Network Realism

Our inquiry into the ways ICTs change the nature of collective action in its various appearances has led us to the conclusion that conventional hierarchical governance is competing with new ways to distribute public goods and achieve collective outcomes. In this last unit of the module, Livingston integrates what we have learned about the underlying factors, forces, and mechanisms into a comprehensive image. It depicts how ICTs  establish Castells’ “new communication space“ (2007, p.238) and reconfigurate power structures in favor of an institutionally less constrained society. Based on this, I would like to close the circle and develop a theoretical perspective that builds on the insights we have gained into electronically enabled global politics and relates to the neo-realist considerations in the beginning of the module.

New Actors

Transforming time and space and casting networks across the globe (Castells, 2011), ICTs raise issues and problems on a global scale that cannot be dealt with by national governments (Castells, 2007, p.258). As a result, the nation-state as the principle form of social organization is superseded (Robinson, 1998, p.564) and alternative modes of governance emerge. Dependent on the public good the provide, they operate outside (e.g. knowledge through Wikipedia) or inside a “shadow of hierarchy“ (infrastructure or security provided by contractors to the state). While Börzel and Risse use their observations in areas of limited statehood to argue for governance without government (2010, p.120), Livingston implies that the nation-state will not vanish referring to Sen (1982), who limits that possibility by pointing out that it is only the state that has the capacity to provide public goods such as infrastructure or other resource-related services. New actors qualify for governance as the nation-state does not have the respective monopoly anymore.

New Public Space

The emergence of ICTs can be considered to be “a historical shift of the public sphere from the institutional realm to the new communication space“, an electronically enabled network space where private and collective interests are negotiated a society is grounded in (Castells, 2007, pp.238/258). That new communication space is of conflictive nature, as societies have diverse and contradictory values and interests that merge and clash there and thus define its power relations (ibid. p.239). Hence, states and non-state actors are in competition to shape the power structures in the new public sphere according to their very own interests. Rising mass self-communication (ibid., 248) of society’s “long tail“ (as discussed last week) enables everyone to pursue his own interests and aim at changing values and interests, thus altering the prevailing power relations (ibid., p.249), regardless of contradictory preferences of others. So, as hierarchy dwindles and the nation state gets absorbed by a plenticity of stakeholders, each one in pursuit to alter the the public space’s power relations, i.e. distribution of power, in his favor, we arrive at “the condition of meer Nature, that is to say of absolute Liberty [...] and the condition of Warre“ (Hobbes, 1651, Ch.XXXI): a digital anarchy.

Any collective outcome pursued, regardless if it is motivated by political or economical calculation or by moral values, can only be achieved through a change in the prevailing power relations, in opposition to those who are interested in maintaining them. The precondition of such a successful placement of own interests is a familiar one: in a condition of anarchy, “relative gain is more important than absolute gain“ (Waltz, 1959, p.198). As Waltz put it for states, “the closer the competition, the more strongly states seek relative gains rather than absolute ones“ (ibid. p.xi).

A New Notion of Power

Recalling our first discussion, Na’ama raised the question if we should consider technological capabilites as a new form of hard power. As we have seen above, in a new public sphere characterized by mass self-communication of the “long tail“, every one has a certain minimum of access to ICTs. Castells statement that “power relations, in our social and technological context, are largely dependent on the process of socialized communication“ (ibid., 240), thus points out a shift of the meaning of power from technological capabilities to contents and the way they are shared, as power depends on “socialized  communication“.

Descriptive empirical evidence can be found inter alia in Pedro’s examples of last week (Zapatista Revoluion and Chilean education protests) as well as– of course – in the Arab Spring. Both illustrations examplify the change of prevailing power relations after social movements have gained relatively more than their counter-part.

New Approach

At the end of these considerations I come to conclude that 

- Castells’ new public space in the communication sphere can be perceived as a system of digital  

  anarchy,

- this public space is contested and thus determined by the power relations, i.e. distributions of 

  power among its constituents, and that

- the dynamics of these power relations change as actors gain relatively as compared to their 

  competitors.

While these processes parallel basic realist notions, ICTs clearly contrast the new public space from a realist/neo-realist assessment of the traditional international system as they

- have qualified a variety of stakeholders in the public space as key actors in global politics and  

  enqueued the state, which used to be the sole key actor in IR, and

- rely on a broader notion of “power“.

It is time to adjust inherited realist/neo-realist principles to the social world as we have become acquainted with it in our module and think about realism/neo-realism in electronically enabled networks.

Benni

References:

Börzel, Tanja A., and Thomas Risse; 2010; Governance without a State: Can it Work?;  in Regulation & Governance 4; pp. 113–134

Castells, Manuel; 2007; Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society, in: International Journal of Communication 1; pp. 238-266

Castells, Manuel; 2011; The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy; Society and Culture; Cambridge; Blackwell; accessed on 9 July 2012 via http://books.google.de/books?id=FihjywtjTdUC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Hobbes, Thomas; 1651; Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civill; Printed for Andrew Crooke, at the Green Dragon in St. Paul's Churchyard; accessed on 9 July 2012 via  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

Robinson, William I.; 1998; Beyond Nation-State Paradigms: Globalization, Sociology, and the Challenge of Transnational Studies; in Sociological Forum; Vol. 13; No. 4; pp. 561-594; accessed on 09 July 2012 via http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.queensu.ca/content/jhu5q40851312h03/fulltext.pdf

Sen, Armatya; 1982; Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation; Alderley; Clarendon Press

Waltz, Kenneth N.; 1959/2001; Man, the State, and War; New York; Columbia University Press; accessed on 9 July 2012 via

http://books.google.de/books?id=qUsb210ml48C&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false




Unit 11 - Pedro Carrança

On this post I will discuss the idea that information systems in international affairs are changing the nature of governance, specifically focusing in the concept of discoverability on a long tail. My argument is that in spite of the increase on the access to production and reception of knowledge, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are not able to allow coordination fully independent from the state. However, it is necessary to recognize that ICTs have the power to generate significant changes in the way people handle with their needs and demand rights and services.  In order to achieve my objective, first I will shortly provide some insights about the nature of electronically enabled collaboration, followed by practical cases on this area. I will conclude with recommendations about how states in general should deal with this new paradigm, as well as with questions to be discussed by the participants of our blog.   

Chris Anderson popularized the idea of long tail in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, arguing that products in low demand or that have a low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. This can be visually represented in the graphic below, where the horizontal axis represents “products” and the vertical axis represents “sales”.

One aspect that is extremely important to strategies based in the concept of long tail is the possibility to tag information, organizing online content in a way that facilitate the identification of common interests and the discover of related subjects, the “discoverability phenomenon”.

        

Since our purpose here is not to discuss marketing strategies but how ICTs can have relevant impact in governance, it is time to link the long tail with the effects related to the participation of new actors that until less than two decades ago were not able to make their opinions matters. Considering that the costs of coordination typically associated to institutions severely decreased, we can think that our axis ”products” can also be considered as ”players” in the market of social needs, at the same time that the axis “sales” can be considered as “demands”. The players in the yellow area can be as significant as the products/players in the left side, the “mainstream” part that usually get the attention and is able to overcome the barriers of coordination. Now, if the barriers of coordination are not that strong, alternative points of view and demands that usually would be ignored are easily articulated, achieving legitimacy and effective capability to produce actions in order to achieve objectives.

         

There are two interesting examples of the effects of ICTs in the field of governance.  Perhaps one of the first movements using ICT activism as a tool for social change was initiated by the Zapatistas in the Mexican state of Chiapas, Mexico. The poorest region of the country, with low levels of social development, it was neglected by the authorities during the neoliberal euphoria of the 90’s. However, it was the beginning of the internet in 1994, and the group noted that although poor the access to the global network was possible even to that small association.   Shortly speaking, the movement started to spread their ideas concerning the inequalities related to globalization, proposing solutions and serious questioning the government capability to handle with social demands. These ideas were spread through a network of blogs around the world, related by links associated by subjects in common. Also, mainstream media like CNN and The New York Times, writers like Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, as well as the musical group Rage Against the Machine started to support that “curious movement”, making the Zapatistas a fashionable cause. As a result, the government was obligated to negotiate with the so-called terrorists and the problems faced by the Chiapas population were exposed to the entire international community (Gelsomino, 2010).

        

Another interesting event occurred in Chile, 2011. Traditionally presented as an example for Latin America due to neoliberal politics adopted during the dictatorship of Pinochet, Chile faced several demonstrations against its current educational system, based on private institutions. Initially the mainstream media treated as any other protest in the region. But things started to change when the leaders of the movement used Twitter for mobilization. Noting the effectiveness of the tool to achieve people, the government also started to tweet over the situation. The issue was that the Executive Secretary of the Government tweeted that “kill the bitch, puppies die”, referring to the leader of the movement Camila Vallejo. This disastrous comment resulted on several critics even in the conservative media, and the students discovered how to demonstrate the intransigency of the government at the same time that new supporters joined the movement after the information shared online, with massive march (100,000 marchers in August) and the offer of relevant proposals for ending conflict.

         

In my opinion is clear that we are facing an age characterized by the democratization of knowledge and states must to be prepared to interact with social actors in this new context. That said, it is strongly recommendable to consider ICTs as new tools that adequately managed can offer an in depth understanding of needs in a society. This does not mean that states should feel threatened by ICTs: they should try to understand its logic in order to accomplish with social demands.

        

I just would like to conclude with two questions over our subject. How can we review our traditional idea of state in light of ICTs? It is possible for social movements to achieve their objectives without any relation with states?

Resurrecting Durkheim

                In his work “De la division du travail social” first published in 1878, french sociologist Emile Durkheim has identified that the increase of work division and specialization of individuals has led the society to shift from what he describes as traditional society to modern society. In the traditional society, people are express solidarity with their peers because of the traditional, cultural, ideological and normative similitude (mechanical solidarity) between them whereas in modern society, solidarity would fall from the management of interdependence between individuals (organic solidarity)[i]. After having read Benkler and Nissembaum’s theory on commons-based peer production, I believe that the rising of such type of production can lead to a redefinition of Durkheim’s work and even suggest a shift back to some sort of mechanical solidarity.

                Benkler and Nissembaum have identified four different clusters of associations between virtues and characteristics of commons-based peer production.

Cluster I: Autonomy, Independence, Liberation

Cluster II: Creativity, Productivity, Industry

Cluster III: Benevolence, Charity, Generosity, Altruism

Cluster IV: Sociability, Camaraderie, Friendship, Cooperation, Civic Virtue

They also describe the peer production process to be exempt of hierarchical setting which would allow all protagonists to participate freely to the evolution of a project by sharing their thoughts and expertise.[ii]  Wikipedia would be an example of choice to depict the commons-based peer production. This web encyclopedia has gathered thousands of collaborators that were wailing to share their knowledge. In the Wikipedia setting, these subject matter experts do need recognition by their peers that their knowledge is actually valuable, and this fact points out the importance of the reference to society to exist. This apparent auto-regulation of peer production organizations does have a strong similitude with Adam Smith’s proposed model of the “invisible hand” to explain regulation of markets.[iii] But this time, replacing individualism by independence, altruism and cooperation (clusters I, III and IV). Durkheim’s definition of organic solidarity within the modern society also had a very strong link to interdependence between individuals. His vision of modern society is that individuals can only collaborate under contract where the need, extent of support and duration of collaboration is clearly defined.[iv]  Such model could not be valid for all the examples that are used by Benkler and Nissembaum (Wikipedia, SET, Clickworkers) as peer production is triggered from volunteer collaboration of individuals. The term collaboration is of paramount importance in this module as it encloses the ICT and individuals given that ICTs are now the medium through which collaboration is made possible partially because of the ease of assembly they offer.

                The collaboration of individuals in peer production is quite similar to what we have seen about TANs. In previous modules, we have seen the importance of TANs as possible alternative source of governance and how they can have a strong impact in their field of interest. TANs have brought together people with a same interest and a specific knowledge with regards to this interest. This networking of individuals is not made possible by interdependence but rather through the combination of similitude of interest. This type of network would therefore be more likely to meet Durkheim’s definition of traditional society and mechanical solidarity stated in the introduction.

                Durkheim’s research has led him to believe that the stronger the interdependence is, the more solidarity there will be between individuals. The objective itself is therefore less important as the individual is only asked to perform his attributed task in a flawless, timely manner. In commons-based peer production, the attention is put on the finality of the common effort as the individual does not receive any retribution besides the finalized common accomplishment. Solidarity in such settings takes its roots in the shared objective rather than in interdependence.

                It is clear that the interaction and collaboration between individuals involved in commons-based peer production does not go hand in hand with Durkheim’s vision of the modern society. ICTs have allowed the appearance of a form on knowledge altruism thus showing a potential ideology shift from “information is power” to “information is common good”.

                The most interesting thing about commons-based peer production is the opportunity that we have to see this evolve. I believe it is impossible for such organization to evolve without any sense of hierarchical structure. As peer production efforts get bigger and bigger, Anderson’s statement that “more is different” [v]will just make even more sense and steering in direction of an original common goal will be a great challenge. Shirky said: “whatever method helps coordinate group action will spread, no matter how inefficient they are, as long as they are better than nothing”.[vi]  Can this lack of efficiency become peer production’s sword of Damocles?

               

Ludovic Moulin

---

[i] Durkheim E., De la division du travail social, 1893, e-book numerized on 15.02.2002 by the University of Chicoutimi, accessible via http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/Durkheim_emile/division_du_travail/division_travail_1.pdf

[ii] Benkler Y., H. Nissenbaum, Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue, Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 14, No 4, 2006, pp 394-419

[iii] Rothschild E., Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand, The American Economic Review, 1994, pp 319-422

[iv] Durkheim E., De la division du travail social, 1893, e-book numerized on 15.02.2002 by the University of Chicoutimi, accessible via http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/Durkheim_emile/division_du_travail/division_travail_1.pdf

[v] Shirky C., Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, New York, Penguin Press, pp 109-142

[vi] Shirky C., Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, New York, Penguin Press, pp 109-142

Blog Post - Unit 9

The State and ICTs: E-Governance


At a time when the state is increasingly mistrusted and seen as incapable of providing essential public services given the complexity, alternative modes of governance are taking form.  In this unit, Livingston examines these alternative modes of governance and how ICTs ability to facilitate social coordination and collaboration across geographic space is replacing physical, state-based modes of social organization.  Moreover, electronic networks have various enabling properties which have the potential to activate political agency which would otherwise be latent due to "real life" spatial and temporal limitations.  Livingston mainly focuses on how ICTs empower NGOs, social movements, and TANs; and how they are supplanting and challenging state control of information.  Bennett makes the same argument, while also showing how "the same qualities which make communication-based politics durable also make them vulnerable to problems of control, decision-making, and collective identity" (Bennett 2003)

Due to personal interest (and partly because the subject is already quite well-covered in the Unit's compulsory readings by Livingston and Bennett) I will venture away from Livingston's focus on ICT's effect on the coordination of social movements, NGOs, and TANs; and look more into Livingston's question of whether, in a networked society, the state is still vital to governance.  In this post, I will highlight the flip side of that coin - that the state is still vital to governance, and is using and developing ICT tools to strengthen citizen-government interaction, increase citizen participation (as well as the government's role in private lives), and facilitate the delivery of public services.
 
This is done through "e-government", which is defined by the United Nations as "the employment of the Internet and the WWW for delivering government information and services to the citizens" (United Nations 2006).  "E-governments are fast replacing functions performed by traditional governments" (Alrazooqi, De Silva 2010)   Examples of functions include - accessing government data, encouraging the citizen to vote, filling out government forms, filing taxes, etc.  The delivery of these functions is modeled on a customer service approach, similar to how businesses operate.  And as almost 90% of the world now has mobile telephones, which people prefer to computers due to their mobility and affordability, e-governance is being extended to "m-governance".

Apart from engaging citizens, e-government is being used to engage the private sector through government-to-business (G2B) services ranging from handling corporate tax to environmental regulations.  There is also G2G e-government which is meant to streamline existing bureaucratic organization in public administrations.  This is applied to different organizations and departments within a government as well as between different countries' governments.  An example of the latter would the Schengen Information System.

E-government, and especially m-government, is still in the early stages of development and  effectiveness is of course dependent on the infrastructure as well as the opportunity structures provided by the state's political system.  The countries which scored the highest in a 2012 UN  e-government survey rankings are South Korea, Netherlands, the UK, and Denmark.  These are all countries with the most developed internet and broadband infrastructures in the world.   However, a developing country, Kazakhstan, ranks third in a survey on "e-participation" due to its government's website features that allow citizens to engage with government (United Nations 2012).

Many e-governance projects and initiatives in developing countries have been failures, due to inaccessible and difficult to understand information, low literacy, and lack of basic electronic infrastructure.  However, the widespread access to mobile phones has led to greater developments in m-governance, which is a much better suited to reach a greater number of people more effectively.  Rural communities are particular empowered by such technology because living over ten hours away from capital cities and Ministries makes face-to-face interactions impossible.  The state can provide citizens with voting ID details and local news, provide farmers with weather and commodity market updates, and warn of natural disasters - all via SMS.

Recently the Kenyan govenment launched Open Kenya (https://opendata.go.ke/), an open goverment data platform which allows citizens to compare their counties' use of resources to other counties, creating a win-win situation for government - less bureaucratic burden, greater transparency), and citizens - ease of information access, more trust in government (Crandall 2012).  The Turkish National Police uses MOBESE (http://www.turkishnationalpolice.gov.tr/mobese.html), an IT system which uses image, video, and location data to facilitate coordination between police forces and respond quickly to security situations (Ghyasi 2004).  Other examples of success with e- and m-government in developing nations can be found in the Kerala region of India (http://www.itmission.kerala.gov.in), Ghana, and Malaysia.

It is worth noting that these nations cooperate with NGOs such the World Wide Web Foundation (www.webfoundation.org) to implement e-government initiatives.  The private sector also has a watchful on these developments and are starting to play a bigger role.  Like in any public-private partnership, governments form contracts with private sector entities to deliver services related to e-governance and assume the associated risk, which relieves states of the financial burden while still leaving state regulation mechanisms intact (Kelly 2009).

 There are, of course, problems and risks associated with e-government, with the inequality in public access to ICTs being a major disadvantage, as well as the greater intrusion of the state into personal privacy.  ICTs are means to good ends as well as bad ones.  Nevertheless, while looking at these examples of how ICTs are used by states to increase their presence in areas of limited governance (due to distance, lack of resources, and obstructive bureaucracy), one sees ICTs ability to flatten the hierarchical structure and unlock the state's potential to provide for its citizens.

By Daniel Sankarsingh


References

Alrazooqi, Mansoor, and Rohan De Silva. "Mobile and Wireless Services and Technologies for M-Government Solution Proposal for Dubai Government."WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications. 7.8 (2010): 1037-047. Print.

Bennett, W. Lance. "Communicating Global Activism." Information, Communication, & Society 6.2 (2003): 143-68. Print.

Crandall, Angela, and Leonida Mutuku. "M-governance: Exploratory Survey on Kenyan Service Delivery and Government Interaction." (2012): n. pag. Print.

Ghyasi, F., & Kushchu, I. (2004). "M-Government: Cases of developing countries." The 4th
European conference on E-Government, Castle Dublin, Ireland, p. 887-898

Janowski, Tomasz, Theresa A. Pardo, and Jim Davies. "Government Information Networks - Mapping Electronic Governance Cases through Public Administration Concepts." Government Information Quarterly 29 (2010): n. pag. Print.

Kelly, Tim. "Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in E-Government." Institute for Public-Private Partnerships (IP3) (2009): n. pag. Print.

Realini, Andrea F. "G2G E-Government: The Big Challenge for Europe." Thesis. University of Zurich, 2004. Print.

"UN E-Government Survey." UN E-Government Survey. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 June 2012. <http://www.unpan.org/egovkb/global_reports/08report.htm>.

Global Governance Paradigm

 

 

Global Governance: The New Paradigm of the Information Era

 

Introduction  

The following reflection explores the concept/institution of global governance from a skeptical/critical personal perspective. It departs from the analysis of the ambiguity of the term, exploring different authors' conceptualizations, and expands to the interpretation of diverse approaches. Following a sort of query logic, the present paper calls into question the reason and/or purpose of governance: What the institution/category called governance is intended for? Why is it on the international agenda? Since the concept/institution of governance is intimately intertwined with categories such as information - to promote a global public sphere - and collaboration - to encourage cooperation among states - special attention will be paid to its similitude with the process of globalization. Finally, as a way of concluding, a couple of final statements will be made to promote criticism and academic reflection about the subject matter.

 

A concept that matters

In the contemporary academic debate about world politics "global governance" is everywhere.[1] Whether it is or isn't a natural consequence of globalization, authors have neither a clear concept nor a uniform definition of what governance is. According to Lawrence Finkelstein, "we say "governance" because we don't really know what to call what is going on."[2] Truth be told, experts have been trying to define a complex phenomenon by offering a mere account of regularities and providing a pragmatic description of the aspects that best suit their sphere of interest. In this regard, the World Bank offers a definition based on the way authority is exercised to effectively implement its prescriptions.[3] On their part, Adrienne Heritier[4] and Oliver Treib[5] present conceptualizations that refer to modes of political steering to coordinate actions (on the base of an institutionalized set or system of rules) and suggest that governance is more than government, but it still seems rather hierarchically structured.[6] Despite of the vast conceptualization efforts, Tomas Weiss has observed that the ambiguity of the term still remains: "Many academics and international practitioners employ 'governance' to connote a complex set of structures and processes, both public and private, while more popular writers tend to use it synonymously with 'government'."[7] In fact, most of the experts have remained indifferent to find consensus on the definition of governance. Instead, they have defined the institution from various different perspectives and approaches which emphasize categories such as "interaction", "collective regulation", "governing", "collective action", "out-puts/results", and "exercise of authority"[8] Based on the allegations above stated and considering that concepts are the most basic tool that political science has at its disposal to develop research and formulate theories, the shortage related to the concept of governance seems to be and will remain the most challenging issue for the analysis and evaluation of contemporary world politics.      

 

By the means of Governance

The era of the information and network state[9] has been preceded by two major events: the implosion of a bipolar world and the rising and implementation of globalization. The latter was foreseen as the world's placebo, a sort of magnificent formula to alleviate humankind's problems.

A very comprehensive definition of globalization is provided by Manuel Castells who conveniently quoted Ulrich Beck and Monroe Price remarking that not everything or everyone is globalized, but the global networks that structure the planet affect everything and everyone, connecting everything that is valuable.[10]

The fact is that most of the global south[11] perceives globalization as a sort of market fundamentalism, which at the present time, is struggling to survive and tries to reinvent itself under a new global category called global governance. Using "global issues" and the alleged decreased ability of national states to manage the world's problems on a global scale, global governance seems to be on its rise with a different set of priorities and new goals to alleviate world's major problems. Indeed, the management of the environment, the globalization of human rights, the imperative to bring social justice for the planet at large, and global security[12] are some of the reasons/excuses that have been set/brought to the global public sphere[13] trying to find a global common ideational ground.

 

However, according to my personal perception, based on the experience gathered at the UN-Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues, and disregarding global governance's practicality and/or well intentioned agenda, I consider the term/institution ('global governance') a loaded concept/category. As Dingwerth and Pattberg argued, "the concept is often used to denote a specific political program, expressing either a normative perspective on how political institutions should react to the reduced steering capacity of national political systems or a critical perspective that refers to global governance as a hegemonic discourse.[14] 

 

Conclusions  

1)    Theoretically, it seems that globalization and governance share the same principles and values and they both have collaboration among the states at their core. However, the global south is still waiting for the benefits/advantages that such collaboration was supposed to bring to their developing processes.  

2)    A conceptualization of governance, if valid, must take into consideration its four constitutive elements: 1) system of rule, 2) levels or dimensions of human activity, 3) pursuit of goals through coordination, and 4) transnational repercussions.

3)    The skepticism of the present approach, towards the implementation of global governance, rests on the still-unsolved contradictions/crisis that the globalization process brought to the international arena such as: a) identity crisis, b) economic crisis, c) security crisis, and d) revival of nationalism.

4)    As Rosenau stated: "There is no single organizing principle on which global governance rests, no emergent order around which communities and nations are likely to converge. Global governance is the sum of myriad - literally millions of - control mechanism driven by different histories, goals, structures, and processes (I would add interests)… In terms of governance, the world is too disaggregated for grand logics that postulate a measure of global coherence"[15]        

  

Huascar Cabanillas

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[1] Digwerth Klaus and Philipp Pattberg, Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder Co, US, 2006, page 185. 

[2] Finkelstein Lawrence, What is Global Governance?, Global Governance 1, Edition no.3, 1995, page 368.

[3] Dr. Steven Livingston and Nagar Na'ama, Media and International Relations: Organizing Global Governance, International Relations 2012, Freie University of Berlin, Germany, page 3.

[4] Heritier A, New Modes of Governance in Europe: Policy Making Without Legislating? In: A. Heritier (ed): Common Goods: Reinventing European and International Governance, Lanham: Rowman and Lttlefield.  

[5] Treib Oliver, Hoger Bahr, and Gerda Falkner, Modes of Governance: A Note Towards Conceptural Clarification, In: European Governance Papers, November 17, 2005.

[6] Dr. Steven Livingston and Nagar Na'ama, Page 3.

[7] Weiss G. Thomas, Governance, Good Governance and Global Governance: Conceptual and Actual Challenges, Third World Quaterly 21, no. 5, 2000, page 195.

[8] Digwerth Klaus and Philipp Pattberg, Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder Co, US, 2006, page 188.

[9] Castells Manuel, The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance, SAGE Publisher, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, U.S., 2008, page 88.

[10] Castells Manuel, The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance, page 81.

[11] United Nations Development Program Report, Global North and Global South, www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG_FS_8_EN

[12] Nye Joseph, The Paradox of American Power: Why the world's only superpower can't go it alone, Oxford University Press, New York, U.S. 2002.

[13] Castells Manuel, The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance, page 78.

[14] Digwerth Klaus and Philipp Pattberg, Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder Co, US, 2006, page 189.

[15] Rosenau James N., Governance in the twenty First Century, Approaches to Global Governance Theory, Albany: SUNY Press, 1999, page 295-296.

Collective action and information technologies

Since we are missing a blog entry I decided to post one myself.

This week we read about collective action and social movements in a broader sense with a short but informative discussion on how information technologies challenge some of the theoretical premises of collective action. Below you will find some ideas and questions I would like you to comment on. Of course no need to address them all.

What is collective action according to Ostrom and Olson? Bimber et al. offer a modification to that definition, do you agree with it? 
 
I identify at least three common themes in the study of contentious politics – why individuals join, the nature of the organization, and the outcome of the action. Discuss information technologies’ potential influence on each of these themes.

Ostrom talks about the fixed constrains in the prisoner’s dilemma that preclude policy-makers from thinking about creative ways to alter the outcome of the game. What is the effect of the internet on these constrains?

It seems that information sharing is key in the realm of collective action, but the advancement of information technologies also introduce issues such as credibility of information and information overload, how do you think these two issues effect local and transnational activism?
 
 A key aspect in Tarrow’s work is political opportunity structure, which means that certain characteristics of the political structure and institutional arrangements within a state impact the emergence and effectiveness of social movements. Can or should we consider the development of information technologies as part of the political structure? 
 
 Tarrow argues that transnational activists are rooted in local conditions and are motivated by local concerns. Livingston, the author of our module, disagrees? What do you think?
 
With the internet as a mobilizing tool, do we still need interpersonal interactions to promote collective action?
 
 

Looking forward to our discussion, 

 Na'ama