Is Democracy a Good Thing?

H-Diplo’s example of technological democracy in action raises comparisons with a far more well-known tool of the twenty-first century, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that encourages anyone to insert, revise, and discuss an entry. The democratic process—that is, free access to write, comment, and read on the site—assumed primacy in Wikipedia’s basic structure and content, and it has worked wonders in boosting the number of entries in the English version to over one million since 2001. On a smaller scale, H-Diplo has had a similar impressive rise to that of Wikipedia. According to its managing editor, Diane Labrosse, H-Diplo has a current membership of about 4,000 members, a nearly four-fold increase over the past eight years. The average H-Net list has roughly 600 members, while a typically strong one attracts about 1,000 subscribers. This makes H-Diplo one of the top five largest lists among the 180 on the H-Net system.

Democracy is in action within H-Diplo’s submissions process, too, but in a more controlled way. To be sure, the editors and moderators provide guidelines to ensure civility, regulate the list to prevent redundant messages, and terminate access for those eventually identified as rogue contributors. This has brought charges that H-Diplo stifles the very democratic process that lies at the core of Internet communications. Some readers complain about ideologically driven gate-keeping that represses open inquiry, but it is impossible to verify such complaints with any accuracy, especially as such grievances are common in the academy. My brief survey of H-Diplo members (of which just a handful responded) turned up grumbling across the political spectrum (though more from the Left). In determining content from the top down, the editors also work closely with other scholarly journals (such as Diplomatic History, the journal of record for the field) to present forums on articles, and they have their own excellent list of book review roundtables. But the core of H-Diplo, just like Wikipedia, remains member driven. Subscribers offer topics on whatever suits their fancy. Free expression, however moderated by the editors, is in evidence, but a question arises as to how positive the consequences are.

Surely, there is much that is good within the messages posted to the list. For starters, there is considerable discussion whose quality and breadth we might expect and demand from traditional print journals. A quick look at recent traffic reveals, for instance, that writers on a thread regarding Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (1967) included Robert Jervis, Robert Kaplan, and other leading scholarly commentators. Similarly, the H-Diplo staff has worked wonders in ensuring that the list deals with the most germane scholarship and also allows for spirited (albeit sometimes ranting) debate over contemporary events. Professors reportedly assign these discussions to their students in order to stimulate classroom discussion, while many nonscholars tap H-Diplo for analysis of the day’s diplomatic events. In some senses, such as global accessibility and pervasiveness, H-Diplo does a better job than print journals of reaching readers throughout the world. It does a better job of internationalizing the production and consumption of history writing, though the list remains largely American centered despite the vision of the editors to broaden the geographic scope. H-Diplo has also been invaluable in fostering communication between scholars who wish to create panels at conferences, or by announcing such conferences in the first place. Researchers have found answers to their queries about archive rules, travel, and the like, and the intimacy of this advice makes it often far more valuable than what libraries offer visitors. Scholars feel less isolated, despite their geographical location, because of contact through the list. Thus, H-Diplo serves as a forum for both academics and the layperson; it provides communication for a diverse community of people interested in diplomacy. It is, like Wikipedia, a modern community in its own sense, with rules, norms, and a sense of common identity—all via the Internet and among members who might never meet face-to-face in their lifetime.

Given all these positives, why then, according to my experience, the brief survey, and anecdotal evidence, do the bulk of diplomatic historians routinely delete or ignore H-Diplo messages? Why do the usual suspects always seem to engage in debate? Why aren’t more scholars involved in discussion; why does a more diverse group of scholars contribute to the field in print rather than online? In short, why isn’t the list more relevant to the field?
One answer lies in H-Diplo’s very strength and mission: promoting democratic access for all within a moderated forum. Because free speech can be chaotic even under the best of circumstances, this very openness undermines the forum and hurts H-Diplo’s reputation. That is a downside of democracy; endless chatter. Yet those who ply the trade of scholarship presumably diverge from the Wikipedians, whose purpose is to disseminate knowledge. H-Diplo contributors hold to high standards of scholarly debate that we find at conferences and in journals. H-Net forums were designed with scholars in mind. Yet in the past, many postings resulted in turf wars and endless one-upsmanship, and less scholarship. And that is why the Speaker’s Corner format turned off a large segment of serious readers whose reaction to a thread was to tap the delete button rather than ponder, craft a reply, or take umbrage. The novelty of the Internet waned, and with it, interest in battling on H-Diplo.

Contributors may believe that their postings have the effect of either altering scholarly discourse or affecting popular and political dialogue, but this is a reach. Certainly, we have all clicked on interesting discussions, shutting down computer operations for the night with a slightly different appreciation of history. Forums on World War II, the Cold War, and the atomic bombings have wrestled with interpretations, although they have revealed little by way of new information and oftentimes splinter into arguments over the most minute details until the moderators mercifully sever the threads. Still, H-Diplo has served even the famous. In one instance, the list posted a submission by General Anthony Zinni who voiced his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. The course of the national debate, of course, did not change, but Zinni drew attention to his views. Rigorous scholarship and effective criticism are hard to come by on H-Diplo.

A part of the problem is the inherent uneasiness, within an academic community which stresses skepticism and even a fair amount of downright orneriness, of editorial oversight, especially over the democratic channels of the Internet. Any H-Diplo editor, or reader, for that matter, will be aware of a myriad of conflicts over wording, content, and intentions between moderators and authors of submissions. While the editor-in-chief of Diplomatic History has the last word in such battles, it is harder for H-Diplo editors to justify restrictions other than insist on adherence to Robert’s Rules of Order. They do so, but at the peril of alienating those who might otherwise participate in vigorous debate.

After all, the Internet is all about open access, but therein lies a paradox. A Speaker’s Corner, by definition, means less oversight yet also less sustained interest to what is being said. Along with the heat generated by discussion, H-Diplo editors do their best to provide light through their authority over the list. Still, democracy is supposed to rule on the Internet. Some contributors detest that democracy is muffled by moderators; most readers merely become bored by the rantings. The editors have a truly thankless task. Running interference is appreciated by many readers, but in the past, the quarrels became so tedious that a large segment of scholars simply threw up their hands in frustration and quit the list altogether. They have not been won back, and that is a setback for H-Diplo as well as the field of diplomatic history itself.

Openness creates another problem: list members are free to begin a thread on any topic they so choose. That is a strength in Wikipedian terms of transparency, and, presumably, in promoting breadth of topics. Yet it is a weakness when it comes to maintaining the interest of scholars, and primarily the historical profession which is, presumably, H-Diplo’s main target audience. It is not that so many discussions relate to contemporary events, but that there is little history, or historically- or archive-based explanation, given to these forums. While the critics castigate their ideological opponents and the moderators themselves, most subscribers merely lament that history is shunted aside by contemporary policy debates centering, say, on the Bush administration (and with few or no citations to sources to support their reasoning). One former editor expressed chagrin that no matter how hard he tried, through solicitation and the like, he could not drum up enough responses on “old” diplomatic topics from the nineteenth century or World War I to keep a thread going. The lion’s share of attention went to the here and now, with the Second World War usually considered the ancient past. Discussion of Clinton- and Bush-era foreign policy has become hegemonic on the list. It does seem clear that policy wonks and bloggers have overwhelmed the historians. For now, democracy has rendered history—unless, of course, it is used to make a point about current affairs—a tough sell.

H-Diplo, like any element of the democratic process, is a work in progress. Most subscribers would agree, however, that an effort should be made to address H-Diplo’s original intended purpose: a discussion of international affairs and diplomacy in a historical context that scholars find relevant, useful, and engaging. Perhaps the editors can simply take an even more high-brow approach, insisting on the study and discussion of historical topics while providing a chat room on the side for current events. They may devise an even sterner vetting process, as print journals do now, of discussions (and certainly of book and article reviews) that deal not only with civility but with content. This would be a healthy signal to readers of the elevated standards of H-Diplo from the Wikipedia model, as well as serve notice that a thread is important and worth reading. The entire community of foreign and international relations scholars and commentators should also engage in a discussion offline, perhaps at a meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) or the OAH, about the reforms needed to bring diplomatic historians back into the H-Diplo fold. Such a panel could be organized by the journal Diplomatic History to give it added seriousness. These, and other remedies, might regain the trust and scholarly purpose of H-Diplo in the halls of academia, while maintaining the essential freedom and openness that makes Internet scholarship so invaluable.

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Thomas Zeiler, professor of history at the University of Colorado, is executive editor of Diplomatic History and is a member of the advisory board of H-Diplo, an H-Net discussion list dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history at <http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/>.