the state

This page looks at the state and the information economy.

It covers -

• global regulation and the death of the state?
• concentration & competition

Pundits such as Peter Huber to the contrary, the state and the information economy are not antithetical. Pronouncements about the state's imminent demise are at best overstated, at worst shamelessly naive.

     global regulation and the death of the state?

In his 1995 tract Being Digital Nicholas Negroponte proclaimed that

like a moth-ball which goes from solid to gas directly, I expect the nation-state to evaporate without first going into a gooey, inoperative mess, before some global cyberstate commands the political ether. 

... the role of the nation-state will change dramatically and there will be no more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox.

Ten years later the nation state looks somewhat more resilient than the pox. Why? Arguably that is because, as Linda Weiss noted in The Myth of the Powerless State (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1998), it fulfils fundamental needs. Bart Kosko's Heaven in a Chip: Fuzzy Visions of Science & Society in the Digital Age (New York: Three Rivers Press 2000) more succinctly declares that

we'll have governments as long as we have atoms to protect.

We have noted the excellent Global Business Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000) by John Braithwaite & Peter Drahos and the drier The Regulation of International Trade (London: Routledge 1999) by Michael Trebilcock & Robert Howse.  

Globalization in Question: The International Economy & the Possibilities of Governance (London: Polity 1999) by Paul Hirst & Grahame Thompson and Eric Helleiner's States & The Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1996) offer a more positive view than Susan Strange's The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1996) and Mad Money: When Markets Outgrow Governments (Ann Arbor: Uni of Michigan Press 1998).

John Wiseman's Global Nation: Australia & the Politics of Globalisation (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 1998) provides a local perspective.  Living On Thin Air: The New Economy (London: Viking 1999) is another view from the Left by UK 'knowledge entrepreneur' Charles Leadbeater.

Kenichi Ohmae's  The End of the Nation State (London, HarperCollins 1995) and The Invisible Continent: Four Strategic Imperatives of the New Economy (New York: HarperBusiness 2000), like his The Borderless World, are views by the McKinsey guru.  Entertaining ... but the state is alive and well, as you'll find if you forget your passport or ABN. There is a less convincing, because more detailed, recitation in Richard Rosecrance's The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth & Power in the Coming Century (New York: Basic Books 2000). 

For a panoramic global perspective why not browse Martin Van Creveld's The Rise & Decline Of The State (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999), the big picture from 1350 to 1998. It is more subtle than Armand Mattelart's Networking the World, 1794-2000 (Minneapolis: Uni of Minnesota Press 2000).

William Taylor & Alan Webber edited Going Global (New York: Viking 1996): interviews with Ohmae, venture capital czar John Doerr, Nestle Vice-President Barbara Kux and others.  Essential reading if you're a Fast Company member, otherwise not.

Joel Reidenberg's 2005 paper Technology & Internet Jurisdiction argues that conventional wisdom about the erosion of national jurisdictional claims is flawed, commenting that interactive technologies give multiple states greater authority to claim personal jurisdiction and enable states to enforce decisions electronically, thereby bypassing some problems of foreign recognition and enforcement.

     concentration & competition

The role of referees on the digital playing field - level or otherwise - remains contentious. One starting point is the valedictory address on Rethinking Antitrust Policies For The New Economy by US Asst Attorney General Joel Klein.

Tony Freyer's Regulating Big Business: Antitrust in Great Britain & America 1880-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1992) and Antitrust and Global Capitalism, 1930-2004 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2006) provide a useful introduction to competition law and politics. 

They are more useful than Charles Geisst's facile Monopolies in America: Empire Builders & their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2000) and the somewhat paranoid Trust On Trial: How the Microsoft Case is Reframing the Rules of Competition (Cambridge: Perseus 2000) by Richard McKenzie.  

Perspectives on Microsoft, IBM and AT&T are offered elsewhere on this site. Paul Ceruzzo's excellent A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) in discussing the IBM anti-trust litigation notes that

...both sides, with all their highly paid legal and research staffs, utterly and completely missed what everyone has since recognised as the obvious way that computing would evolve ... one expert witness testified that "it is most unlikely that any major new venture into the general purpose computer industry can be expected.  As late as 1986 one Justice Department economist, still fuming over dismissal of the case, complained that "IBM faces no significant domestic or foreign competition that could threaten its dominance".  

The essays in The Future of Software (Cambridge: MIT Press 1995) edited by Derek Leebaert suggest that the 'road ahead' won't be owned by Microsoft. That is consistent with the analysis in the iconoclastic, persuasive Who Owns the Media? Competition & Concentration in the Mass Media Industry (Mahwah: Erlbaum 2000) by Benjamin Compaine & Douglas Gomery and in Media Ownership and Concentration in America (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2007) by Eli Noam.  

Peter Temin's The Fall of the Bell System (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1988) and Gerald Brock in Telecommunication Policy for the Information Age: From Monopoly to Competition (Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 1994) consider the fall of Ma Bell, as much a result of innovations as of government regulators.  

Another perspective is provided in Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999) by Stephen Adams & Orville Butler and other studies noted in our revolutions profile. 



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