In a complex world flooded with information, journalists and journalism have an increasingly important role as monitors, selectors, interpreters and imposers of order and hierarchy on events and trends for the public and policy-makers.
This conclusion emerged from wide-ranging discussions on how to react to the knowledge-based society between European and Japanese journalists held in Dublin last month.
The conference addressed the relationship between globalisation and technological change, and the responses of European and Japanese policy-makers to these challenges. Several speakers said the role of national politicians and diplomats as exclusive gatekeepers and practitioners of government in modern democracies has been transformed by the knowledge based society.
They no longer have the virtual monopoly of information and wisdom about state-craft they used to enjoy, but now share it with the media, non governmental organisations and, therefore, with mass publics.
As a result the political class in most of the 15 developed democracies represented at the conference have lost legitimacy with their citizens, because they have not yet learned how to share power with such a multiplicity of other actors.
Paradoxically, globalisation and European integration tend to reinforce the loss of legitimacy for national politicians in Japan and the EU. Although harnessing these forces can bolster their effectiveness, information and democratic deficits about the accountability and operation of supranational governance obscure this.
The loss of legitimacy is a matter not just of perceptions but of faulty structures, two of the principal European speakers stressed. Journalist and consultant John Wyles said we had reached a crossroads in European integration, exposing the limits of the methods and institutions used to construct it.
The achievements to date have been "a powerful force for good in the world" brought about by a "reactive destruction". This buried old European wars, successfully enlarged the EU from six to 15 member states over the last generation, guaranteed civil rights and hugely expanded the trading and single market systems within a framework of law.
But the EU now faces a choice of "slow paralysis or radical change in institutions to assert democratic control of its actions and policies" as enlargement to double the current membership is planned.
He lamented the ebbing away of trust in national and EU political structures, the lack of dialogue between people and politicians, EU institutions' impenetrability and distance from citizens and the absence of political leadership on how to overcome these shortcomings.
It would be preferable to go consciously for change, he argued, rather than wait for a disaster or crisis. This might arise from a government refusal, say, to accept the system of budgetary and fiscal policy installed to operate the single European currency, as hinted at in the rebuke to the Irish Government by the Ecofin council of ministers.
Alternatively it would be possible to develop the quasi-constitutional process agreed in the Treaty of Nice to re-examine how the EU is governed between now and 2004.
The French political scientist Dominique Moisi agreed that Europe is crucial to the reconciliation of citizens with those who represent them in a knowledge based society. The nation-state is changing, so that we now have less state and more nation than in the 1950s-60s, as people search for anchors of identity in a globalised world.
But homogenous national identities no longer suffice. Competitive advantage will accrue politically to those able to live with multiple identities in the emerging network society. That would put Europe at a definite advantage over Japan, "the absolute island".
He compared the Japanese predicament to that of his own country, now that "France's universalism is now seen as an exceptionalism". Both Japan and France face the question of how to impose structural reform on their politics; but France has the advantage of having Europe to reinforce its efforts.
Japanese speakers upset by these remarks reminded us that 120 million of their fellow citizens "live with some wisdom"; political reforms are being initiated at regional and local levels.
Identity begins at home in such a world but can no longer end there. But, as Dr Moisi put it, the global village has not yet produced a global man although a global civil society is in the making.
Dr Moisi was struck by the mediocrity of national politicians in France and Europe. His brightest students no longer gravitated to politics or government service but chose either to get rich or, if idealistic, to join an NGO.
These organisations seem to assume a legitimacy that has drained away from the politicians, helping to revive revolutionary activism and theorising. But they are often as unaccountable as the orthodox politicians.
Chris Patten, EU Commissioner for External Relations, spoke of how (whether by accident or design) the EU's foreign and security policy could be more effective in tackling issues thrown up by the "dark side of globalisation" than foreign ministries with their classical diplomatic agendas.
Climate change, the drugs trade, illegal human trafficking, conflict prevention and international security all benefit from a pooled sovereignty approach. A common rather than a single policy matched the complexity of a globalised world and seemed better to reflect its diversity and multilateralism. He was worried about a potential unilateralist trend in US foreign policy, observing in addition that Henry Kissinger's famous question of what phone number to ring in Europe to find out its policy might now be reversed to ask the same question of Washington.
The dark side of globalisation includes a growing divide between knowledge-based societies and less developed ones. Mr Yoshimi Nogami, Japan's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and sherpa of the Okinawa G8 summit, argued that this was often caused by market failure.
Such inequalities could be addressed by extending corporate governance principles of openness and stakeholding, notably in public health.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie
