Prof. Michael Froomkin has published the introduction and final section of the conference draft of "Building the Bottom Up from the Top Down," a paper that he'll be giving at a seminar in Paris this weekend. As the title implies, Froomkin is looking at what top-down orgainzations, particularly governments, can do in order to stimulate bottom-up self-organization:

The government's role should be facilitative yet entirely content-neutral. Even ostensibly non-political rules such as one that limited subsidies to non-political activities should be avoided. Human time and energy is limited. thus, even if one could craft a program that had no class-based discrimination, any rule subsidizing gardening but not community organizing would inevitably cause a shift of time and energy away from politics towards the subsidized activities. If, as Habermas persuasively argues, public engagement is already too weak then it makes no sense to discriminate against it.

Thus, the state's ideal role is primarily in creating a climate in which groups can form, and resources that they can use to organize themselves, govern themselves, and achieve their aims. Given the speed at which communities such as Slashdot (with more than half a million members) and the so-called blogisphere are forming, much may be achievable without much in the way of direct state intervention. There are, nonetheless, some areas where government action would be helpful and appropriate.

Read the whole thing.