Political communication and democracy

Political communication and democracy

By Ignas Kleden

This is the second of two articles on the relationship between
political communication and democratization. Sociologist Ignas
Kleden addresses the question in this article.

JAKARTA (JP): So far we have discussed technical as well
social and personal know-how as preconditions for political
communication.

However, it is equally important to look at the political
conditions required by effective political communication. This
implies the existence of a reciprocal and even dialectical
relationship between political life and political communication.

Indonesian Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja made
a good point at a seminar at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences
on Sept. 3. He said political communication in Indonesia should
be improved. At present, he said, political communication is so
poor that it makes but little sense to talk about democracy and
the enhancement of democratic life, unless there are real efforts
to improve political communication.

According to the minister, the poor political communication is
due to factors which may be summarized as follows.

First, political accountability has not worked as well as it
is expected to. The recent banning of a television talk show, for
example, was carried out without much attention being given to
the reasons for the banning or any consideration of whether the
reasons are valid.

Second, there could be better communication between the
government and the people if there were better communication
between the people in political decision-making positions. This
is important in order that the policies of one official do not
contradict those of another.

Third, it would be better to establish a comprehensible
political vocabulary which rests on common sense and is clear,
rather than persisting with the use of expressions and
formulations which mask political messages which are frequently
not received by those to whom they are addressed.

This means we have to learn to say what we mean and to start
to do away with the habit of saying what we do not mean, while
meaning what we do not say. In other words, even in politics it
would be better to have low-cost rather than high-cost
communication.

The assumption which underlies such an analysis is that
political communication is a precondition and democratic
political life is a result. However, in order to be able to
improve political communication it is first necessary to
understand why political communication in Indonesia is the way it
is.

To assume that political communication is precondition for
democracy is evidently true, but to contend that a more
democratic life is a precondition for the improvement of
political communication is no less plausible.

The reason is that communication always involves two or more
parties. In order for communication to be effective, those
involved in it have to have an equal position; each with a right
to expression and each with an obligation to receive. The verb
"receive" is used here in the sense of a willingness to
understand what the other party is saying and why he is saying
it, without necessarily being bound to a practical acceptance of
it.

Equality is necessary because, although communication aims at
understanding, it is nevertheless often laden with
misunderstanding, either because one party is deficient in
expression and the other party is deficient in reception or
because the parties proceed from totally different basic
assumptions.

The statement, for example, that Indonesia receives a lot of
attention from foreign experts as an object of social science
research can be understood in totally differently ways. One
person might be very proud that Indonesia seems to be so
interesting to foreign scholars, while another person might
resent the fact that the country is so dependent on foreign
resources when it comes to social scientific knowledge.

One of the main sources of misunderstandings in political
communication is the existence of unequal power positions.

Those who are in more powerful position (politically,
economically, intellectually or spiritually) tend to have a
greater right to expression and a lesser obligation for reception
(though they might not claim it), whereas those who are in less
powerful position usually have less right to expression and a
greater obligation for reception.

In such unequal communication, the exchange of opinion and
argument becomes limited, with the level of misunderstanding
being proportional to the level of inequality.

If the resultant misunderstanding plays a decisive role in
further communication, we are faced with distorted communication.
If the distortion persists to the point at which it becomes
regular we end up with systematically-distorted communication, in
which distortion is no longer treated as something to be
corrected or straightened out but, rather, as something normal
and natural which is taken for granted.

Thus, the more democratic the conditions of communication, the
greater the likelihood of effective communication and the less
likely that communication will be distorted and, eventually,
paralyzed.

One way to improve communication and to safeguard equality is
to suspend power considerations in communication (seeing it is
impossible to get rid of power imbalances) and to rely on sound
common sense and human reason in order to enable the exchange to
be based on relative equality.

In that sense, the less communication is the communication of
power, the greater will be the power of communication, such that
both a threatening shout and a plaintive whimpering are
transformed into a normal voice.

The writer is a sociologist with the SPES Foundation Research
Centre in Jakarta.

Window: The less communication is the communication of power, the
greater will be the power of communication, such that both a
threatening shout and a plaintive whimpering are transformed into
a normal voice.