New Problems, New Publics? Dewey and New Media

This is a response to the article by Ethan Zuckerman “New Media, New Civics?” published in this issue of Policy & Internet (2014: vol. 6, issue 2). Dissatisfaction with existing governments, a broad shift to “post-representative democracy” and the rise of participatory media are leading toward the visibility of different forms of civic participation. Zuckerman’s article offers a framework to describe participatory civics in terms of theories of change used and demands places on the participant, and examines some of the implications of the rise of participatory civics, including the challenges of deliberation in a diverse and competitive digital public sphere. Henry Farrell responds.

Henry Farrell (2014), “New Problems, New Publics? Dewey and New Media,” Policy & Internet, 6, 2:176-191.

Other Writing:

Academic Article

The New Interdependence Approach: Theoretical Development and Empirical Demonstration – with Abraham Newman

Mainstream approaches to international political economy seek to explain the political transformations that have made more open trade relations possible. They stress how changing coalitions of interest groups within particular states and changing functional needs of states give rise to new international agreements. While these approaches remain valuable, they only imperfectly encompass a new set ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume

“The Shared Challenges of Institutional Theories: Rational Choice,” in Historical Institutionalism, and Sociological Institutionalism, Knowledge and Institutions – eds. Johannes Glückler, Roy Suddaby and Regina Lenz

Scholarship on institutions across the social sciences faces a set of fundamental dilemmas. On the one hand, it needs to explain how institutions change. Yet explanations of change which point to external factors run the risk of reducing institutions to a mere transmission belt for other, more fundamental causes. On the other, it needs to ...
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