The MoveOn Effect, in Retrospect

• In Event: Moving On: The Future of Campaigning and Twitter

Abstract

It has been an eventful decade since the publication of The MoveOn Effect. In this paper, I revisit both the empirical and theoretical material in the book and offer a set of critical reflections on how the trajectory of “netroots” digital politics has diverged from my earlier observations and predictions.

By revisiting past cases and critically challenging the author’s own established theories, the paper offers insights into the shifting contours of digital politics. It also generates fresh hypotheses worth testing in other settings.

I offer four updated arguments on the basis of tracing what happened to the organizations studied in the book in the decade since it was published:

(1) Rethinking political innovation and disruption theory. Built out of an extended case study of the collapse of the New Organizing Institute, and also drawing on recent findings from the field of Science and Technology Studies, I argue that the focus on political innovation has masked a negative trend in neglected political maintenance, with deleterious effects on netroots power-building.
(2) The downstream effects of political valence on the emergence and alteration of tactical repertoires. This finding extends the “outparty innovation incentives” theory from chapter six of the book, adding new data that explores the declining salience of digital petitioning in an era of resurgent authoritarianism.
(3) The disappearance of the “neo-federated” model. The book identified three netroots “ideal-types.” The most promising, at the time, appeared to be a “neo-federated” organizational form that used digital tools to recreate the type of federated civic associations that Skocpol (2003) hails as essential for civic power-building. The neo-federated organizations in the book all either collapsed or converted to MoveOn’s “hub-and-spokes” model. I offer fresh hypotheses for why this organizational form has proven so short-lived.
(4) The book introduces the concept of “beneficial inefficiencies.” I update this concept and show how it applies to more recent developments in U.S. contentious politics.

These arguments are meant to update and expand upon an established piece of the literature on Internet Politics.

Author

• David A. Karpf, George Washington University