Intelligent Centralization

Jonah Sieger certainly made a lot of insightful points last night. Walking away, though, something bothered me about the Bloomberg "decentralization" plan. The way Sieger described it, the mayor's campaign has established an advanced peer-to-peer volunteer campaign in which people of the same neigborhood or ethnicity would be campaigning to one another. The Internet, of course, is the tie that binds here, as the tool that brings these volunteers to the campaign and, then, to the voters.

While I think this strategy makes for good campaigning, I'm not sure I agree with the term "decentralization." To me, this represents merely a step toward decentralization -- and not a very large one. After all, the campaign presumably still trains the volunteers, arms them with talking points and brochures. They just micromanage less. What is decentralized about it, we asked? Sieger pointed to "definitive compromises" made between the campaign and its grassroots volunteers, including the major decision of when to have the captain meetings.

Again, I think this is the kind of campaign innovation that wins elections. I'd even call it "intelligent centralization." But, don't call this decentralization. The reality is, campaigns don't want more decentralization (the theory itself is inherently risky), and the daring ones that actually try it to any large extent get called "utter failures" in the end.

Thanks, Damien, for getting the ball rolling here.