Mauro Santaniello

Electronic Regimes: Democracy and Geopolitical Strategies in Digital Networks

From the second half of the 1980s onward, Western governments have been pursuing vigorously the implementation of digitalization policies. As a result, political institutions and administrative procedures have been progressively computerized. Even non-Western countries like China, India, and Russia have started reform processes aiming at the creation of “virtual states.” Concurrently, developments in the Internet and related technologies have affected international relations, either heightening conflict or strengthening cooperation. e-Democracy and e-government projects and policies have generated numerous case studies, leading to a solid research tradition investigating the extent to which politics has been transformed. However, theoretical development to understand the geopolitical strategies designed by states in order to control and regulate digital networks has lagged behind. This article analyzes the main trajectories followed by states in their digitalization processes, highlighting their constitutional and geopolitical relevance. It explores the relationships between the state and information and communication technologies and proposes a set of typologies of digital regimes.

Digital constitutionalism: Fundamental rights and power limitation in the Internet eco-system:

During the 1990s, the Internet underwent a great transformation under the influence of a broad set of processes. Popularization was fostered by the invention of the World Wide Web, which opened cyberspace to the masses by providing it with an effective graphical user interface (hypertext markup language (HTML) pages) and an intuitive exploring method (hyperlinks). Internationalization of Internet usage was the long-term result of design principles created during the first decade of the network development process, such as the openness of basic protocols and standards, and their implementability on the least powerful equipment, which allowed interconnection and interoperability to heterogeneous networks, systems and devices all over the world (Braman, 2012). Privatization and commercialization of the Internet were triggered by specific public policies formulated and implemented by the US government, seamlessly between different administrations over a decade (Goldsmith, and Wu, 2006; Mueller, 2004, 2010). These processes, together, produced profound changes in the Internet architecture as well as in its governing arrangements, bringing about a political paradox. On one hand, the increasingly widespread and global dissemination of the Internet raised questions about how to protect users and their fundamental rights online, and how to enable them to participate in Internet policy-making. On the other hand, the transnational private regime running the Internet at the end of the transformation was structurally inconsistent with the traditional approach to these issues, i.e., modern constitutionalism, based on the sovereign authority of the nation-state and focused on

The language of digital constitutionalism and the role of national parliaments

Attempts to establish constitutional provisions for the Internet have been promoted since the late 1990s, mainly by the global civil society and intergovernmental organisations. More recently, a new wave of digital constitutionalism has emerged from the nation-state level, and particularly from national parliaments. In order to better understand this process, the article seeks to investigate, from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, whether and to what extent parliamentary initiatives exhibit specific political features compared to constitutional attempts emerging from other kinds of sources. Further, the study aims to assess if drafting initiatives overlap or, rather, respond in different ways to different constitutional concerns.

GOVERNING BY INTERNET ARChITECTuRE

In the past thirty years, the exponential rise in the number of Internet users around the word and the intensive use of the digital networks have brought to light crucial political issues. Internet is now the object of regulations. Namely, it is a policy domain. Yet, its own architecture represents a new regulative structure, one deeply affecting politics and everyday life. This article considers some of the main transformations of the Internet induced by privatization and militarization processes, as well as their consequences on societies and human beings.

Governance by indicators: the case of the Digital Agenda for Europe

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyse how the European Union (EU) evaluates its digital policies in the context of the Digital Agenda for Europe. In fact, the evaluation process, the indicators that the EU produces and uses to this aim, how it measures states’ performance in this field are all relevant issues mirroring the idea of (digital) Europe that the EU intends to build. Drawing on previous studies that have emphasised the political aspects of measurement and the governmentality power of indicators, the authors maintain that the way the EU measures the implementation of digital policies reflects a neoliberal vision of what a digital Europe should look like; furthermore, through rankings and ratings, the EU exerts a governmentality power on member states by conducting their behaviour at a distance. After introducing the theme, the study deepens the political dimension of evaluation and unfolds its crucial connection with neoliberalisation. Then it focuses on the European case, with a qualitative content analysis of the indicators included in three datasets that the European Commission has created over time: the Digital Agenda Key Indicators (DAKI), the Lead indicators for DG Connect policy priorities, and the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). The article ends with some remarks about the kind of digital Europe promoted by indicators.

Between Reason of State and Reason of Market:The developments of internet governance in historical perspective

“Ninguna soberania, ningun gobierno electivo, ninguna autoridad, ningun confin”. Hace veinte anos, John Perry Barlow proclamo su Declaracion de Independencia del Ciberespacio. Y estas eran las palabras clave. Hoy dia, podemos afirmar que el desarrollo del Internet Governance como ambito de policy global responde a las preguntas que Barlow consideraba irrelevantes precisamente por lo que al desarrollo del ciberespacio se referia. Una vez que los mitos fundadores de un Internet sin confines, inmaterial y falto de estructuras de gobierno han sido derrotados, ?cuales son las relaciones de poder que han emergido en el campo del dominio del Internet? ?Cuales son las ideas –o los valores normativos– que sostienen y legitiman el papel politico de los actores gubernamentales y no gubernamentales? Ademas, ?el modelo multi-stakeholder sabe distinguir los conflictos de poder reales, o el mismo parte de esos conflictos, como un discurso de apoyo de los intereses y de las coaliciones en juego? El objetivo principal del articulo es analizar esos cuestionamientos a traves del analisis del desarrollo de los conflictos politicos respecto de la gobernanza de la red: del IAHC al WSIS, hasta llegar a los procesos mas recientes, como el WCIT y el NetMundial.