Shaping Network Society

#OpenGov in Germany, Quo Vadis?

A complex crossing of historical forces

Nationality, nation-ness, and nationalism are cultural artifacts whose creation toward the end of the 18th C was the spontaneous distillation of a complex ”crossing” of discrete historical forces; but that, once created, they became ”modular,” capable of being transplanted to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a variety of political and ideological constellations.

The Social Logic of Open Government

Germany as an interesting case

Transparency

Participation

Collaboration

Conclusion

23. January 2012 by Philipp
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Strategy for the N2N World

24. October 2011 by Philipp
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A quick note on the state of the art on the art of opening the state

25 years ago, in 1986, Fritz Kratochwil and Gerald Ruggie reminded us of the historicity of the state, by pointing at the hypocrisy of theories of statehood that assumed ontological inter-subjectivism (imagined communities), while at the same time positing epistemological positivism (laws-of-nature). It took 20 years for that realization to sink in, but in the early 21^st Century, we (as humanity) got it and started to explore concepts of governance beyond statehood: The global governance discourse, the supranational governance ideas, and the emergence of multi-stakeholder governance processes come to mind.

Five years ago, in 2006, O’Reilly (who earlier had coined the term web 2.0) called for government 2.0 or „government as a platform.” In 2009, President Obama published the Memo on Open Government and defined in Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration the taxonomy of legitimate open governmental action. In 2011 the Open Government Partnership was launched at the UN General Assembly and many if not most governments on this planet have started to develop explicit open government policies or have included the vocabulary of open government in their policies.

“government as a platform”  or why many-to-many is different

At its most fundamental level, “government as a platform” alludes to the condition of possibility of governance in n-to-n media. N-to-n  can be many-to-many, as posited by Clay Shirky (2008), but also few-to-few, and few-to-many, and many-to-few. However, all are fundamentally different than one-to-many media, the form of communication that we have become accustomed to in the 20^th Century and require new forms of governance if their potential is to be realized. On a many-to-many platform processes can be structured so that they can make use of contributions across space and time, allow for contributions that are granular and modular, and that can outsource quality control to the community or institutionalize it in algorithmic solutions.

This is very relevant for our political communities, because today, the conditions of possibility of media play such an important role in structuring possible forms of governance: In the 21^st Century all social value creation (including economic production) is mediated through digital networks. Therefore, even the most material aspects of social life is not thinkable independent of digital communication and this in turn amplifies the impact its logical conditions of possibility have on instantiations of forms of governance. This goes way beyond the idea of empowering citizens and thereby increasing the legitimacy of our existing governmental institutions.

It means, we need to rethink organization, strategy, and leadership. 

13. October 2011 by Philipp
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Shaping network society: a quick note on my new job

Most of you know that starting May 1st I moved to CSC, one of the big global IT systems integration and outsourcing players. It has been an amazing first three months and I am looking forward to writing down some of my experiences. It is thrilling and exciting to see the interplay between network technologies, processes, and governance unfold as we try to shape our emerging network societies.

Expect more soon…

25. August 2011 by Philipp
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Power-Shift or Media-Shift? The Twitter Revolutions in Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt

Are we observing a tectonic change in the Arab world, parallel only to the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe 1990? Are Facebook and Twitter the equivalent of the levee en masse in post-revolutionary France? Or is Egypt’s just-in-time Internet blocking working?

The Egyptian, Tunesian, and Iranian protesters were not the first to utilize social media to organize and amplify their voices. During the French riots in 2005, in the Zimbabwean opposition uprising in 2008, in the Greek protests in late 2008 and during the youth riots in Budapest 2006, social media played important roles. In the Ukrainian 2004 Orange Revolution, flashmobs, organized online, contributed to the revolution’s success. During the Greek riots, Twitter was used massively. And a first reading of the case seems to suggest that the spread of sympathy worldwide among the Internet community triggered protests in many European cities. The impact on the international level has caused scholars to speak about the rise of a new global phenomenon: the “networked protest,” a phenomenon for which the Internet is valued as being crucial for its occurrence. Social networking technologies are involved in many of today’s social movements and seem to transform traditional modes of protest politics. Many-to-many media enable a new form of collective action never observed before.

One-to-Many and Many-to-Many

What makes the decisive difference between traditional mass-media and networked social media is the logic at work. Traditional Western mass media is exclusively broadcast media, i.e., one-to-many media, where direct feedback is impossible. In many-to-many media, the emitter and the recipient coincide. This theoretically allows the empowerment of new social actors. But it is more complicated, as media production in a networked realm is malleable: It can include “information broadcasting,” i.e., sent from one-to-many (e.g., blogging, micro-blogging such as Twitter), it can be a “conversation” between many (a forum or social networking), or it can be a “project” that is collaboratively produced by many only to thereafter be broadcast (Wikipedia, Indymedia, Ushahidi). The difference between “conversations” and “projects” is that socially produced conversations are not purposeful in the sense of generating a common output, while collaborative production concentrates on the output of the collaboration. The latter two are naturally exclusive to many-to-many media, as social actors within the network produce media for other social actors within the network, while broadcasting can take place on many-to-many or one-to-many platforms (television, radio, print).

Does it Change the Powerscape?

What is missing in existing studies of the revolutionary potential of many-to-many is a persuasive framework to describe the interplay between traditional media, social media and power relations in society. In an article under review at Oxford Internet Policy Journal, Sophie van Hüllen and I argue that there are two possible heuristics: The power-shift and the media-shift hypothesis.

The Power-Shift Hypothesis

The power-shift hypothesis assumes that many-to-many media will empower actors successfully utilizing social media. The notion of power itself is, in reference to Max Weber’s definition, understood as the ability of a social actor to enforce her will, even against the will of other actors. To better understand the interaction of many-to-many media and traditional power relations, we differentiate between two relevant power patterns: Coercive power (Weber) and structural power (cf. Foucault’s or Castells’s notion of power through “discourse”). Coercive power is caused by a superiority based on physical or synthetic advantages of one actor over the other. Power can be exercised by either fear or physical violence. Structural power is the fixation of power relations through institutions and culture in which social actors are dominated by others. The construction of institutions and cultures is channeled through communication. The power to influence the meaning and value defining process is labeled as agenda setting power. The ability to control social media, i.e., the construction of meaning, should then lead to changes in agenda-setting and institutional power arrangements as we are possibly seeing in Tunesia and Egypt (not in Iran).

The Media-Shift Hypothesis

The media-shift hypothesis assumes that the Internet and more specifically the mainstreaming of many-to-many media, such as blogging, collaborative editing, and social networking, has changed how we produce and consume information on all levels. However, it is not that many-to-many media is superseding mass media, but rather entering a complex interplay with mass media, where it is substantially impacting the media cycle, but not automatically altering social power relations. The hypothesis assumes that many-to-many media are closely embedded into the traditional channels of mass media. Thus the media-shift hypothesis reminds us that the use of a different media does not automatically entail a power-shift. Web 2.0 technologies introduce a new “mediascape,” but no new “powerscape.”

In Conclusion

Both the power-shift and the media-shift hypotheses are relevant heuristics to understand the impact of social networking technologies on revolutionary politics today. Social media are relevant for agenda setting, organization, coordination, motivation, and the provision of real-time information. Traditional Western mass media, today are dependent on online social media platforms to report about the protests. However, mass-media journalism is not displaced by the network public sphere. Journalistic processing adds value for the audience. Similar configurations likely will be observed in the next years. That is why the development of theories of the public sphere should be promoted in the sense of that coexistence of both mass media and social media with their respective modes of production. Clearly, we are confronted with a complex rearrangement of existing power structures and in need of frameworks that allow us to think these through intelligently. Until we have a fully-developed theory of our networked societies, heuristics such as the power-shift or the media-shift hypothesis can be helpful to describe, explain, and predict collective action. Even if the empirical evidence suggests that today many-to-many media have transformed the mediascape, but not the powerscape, we are shooting at moving targets. We need to carefully develop heuristics that allow us to understand and explain the complex interplay of social media and power politics.

Read the article by clicking here…

30. January 2011 by Philipp
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Rethinking Copyright for Social Production

In the early 21st Century, social production is starting to play a major role in how we live our lives and create wealth – just like the feudal system was superseded by capitalism, social production is increasing its footprint in our economies and societies.

Social production on a grand scale has become possible because of digitization and network technologies that allow us to collaborate across space and time. However, its success is not technologically determined. Social production needs production processes with interfaces to potential contributors that allow granular and modular contributions, checks and balances that ensure quality control. And process managers that are able to engage outside contributors without relying on the classical ‘modern’ modes of aligning interests, such as contracts, monetary incentives, or force. And a legal framework that fosters it.

Historically, social production has always existed as a mode of collective action, the 17th Century idea of the invisible college is only one example. However, only in the 21st Century have we developed the transaction cost reducing network technologies and the open source mindset that is making social production the default mode of creating value. No new business model is possible in 2010, if it does not at least include a social aspect.Therefore, any strategist today needs to ask, “how do structure the value web or transform my existing value chain so that I leverage the potential of openness?”

Copyright and Social Production

The value added of most products today takes place in the digital realm, therefore result of our processes normally are digital products, covered under existing copyright law. However, our intellectual property rights regimes and organizational cultures have not yet been adapted to facilitate social production and its results. The GPL and other open licensing models are “hacks” to our existing ‘one-person, one-product’ intellectual property rights framework, not a fundamental rethinking that is necessary when confronted with such a fundamental challenge as the incorporation of social production into our network economies and societies.

Therefore, we need to address the following questions:

• How do base metaphors shape the grammar of our normative thinking on creativity and value creation?
• What alternative base metaphors could be imagined as foundational for a value creation framework?
• When talking social production, what is the original position, from which we analyze questions of value creation and distribution of benefits?
• How do we translate these political theory questions into legal principles?
• How do we operationalize legal principles into a functioning system?
• How can we evaluate economic and societal effects of such a counter-factual system?

18. January 2011 by Philipp
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Rethinking/Rebooting US-Mexican Relations

In early December at the Harvard Kennedy School, I co-chaired a workshop where we asked, “should we aim to re-shape the policy discourse on North American integration, by applying some of the lessons learned from how the European Union interacts with poor and fragile states at its South-Eastern borders?”

This idea is at once simple and obvious (learn from global best practices) and radical (it forces us to rethink almost everything we assume about national sovereignty and the contemporary US and Mexican policy discourses), therefore, it needs careful reflection.

The backstory

Let me start with a caveat – we came to this question from very different perspectives. Mary and I are not integration scholars. Mary is working on development issues in Latin America and she heads the Mexico program at the Kennedy School. I have headed a public policy program in Mexico for some years, but today am interested in how network technologies shape public policy and head the center for public management and governance at the business school in Salzburg. I have left Mexico three years ago and only go back once or twice a year.

We have worked together for the last 7 years in our roles as coordinators of an academic exchange agreement between Tec de Monterrey and the Kennedy School, on several research projects, and executive programs. During all this time, North American integration has been the backdrop to our discussions. However, 10 years after NAFTA, it was not the topic we dared to touch in our work.

In parallel in Europe, there have been three major, even revolutionary, changes in European border regimes in the past two decades. These represent transformation in both thinking and practice with regard to borders and international cooperation to secure them.

• removing the EU’s internal borders (Schengen)
• extending the Schengen acquis and institution building to countries with initially weak institutions in Central and South East Europe (Schengen enlargement)
• defining reforms of security institutions, border regimes and policing in countries on the Eastern border of the EU in return for visa-free travel (visa road maps)

They have all been very much security oriented—precisely because they have involved revolutionary changes. The Germans, for example, have accepted that “their” external borders are protected first by each other, then by Poles, and soon by Romanians – this goes way beyond giving up the Deutsche Mark for the Euro.

In effect, the German external border has moved to the Hungarian-Romanian border and is going to move to the Romanian-Moldovan border in the Spring of 2011. Therefore, making sure that security risks are minimized has been crucial to the acceptance of each successive step. From the perspective of countries like Poland and Romania, the approach was just as radical. The European Union specified and controlled processes that are integral to the sovereignty of any nation. However, the combination of medium term carrots (visa-free travel, accession), with clearly specified sticks (process-reengineering, quality control) worked wonders for these countries.

So from time to time over a Margarita in Mexico or a Samual Adams in Cambridge, we would discuss the argument that there must be something to be learned from the European process. This summer, finally, while we were co-teaching in a summer program here in Cambridge that Mary was organizing, we met Gerald Knaus, from the European Stability Institute, one of the master-minds behind the European success story (or at least a facilitator).

The Analogy

Analogies are structural mappings from one familiar domain onto a different domain. They are not true in themselves, but potentially helpful to shed light on difficult problems.

The analogy is that the challenges and opportunities Mexico and the US are facing structurally comparable to the challenges and opportunities that Southern and Eastern European countries and the European Union are facing.

The assumption is that at least some of the practices that have shown tremendous success in Europe can be transferred to the Mexican-US situation.

Our Vision – Join us in the upcoming year and help with research, awareness-creation, and fund-raising!

• Develop a research community that is concerned about the topic.

• Develop a set of best practices from the European analogy that can be implemented in the North American context.

• Shape the policy discourse on North American integration for years to come.

• And address the biggest policy challenge that the United States is confronted with at this time in history.

22. December 2010 by Philipp
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Learning from the European Analogy?

On Thursday, we (Mary Hilderbrand, Gerald Knaus, and me) are bringing together a group of academics and policy makers from the European Union, Mexico, and the US for a first workshop at the Harvard Kennedy School. We will be exploring the idea that the challenges and opportunities Mexico and the US are facing structurally comparable to the challenges and opportunities that Southern and Eastern European countries and the European Union are facing, so that at least some of the practices that have shown tremendous success in Europe can be transferred to the Mexican-US situation. We call this “learning from the European analogy.”

US-Mexican relations have become gridlocked on many fronts. Immigration from Mexico to the US is a difficult political and policy issue that has been resistant to solution. Trafficking in drugs and weapons is not seriously addressed at a regional level. Both the US and Mexican policy elites have taken a defensive posture in the discourse rather than thinking in terms of integration, even as economic integration is moving forward.

By taking a step back and using a comparative approach, we want to develop a new approach towards North American integration. We assume that there are interesting lessons to be learned from the European integration process. Looking back at the last twenty years, we can observe a surprising success in the formerly divided European continent.

• Several countries with lower GDPs than Mexico in 1990 have achieved integration into the European Union.
• Open borders have been extended to include countries marked in the recent past by high levels of corruption, crime, and violence. Balkan states formerly at war now have murder rates comparable to that of Sweden.
• With access to production capacities and human resources in the East, the European Union has become one of the world’s most competitive economic spheres.

Although there are remaining problems and issues to be confronted, transformation has been swift and the results are generally positive. The changes have been accomplished by offering attractive incentives—specifically, visa-facilitation, clear roadmaps, and membership—as well as through defining a clear European body of law (the EU acquis), using it strategically, offering advice, and ensuring compliance through clearly specified mechanisms.

Perhaps most significantly for potential relevance to North America, the EU has been able to export its ideas of security to a much poorer half of the European continent, allowing it to handle threats facing EU citizens better. The integration of South East Europe has been approached through the framework of visa road maps, starting with the exchange of visa facilitation schemes and progressing to visa-free travel in return for meeting demanding road-map conditions. Whereas the prospect of EU accession is not available in any other context, the visa road-map framework holds promise to inspire debates in other contexts, including the relations between the US and its southern neighbors, especially Mexico.

Security, Visa Road Maps, and Borders in the EU

There have been three major, even revolutionary, changes in European border regimes in the past two decades. These represent transformation in both thinking and practice with regard to borders and international cooperation to secure them.

• removing the EU’s internal borders (Schengen)
• extending the Schengen acquis and institution building to countries with initially weak institutions in Central and South East Europe (Schengen enlargement)
• defining reforms of security institutions, border regimes and policing in countries on the Eastern border of the EU in return for visa-free travel (visa road maps)

They have all been very much security oriented—precisely because they have involved revolutionary changes. The Dutch and Germans, for example, have accepted that “their” external borders are protected first by each other, then by Poles, and soon by Romanians. In effect, the Dutch external border has moved to the Hungarian-Romanian border and is going to move to the Romanian-Moldovan border in spring 2011. Therefore, making sure that security risks are minimized has been crucial to the acceptance of each successive step.

This has been an effort shaped by interior ministries, to such an extent that it has often been criticized as “fortress Europe”. Yet that has been central to its credibility and success. There have been no leaps of faith, no romantic notions that borders do not matter. EU citizens care intensely about issues of illegal migration, transnational organized crime and insecurity. These changes have, therefore, involved defining and enforcing very clear targets.

The changes have not occurred overnight. Based on institution building and the creation of new networks of cooperation and trust, this has been a generational project that began in the mid 1980s and is ongoing. It has been incremental and experimental in implementation. And the project of a continent- wide reform of border management and security cooperation is still expanding: there are now serious debates on visa road-maps for Ukraine, Moldova, Turkey, Kosovo, and even the South Caucasus. In the last year the visa issue has also moved to the center of the Russia-EU dialogue.

Relevance for US and Mexico

US-Mexican relations have not developed along the same lines nor at the same pace as the integration of Central and Eastern European countries into the European Union. Trade barriers were lowered or removed through NAFTA, but strong opposition continues in both countries; some parts of the agreement have not been fully implemented; and deeper economic integration has been limited. The labor markets of the two countries are highly interdependent, and illegal immigration into the US is a major and increasingly difficult political and economic challenge, but progress on immigration policy reform has been stymied. Whereas the economies of Central and Eastern European countries have developed rapidly, Mexico’s economic growth has been slow. Tensions between the original European Union countries and their neighbors have been reduced; tensions between Mexico and the US over migration and security issues are growing.

We believe that exploring the analogy of the successful European experience, and in particular the visa road map framework, can make a contribution to developing new ways of thinking about the North American relationships. The immediate objections, beyond the barriers of domestic politics, will surely be that Mexico is too poor, too corrupt, and too racked by violence and insecurity to think of integrative responses rather than defensive ones. The brief review above suggests, however, that the situation in North America and the barriers to be overcome are perhaps less different from the recent EU experience than is generally recognized.

Therefore, serious comparative analysis that looks at the political, economic, institutional contexts; the regional relationships; the nature of the challenges; and policy and political options is needed, to explore whether there are elements of the EU experience that might be adopted and adapted within the North American context. A new integration project along such lines would need serious political capital, but without research that builds the basis for new approaches, there is little hope for change. Therefore, our challenge is twofold:

On the research side, we need…

• to learn more about the similarities and dissimilarities of the respective integration processes. Does the analogy hold? What are its limitations?
• To codify the successful algorithms of integration in Europe and translate them into the North American context.

while on the policy dimension, we need…

• to develop a sensitivity for the analogy in the discourse.
• to lobby for policy interventions that are designed along the lines of the European approach.

That is a fairly big research and policy program, where we need to think in decades, not years. Join us!!! Next workshops are coming up.

08. December 2010 by Philipp
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