individuals are “leap-frogging” to the latest technological applications rather than developing broad-based, egalitarian user bases (Plettner, 2002; Davison, 2000). While the world’s technology impoverished continue their daily existence without access to the digital genie, many of their lives nonetheless are touched in unseen ways by the new technologies. Social changes are taking place at a pace that outstrip governmental and cultural regulators abilities to stem the tide (Lawrence et al., 2000).

The International Labour Organisation in 2001 found that the highest levels of Internet use were in those countries that foster democracies and political freedom, while at the same time enabling in those countries the dark side of the technologies: illegal transfers of money, growth of offensive ideologies, propagation of “hate speech,” pornography and on-line gambling (ILO, 2001).

Many national and subnational governments are exhibiting the political will that has narrowed this techology lacuna through tax credits or other creative usage of incentives. Of course, the private sector – or, more accurately, political interest groups – might also find it beneficial to supply free computers and hookups to those who do not have them. In fact, that is exactly what Spain and the Netherlands have proposed. New wireless technologies and satellite uplinks no bigger than a TV converter box allow for unparalleled access to the World Wide Web and Internet in even the remotest villages of the world (Forrester, 2003).

The biggest obstacle to leveling this playing field for most of the world is that with more than 80% of its content and nearly all of its programming English is the Internet’s official language (Hachten, 1999). But user language is another story. In 2003 Mandarin Chinese, the world’s most spoken tongue, quietly supplanted English as the language most used to communicate on the Internet. Global governments need to address seriously their telecommunications policies, if they are to provide a service to their populations. Unlike the United States where phone customers have unlimited telephone use for around $20 a month, some countries charge as much as $1 a minute for local phone usage, which makes connection to the Internet a budgetary item or even prohibitively too expensive. This is where political will to allow citizens access to the Internet rubs against a state’s budgetary pressures and the discredited notion that only wealthy people want to communicate over and do business on the Internet and are willing to pay for the privilege.

Sensitive to this obvious speed bump on the Information Superhighway, governments are increasingly moving toward non-metered telecommunication services. Between October 1999 and March 2000, for example, the average costs for 20 hours per month fell by 15%, according to one UN study. Connection costs are expected to continuing dropping (Berenger, 2001). These factors – barriers of language, costs and access – created the digital divide, in the developing world. How can lagging governments close this gap? Where do they start? Is there necessary and sufficient political will to accept the benefits of interconnectivity as an egalitarian principle as well as its downsides of the rough-and-tumble cyberworld?

Over a half century ago Abraham Maslow first theorized that for every individual to lead a happy life a hierarchy of basic needs required satisfaction. These were: physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-actualization needs (Maslow, Frager & Fadiman, 1987). With some creative modifications, the Maslow model can be applied to government’s application of political will on both national and subnational levels. The functional needs to be satisfied in this model are power, protection, provision, peace, prosperity and prestige.

The basic premise of Maslow’s theory is sequentialism. To go from one step to the next in hierarchy one must first satisfy the previous need. One should note that government like individuals, according to Maslow, cannot skip over a need without first satisfying it, even temporarily since satisfying needs is a function and not a permanent condition. That is why in time of war or national disaster, prosperity and even peace can quickly be supplanted by the state’s need for security to protect its citizens and the regime itself (Lipset, 1950; Olson 2000).

Power, protection and provision: Even the most meager, resource-poor country seeks to control its peoples’ destiny, and what its citizens thinks of themselves and the rest of the world. Before it can provide services such as the Internet to its citizens, it must first acquire the means and ability to do so, and the ability to protect that power. In the shorthand of politics this means acquisition of power to force the government will on its people and overcome what Thomas Hobbes suggested was the natural state of men’s lives: every man is for himself against other men in a dog-eat-dog free-for-all (Strauss, 1963; Hobbes, 1962). Without the Leviathan of government to cool individual lusts for power, men are ruthless, scheming, anarchical savages wielding unfocused, unproductive, unfettered and unmerciful force over the less powerful and powerless.

Peace, Prosperity and Prestige: Without true peace, the final two steps of prosperity and prestige become difficult to climb in either the public sphere or cyberspace. No civilization with a history of belligerence towards its neighbors – or its own citizens – has survived beyond the moment. History’s dump heap is littered with failed one-name regimes: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Ceausescu, Milosavich, bin Laden or Saddam. Antagonism, civil disobedience and warfare are unsustainable over time because they conflict with basic, human values of love, respect, belonging, fairness, justice, pursuit of happiness and treating others as one wants to be treated. Political scientists think these periodic outbursts of murderous activity burn themselves out because they conflict with deeper human values of the sanctity if not sacredness of life. This sudden cessation of carnage is called the “thermidorian effect.” Homicidal passion to settle scores eventually consumes itself, much like what happened in the last century in Russia, Romania, Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia.

However, the definition of peace varies with who is defining it. Is peace, as Henry Kissinger once posited, merely the absence of war? Is peace simply being left alone by militarily ambitious neighbors who would trade for resources rather than take them by force? Or is it something larger and more grand? A peacefulness of spirit, a quietude of emotions, a tranquillity of mind? And is peace defined by a state’s neighbors or by its own citizens? Answering these questions realistically will add clarity to how citizens view the efforts of their governors and define their civil expectations and responsibilities.

The excuse that colonialism or defeat in war is to blame for the inability of many countries to progress toward digital parity is unsupported by data and reason. Take as examples former colonies or defeated countries allied with Western democracies, headed by the United States as the premier former British colony that succeeded spectacularly, followed by India and South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Other former colonies like Hong Kong and Malaysia, and client countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and to a lesser degree the Philippines have all done well in developing media systems and market-driven economies. And what about the vanquished of World War II: Germany, Japan and Italy? All three have excelled in the postwar. Common characteristics? Democracy, liberalized self-governance, private ownership of media systems, and the polity’s Political Will to narrow digital divides.

The first step toward developing Political Will is understanding that everyone is a member of an interest group (Berry, 1996), and is a stakeholder in communication development (McPhail, 2002). The second step is organizational since interest groups attract power, a key ingredient in developing Political Will. Governments need to see ICT movements as positive, non-threatening forces with which to form a partnership in development. Governments in some regions, especially the Middle East, should immediately become communication proactive by investing in education and training programs. They should also loosen their grips on censorship levers, both for internally and externally produced publications and media, accepting with the good the occasional bad. Governments – even shadow governments such as religious organizations– should let the populations decide what to read, view and hear, and regimes should adopt a better ear for what the populations are wanting from them. Only by directing power to satisfying constituents needs (and even wants) can peace, prosperity and prestige occur.

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