Rules of Order: Assessing the State of Global Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Stewart Patrick: “The current disorder has multiple causes, although their relative weight can be debated. They include intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China, two superpowers with dramatically different world order visions and clashing material interests; Russia’s brazen assault against its neighbor, resulting in the most serious armed conflict in Europe since World War II; an ongoing diffusion of power from advanced market democracies to emerging nations with diverse preferences, combined with resistance from established powers against accommodating them in multilateral institutions; a widespread retreat from turbocharged globalization, as national governments seek to claw back autonomy from market forces to pursue industrial, social, national security, and other policies and, in some cases, to weaponize interdependence; growing alienation between richer and poorer nations, exacerbated by accelerating climate change and stalled development; a global democratic recession now in its seventeenth year that has left no democracy unscathed; and a resurgence of sovereignty-minded nationalism that calls on governments to take back control from forces blamed for undermining national security, prosperity, and identity. (The “America First” ethos of Donald Trump’s presidency, which rejected the tenets of post-1945 U.S. internationalism, is but the most prominent recent example.) In sum, the crisis of cooperation is as much a function of the would-be global problem-solvers as it is a function of the problems themselves.

Given these centrifugal tendencies, is there any hope for a renewed open, rules-based world order? As a first step in answering this question, this paper surveys areas of global convergence and divergence on principles and rules of state conduct across fourteen major global issue areas. These are grouped into four categories: (1) rules to promote basic stability and peaceful coexistence by reducing the specter of violence; (2) rules to facilitate economic exchange and prosperity; (3) rules to promote cooperation on transnational and even planetary challenges like climate change, pandemics, the global commons, and the regulation of cutting-edge technologies; and (4) rules that seek to embed liberal values, particularly principles of democracy and human rights, in the international sphere. This stocktaking reveals significant preference diversity and normative disagreement among nations in both emerging and long-established spheres of interdependence. Ideally, this brief survey will give global policymakers a better sense of what, collectively, they are up against—and perhaps even suggest ways to bridge existing differences…(More)”

Developing Wearable Technologies to Advance Understanding of Precision Environmental Health

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “The rapid proliferation of wearable devices that gather data on physical activity and physiology has become commonplace across various sectors of society. Concurrently, the development of advanced wearables and sensors capable of detecting a multitude of compounds presents new opportunities for monitoring environmental exposure risks. Wearable technologies are additionally showing promise in disease prediction, detection, and management, thereby offering potential advancements in the interdisciplinary fields of both environmental health and biomedicine.

To gain insight into this burgeoning field, on June 1 and 2, 2023, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine organized a 2-day virtual workshop titled Developing Wearable Technologies to Advance Understanding of Precision Environmental Health. Experts from government, industry, and academia convened to discuss emerging applications and the latest advances in wearable technologies. The workshop aimed to explore the potential of wearables in capturing, monitoring, and predicting environmental exposures and risks to inform precision environmental health…(More)”.

When should states be creative, innovative or entrepreneurial – and when should they not?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Geoff Mulgan: “…So what about governments being entrepreneurial as opposed to creative and innovative? Here things get even trickier. The classic commentary on the subject was written by the great Jane Jacobs (in her book ‘Systems of Survival’). She pointed out the differences between what she called the ‘guardian syndrome’ and the ‘trader syndrome’. The first is common in governments, the second in business. She argued that all societies have to find a balance between these very different views of the world. The first is concerned with looking after things and protection, originally of land, and can be found in governments, ecological movements as well as aristocracies. The second is concerned with exchange and profit, and is the world of commerce and trade.

These each see the world in very different ways. But in practice they complement each other – indeed their complementarity is what helps societies to function.

In her view, however, fusions of the two tended to be malign pathologies, for example when businesses became like governments, running large areas of territory, or when governments start thinking like traders. Donald Trump was a classic example – who saw the government machine rather as an entrepreneur would see his own business. Silvio Berlusconi was another – a remarkable proportion of his initiatives were essentially designed to promote his businesses, or protect him from prosecution.

Jane Jacobs’ points become very obvious in some industries, like the contemporary digital industries that have become de facto utilities on which we depend every day. It remains far from clear that companies like Meta or Google appreciate that they risk becoming pathological fusions of business and government, without the mindsets appropriate to their new-found power.

The pathologies are also very visible in many parts of the world where the state runs a lot of industry, often with the military playing a leading role. Examples include Pakistan, Myanmar, China and Russia. In these cases public servants really have become entrepreneurs. In some cases – like Huawei – great businesses have been grown. But most of the time such fusions of government and entrepreneurialism tend towards corruption, and predatory extraction of value, because when the state’s monopoly of coercion connects to the power to make money abuses are inevitable.

There may be occasional examples where states should be entrepreneurial at least in mindset – spinning off a function or using some of the ethos of a start-up, for example to create a new digital service. But in such cases very tight rules are vital to avoid abuse, so that if, for example, a part of the state is spun out it doesn’t do so with advantages or easy money or legally guaranteed monopolies or inflated salaries. Much depends on whether you use the word entrepreneurial in a precise sense (the first definition that comes up on Google is: ‘characterized by the taking of financial risks in the hope of profit’) or as a much looser synonym for being innovative or problem-solving…(More)”.

Interoperability Can Save the Open Web

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview by Michael Nolan: “In his new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, author Cory Doctorow presents a strong case for disrupting Big Tech. While the dominance of Internet platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Amazon is often taken for granted, Doctorow argues that these walled gardens are fenced in by legal structures, not feats of engineering. Doctorow proposes forcing interoperability—any given platform’s ability to interact with another—as a way to break down those walls and to make the Internet freer and more democratic….

Doctorow: At its root, it’s just the ability to use one thing with something else. Use any ink in your printer with any paper, use any socks with your shoes, anyone’s gasoline in your car, put any lightbulb in your light socket. There’s voluntary, mandatory interoperability, where a group of stakeholders get together and they say, “This is the goal we want all of our products to achieve, and we are going to design a framework so that we can make sure that every lightbulb lights up when you stick it in a light socket.” Then there’s the stuff where they’re indifferent: Car companies don’t stop you from putting a little cigarette-lighter-to-USB adapter into your car.

Companies can grow very quickly because tech has got these great network effects, but they also have, because of interoperability, really low switching costs.—Cory Doctorow

Then there’s the third kind of interop, the kind of chewy, interesting, lots-of-rich-Internet-history interop, which is adversarial interoperability, which in the book we call “comcom,” short for competitive compatibility. It’s the interop that’s done against the wishes of the original equipment manufacturer: scraping, reverse engineering, bots, all of that gnarly stuff done in the face of active hostility. This would be like Apple reverse-engineering Microsoft Office and making the iWork suite—Pages, Numbers, and Keynote—so that anyone with a Mac could read any Windows-based office file without having to buy any software from Microsoft.

There are so many examples of this from technology’s history. It’s really the engine of technology…(More)”. 

On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Lee McIntyre: “The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society. Drawing on his twenty years of experience as a scholar of science denial, McIntyre explains how autocrats wield disinformation to manipulate a populace and deny obvious realities, why the best way to combat disinformation is to disrupt its spread, and most importantly, how we can win the war on truth.

McIntyre takes readers through the history of strategic denialism to show how we arrived at this precarious political moment and identifies the creators, amplifiers, and believers of disinformation. Along the way, he also demonstrates how today’s “reality denial” follows the same flawed blueprint of the “five steps of science denial” used by climate deniers and anti-vaxxers; shows how Trump has emulated disinformation tactics created by Russian and Soviet intelligence dating back to the 1920s; provides interviews with leading experts on information warfare, counterterrorism, and political extremism; and spells out the need for algorithmic transparency from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. On Disinformation lays out ten everyday practical steps that we can take as ordinary citizens—from resisting polarization to pressuring our Congresspeople to regulate social media—as well as the important steps our government (if we elect the right leaders) must take.

Compact, easy-to-read (and then pass on to a friend), and never more urgent, On Disinformation does nothing less than empower us with the tools and knowledge needed to save our republic from autocracy before it is too late…(More)”.

Scaling deep through transformative learning in public sector innovation labs – experiences from Vancouver and Auckland

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Lindsay Cole & Penny Hagen: “…explores scaling deep through transformative learning in Public Sector Innovation Labs (PSI labs) as a pathway to increase the impacts of their work. Using literature review and participatory action research with two PSI labs in Vancouver and Auckland, we provide descriptions of how they enact transformative learning and scaling deep. A shared ambition for transformative innovation towards social and ecological wellbeing sparked independent moves towards scaling deep and transformative learning which, when compared, offer fruitful insights to researchers and practitioners. The article includes a PSI lab typology and six moves to practice transformative learning and scaling deep…(More)”.

Wartime Digital Resilience

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Gulsanna Mamediieva: “Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, technology was already a growing part of the Ukrainian economy and was central to the government’s vision to reimagine the way citizens and businesses interact with the state in the digital era: paperless, cashless, and without bureaucracy. Even before the conflict, we in government believed that technology holds the promise of making government more transparent, efficient, and accountable, empower citizens, increase participation, and combat corruption.

However, technology has become even more central to helping the country defend itself and mitigate the effect of Russian attacks on civilians. As a result, Ukraine has emerged as a leading example of digital innovation and resilience in the face of challenges, particularly through its gov-tech solutions, using digital governance capacities to maintain basic governance functions in crisis situations and showing a strong case for digital public innovation to support its people. Digital government plays a central role in Ukraine’s ability to continue to fight for its very existence and respond to the aggressor…(More)”

Designing Research For Impact

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Duncan Green: “The vast majority of proposals seem to conflate impact with research dissemination (a heroic leap of faith – changing the world one seminar at a time), or to outsource impact to partners such as NGOs and thinktanks.

Of the two, the latter looks more promising, but then the funder should ask to see both evidence of genuine buy-in from the partners, and appropriate budget for the work. Bringing in a couple of NGOs as ‘bid candy’ with little money attached is unlikely to produce much impact.

There is plenty written on how to genuinely design research for impact, e.g. this chapter from a number of Oxfam colleagues on its experience, or How to Engage Policy Makers with your Research (an excellent book I reviewed recently and on the LSE Review of Books). In brief, proposals should:

  • Identify the kind(s) of impacts being sought: policy change, attitudinal shifts (public or among decision makers), implementation of existing laws and policies etc.
  • Provide a stakeholder mapping of the positions of key players around those impacts – supporters, waverers and opponents.
  • Explain how the research plans to target some/all of these different individuals/groups, including during the research process itself (not just ‘who do we send the papers to once they’re published?’).
  • Which messengers/intermediaries will be recruited to convey the research to the relevant targets (researchers themselves are not always the best-placed to persuade them)
  • Potential ‘critical junctures’ such as crises or changes of political leadership that could open windows of opportunity for uptake, and how the research team is set up to spot and respond to them.
  • Anticipated attacks/backlash against research on sensitive issues and how the researchers plan to respond
  • Plans for review and adaptation of the influencing strategy

I am not arguing for proposals to indicate specific impact outcomes – most systems are way too complex for that. But, an intentional plan based on asking questions on the points above would probably help researchers improve their chances of impact.

Based on the conversations I’ve been having, I also have some thoughts on what is blocking progress.

Impact is still too often seen as an annoying hoop to jump through at the funding stage (and then largely forgotten, at least until reporting at the end of the project). The incentives are largely personal/moral (‘I want to make a difference’), whereas the weight of professional incentives are around accumulating academic publications and earning the approval of peers (hence the focus on seminars).

incentives are largely personal/moral (‘I want to make a difference’), whereas the weight of professional incentives are around accumulating academic publications

The timeline of advocacy, with its focus on ‘dancing with the system’, jumping on unexpected windows of opportunity etc, does not mesh with the relentless but slow pressure to write and publish. An academic is likely to pay a price if they drop their current research plans to rehash prior work to take advantage of a brief policy ‘window of opportunity’.

There is still some residual snobbery, at least in some disciplines. You still hear terms like ‘media don’, which is not meant as a compliment. For instance, my friend Ha-Joon Chang is now an economics professor at SOAS, but what on earth was Cambridge University thinking not making a global public intellectual and brilliant mind into a prof, while he was there?

True, there is also some more justified concern that designing research for impact can damage the research’s objectivity/credibility – hence the desire to pull in NGOs and thinktanks as intermediaries. But, this conversation still feels messy and unresolved, at least in the UK…(More)”.

Experts: 90% of Online Content Will Be AI-Generated by 2026

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Maggie Harrison: “Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet” has been pretty standard advice for quite some time now. And according to a new report from European law enforcement group Europol, we have all the reason in the world to step up that vigilance.

“Experts estimate that as much as 90 percent of online content may be synthetically generated by 2026,” the report warned, adding that synthetic media “refers to media generated or manipulated using artificial intelligence.”

“In most cases, synthetic media is generated for gaming, to improve services or to improve the quality of life,” the report continued, “but the increase in synthetic media and improved technology has given rise to disinformation possibilities.”…

The report focused pretty heavily on disinformation, notably that driven by deepfake technology. But that 90 percent figure raises other questions, too — what do AI systems like Dall-E and GPT-3 mean for artists, writers, and other content-generating creators? And circling back to disinformation once more, what will the dissemination of information, not to mention the consumption of it, actually look like in an era driven by that degree of AI-generated digital stuff?…(More)’

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Anu Bradford: “The global battle among the three dominant digital powers—the United States, China, and the European Union—is intensifying. All three regimes are racing to regulate tech companies, with each advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. In Digital Empires, her provocative follow-up to The Brussels Effect, Anu Bradford explores a rivalry that will shape the world in the decades to come.

Across the globe, people dependent on digital technologies have become increasingly alarmed that their rapid adoption and transformation have ushered in an exceedingly concentrated economy where a few powerful companies control vast economic wealth and political power, undermine data privacy, and widen the gap between economic winners and losers. In response, world leaders are variously embracing the idea of reining in the most dominant tech companies. Bradford examines three competing regulatory approaches—the American market-driven model, the Chinese state-driven model, and the European rights-driven regulatory model—and discusses how governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulatory approaches collide in the international domain. Which digital empire will prevail in the contest for global influence remains an open question, yet their contrasting strategies are increasingly clear.

Digital societies are at an inflection point. In the midst of these unfolding regulatory battles, governments, tech companies, and digital citizens are making important choices that will shape the future ethos of the digital society. Digital Empires lays bare the choices we face as societies and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies….(More)”