Edging toward the sweet spot of new-century governance
Enter the info-state. The info-state – today one of a growing number of dynamic and entrepreneurial cities, city-states or small nations scattered around the world – governs as much through data as via democracy.
Scholars have for decades appreciated political mutations that drive international competition and result in new forms of governance. In 1941, Harold Lasswell emphasized the rise of politico-military elites, such as in Imperial Japan, that shaped the ideology of ‘garrison states.’ In 1996, Richard Rosecrance forecasted a transition toward ‘virtual states’ that downsized geography and outsourced production, while investing more in human and portfolio capital than territorial expansion. Building on this logic of the economic over the political, Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles (2002) traced the advent of the ‘market state’ era, in which the maximization of individual commercial opportunity defines national power and success. Japanese business strategist Kenichi Ohmae then set the stage for the info-state era in The Next Global Stage (2005), which argued that urban agglomerations of city-states resembling the medieval Hanseatic League would become the world’s power centres.
The info-state draws on numerous important attributes of these previous – and still co-existing – units. The economic footprint supersedes the territorial, the urban industrial core and its human capital pool are the locus of value, and diplomacy is exercised by commercial and knowledge centres as much as by national capitals.
But the info-state also presents new mutations that were not conceivable in previous technological periods – a peculiar convergence of the Information Age and the devolved authority of city units and clusters. The critical shift lies in the manner of policy-making enabled by new technologies: governance is practiced in ‘real-time’ – through constant consultation, rather than through traditional, staggered democratic deliberation. In a sense, this is a post-modern democracy – or even ‘post-democracy’ – that combines popular priorities with rationalist or technocratic management. On this logic, data-driven policy might mean more objective measurement of progress, more evidence-based policy, and more accountability of leadership.
In order to thrive, an info-state must provide both the security of the garrison state model and the connectedness of the virtual state. In other words, the essence of the info-state is secure connectedness. And, to be sure, this existential reliance on secure connectedness is potentially the info-state’s most prominent vulnerability.
