Labour complains that the Tories want a nightwatchman state; the Tories respond by saying Labour wants the state to run everything—such are the moronic exchanges we will wake up to each morning during the forthcoming election. But beneath such dreary accusations a more interesting argument about the nature of the modern state has developed in recent years. Labour’s “enabling state” is pitted against the Tories’ “post-bureaucratic state.” Both accept that in a modern liberal democracy, where the goal of politics is to maximise the welfare of the average citizen, the state will remain quite large. They also both acknowledge that the state often fails. Our cover story—on Tim Berners-Lee’s mission to release as much public data as possible—describes a new front in this more subtle dialogue about how to make states function better in complex societies, with more demanding citizens. In fact it even holds the promise of a new form of political interaction between citizens and the state, mediated by a class of internet whizz-kids who take that raw data and reveal to us how resources are used and power is exercised, at least in the public sector. It won’t abolish conflicts of interest or poverty or greed, and is less concerned with the private sector. But just as the old era of mass politics is running out of puff, a new computer-based forum is emerging, especially for the educated, numerate members of the generation that has grown up with the internet.
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