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     cosmocrats and cyberspace

This page considers claims about governance of the net by a cosmocracy - the latest manifestation of the 'New Class'.

It covers -

• introduction
• whose cosmocracy?
• 'Davos Culture' and its discontents
• studies of the New Class
• a matrix of governance?

     introduction

Much of the debate about governance of the net has been characterised by hyperbole that policy is made by (and indeed often for) a new elite that is "unburdened by the baggage of locality or the complications of history", moving from business to government or NGOs and back again, distinguished by technical skills or merely by acquaintance with other cosmocrats, and without strong roots in - or sense of obligation to - a particular nation.

Those cosmocrats are supposedly found attending meetings of ICANN and the ITU, managing multinational corporations, writing for the International Chamber of Commerce or IMF, studying at INSEAD or HBS, and dispensing wisdom on behalf of the Asian Development Bank or Soros Foundation. They have been acclaimed as a realisation of dreams of a global meritocracy and condemned as sinister manipulators of national economies and political processes.

Notions of cosmocracy blur with visions of the netizen, members of a politically self-conscious global community united by the internet, reliant on volunteerism and driven by altruism rather than government agendas. At its most zany that vision encompasses enthusiasts who've purported to secede from dying nation states to a new republic of cyberspace. At a more mundane level the vision - despite pronouncements about universality - embodies assumptions about free speech, intellectual property, regulation, frontiers and manifest destiny that are drawn from one strain of US popular culture.

Neither notion offers a truly effective model for understanding how cyberspace - or merely the global information infrastructure - is currently governed and how it is likely to be governed in future.

     whose cosmocracy

Although use of 'cosmocracy' dates from at least the early 1990s it was popularised in A Future Perfect: The Challenge & Hidden Promise of Globalisation (New York: Times 2000) by John Mickelthwait & Adrian Wooldridge.

The authors characterised the cosmocrats as the world's new

anxious elite ... a much more meritocratic ruling class than we have ever seen before, a broader one and a much more uneasy one.

Cosmocrats derive their power from information and expertise, rather than ownership of major corporations (or political machines). Zbigniew Brzezinski supposedly claimed that

A global human consciousness is for the first time beginning to manifest itself …Today we are witnessing the emergence of transnational elites … composed of international businessmen, scholars, professional men, and public officials. The ties of these new elites cut across national boundaries, their perspectives are not confined by national traditions, and their interests are more functional than national.

Wooldridge subsequently spoke of

the rise of a class of cosmocrats - perhaps 20 million people worldwide. This class is in the process of forming. It is made up of people who have similar global lifestyles and who possess the ideas, connections, and sheer chutzpah to master the international economy. It is a formally meritocratic class produced by Western education systems and companies. Yet, while there is a great feeling among Western educated people that their values are universal, their institutions are not very good at reaching out to the developing world. ... We expect the number of cosmocrats to approximately double by 2010.

Michael Prowse in the Financial Times commented that

The book will provide ideal entertainment for the chief winners from globalisation: the overpaid class the authors call 'cosmocrats'. Investment bankers and chief executives will learn not only that their vast salaries are justified but that they are essential if the world's poorest are to enjoy a bright future.

The anxiety of the elite is attributed to being "overworked and rootless victims of 'affluenza' with an unwillingness to engage in modern politics" - one reviewer sniffed at "the usual symptoms of arrogance, apathy and anomie".

John Prideaux in the New Statesman offered a more downmarket picture of the 'Duty Free' class

An identikit member ... would be younger than 35. She would move jobs from capital city to capital city, never staying longer than a few years. The thought of moving to a provincial city in her home country is more unsettling than a move to the other side of the world. She hardly uses local public services. She may invest her money internationally, and so has no significant stake in a single national economy. When she goes abroad, she stays with foreign friends who share her tastes and understand her acronyms. She may end up marrying one of them.

An even more reductionist view was offered at Clarkson U -

Superficiality - Cosmocrats have developed a level of indifference or cynicism to the world around them. It is hard to measure things like goodness and virtue, but it is easy to measure hours worked and units produced. In addition, the travel habits of cosmocrats lead to a superficial knowledge of the world. Their exposure to different parts of the world is limited to a few hours or days at various airport terminals and hotels. This results in warped perceptions about the cultures of the world. Overall, cosmocrats value material goods and accomplishments within their field over more fundamental and traditional values like family and country.

Limited loyalty - Cosmocrats are only truly loyal to themselves. They are loyal to the company only as long as they are paid to be loyal. This is a paradox for companies because they do not want employees to have strong convictions towards issues outside the company (this is seen as a distraction from company goals), but they do expect strong conviction towards company goals.

John Keane's Global Civil Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2003) takes a different approach, characterising cosmocracy as an emerging form of global governance rather than elite - a dynamic system that involves international agencies, transnational enterprises and NGOs in addition to governments.

    'Davos Culture' and its discontents

As Max Weber noted almost a century ago, criticisms of a managerial elite that is 'disconnected' from its social origins and national interest - or that supersede a provincial establishment - are at least as old as the beginning of the professions, predating the French Revolution and resonating since then.

Mattei Pantaleoni’s 1911 Considerazioni sulle proprieta di un sistema di prezzi Politici and syndicalist Waclaw Machajski (1866-1926) popularised the notion of the 'new class', an elite of professionals and administrators that would rise from but ruthlessly exploit the proletariat. Thorstein Veblen offered a more optimistic vision of technocrats who'd rationalise production and curb market excesses, echoed in Robert Reich's recent praise in The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism (New York: Random 1991) for the new economy of 'symbolic analysts'.

Peter Berger noted the overlap between what he tartly characterised as 'Davos Culture' (after the annual World Economic Summit and independently identified by Samuel Huntington as 'Davos Man'?) and 'Faculty Club International', exemplified by major NGOs, foundations and academic networks. As we've noted elsewhere on this site, that overlap was highlighted by Lewis Lapham in The Agony of Mammon: The Imperial Global Economy Explains Itself to the Membership In Davos, Switzerland (London: Verso 1998)

Janine Wedel in Collision & Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989-1998 (New York: St Martin's Press 2001) coined the term 'transactors' to identify organisations such as ICANN and "members of an exclusive and highly mobile multinational club, whose rules and regulations have yet to be written", an elite - including "econolobbyists" - whose personal and corporate interests transcend national borders.

Her wariness was endorsed in the 2003 Boyer Lectures, where Owen Harries notes the assessment that their

outstanding characteristic is their flexible, adaptable, chameleon-like character. They adopt multiple roles and identities, and largely unaccountable. They often work outside formal channels. Their nationality is becoming increasingly irrelevant, their loyalties and interests are changeable. As she says of the Harvard Institute people, 'To suit the transactors' purpose, the same individual could represent the United States in one meeting and Russia in the next, and perhaps himself at a third, regardless of national origin’.

One of the more fevered populist critics - ironically publishing online - warned about cosmocrats -

formally defined as cosmopolian bureaucrats who promote the new world order. They are the heirs to the Masons, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Cominterm and the Trilateral Commission. Characteristics that identify them include their Oxford educations and reading of the Economist. Cosmocrats are known to congregate at the MIPCOM film market in LA and the Comdex electronics trade show in Las Vegas. They vacation at the Swiss resort of Davos in the winter and Nantucket and Easthampton in the summer.

The cosmocrats control the Earth through the three engines of technology, capital flows, and modern management. Their efforts are coordinated via the Internet, which was designed by academic cosmocrats as a way to bypass traditional national boundaries

The cosmocrats also use the Internet, along with older forms of media, as a means to control the general population. Rather than using the obsolete totalitarian tactic of limiting the amount of information, they instead flood the media with a vast quantity of information.

One alas cannot distinguish them, it seems, by ownership of Mont Blanc fountain pens and Armani suits or tell-tale pointy ears.

     studies of the New Class

We'd suggest that you turn instead to some of the historical literature. Marshall Shatz' Jan Waclaw Machajski: A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligentsia (Pittsburg: Uni of Pittsburg Press 1989) and Karl Mannheim’s 1929 Ideology and Utopia are useful points of entry into marxist writing. Mannheim famously suggested that the role of the intellectual was to be a disinterested technocrat, not an engaged actor. Machajski's analysis was echoed in Milovan Djilas' more accessible 1957 The New Class.

Weber's 'Politics as a Vocation' remains of value and is conveniently accessible in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge 1991) edited by Hans Gerth & C Wright Mills.

For more recent analysis see in particular Daniel Bell's influential The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1960) and 1979 'The New Class: A Muddled Concept' in The New Class? (New Brunswick: Transaction 1980) edited by B. Bruce-Briggs, Alvin Gouldner's The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of New Class (New York: Seabury Press 1979) and Edward Shils' 'The Intellectuals & the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis' in The Intellectuals & the Powers and Other Essays (Chicago: Uni of Chicago  Press 1972). Randall Collins' The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (New York: Academic Press 1979) and Walter Armytage's The Rise of the Technocrats: A Social History (London: Routledge 1965) offers other insights about the US and UK.

For Berger see his provoking but often wrong-headed The Capitalist Revolution - Fifty Propositions About Prosperity, Equality & Liberty (New York: Basic Books 1991) and 'The Four Faces of Global Culture' (Fall 1997 National Interest), complemented by Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster 1996) and Christopher Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: Norton 1995).

PoMo fashionistas may turn to Pierre Bourdieu's Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market (New York: New Press 1999) - which at least has the virtue of succinctness - or the longer The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: MIT Press 1987) by Cornelius Castoriadis and Empire (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2001) by Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri. The marxist tradition is more credibly repackaged in The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell 2000) by Manuel Castells, complemented by Saskia Sassen's Globalization & Its Discontents: Essays On The New Mobility of People & Money (New York: New Press 1999).

Recent political analyses include Andrew Moravcsik’s insightful A New Statecraft? Supranational Entrepreneurs and International Cooperation (PDF), papers in the modish Debating Cosmopolitics (London: Verso 2003) edited by Daniele Archibugi, Leslie Sklair's The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford: Blackwell 2001), Kees van der Pijl's Transnational Classes & International Relations (London: Routledge 1998). Two works of particular value are Linda Weiss' intelligent The Myth of the Powerless State: Governing the Economy in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity 1998) and Anne-Marie Slaughter's A New World Order (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2004).

Moravcsik is complemented by Altiero Spinelli’s The Eurocrats: Conflict and Crisis in the European Community (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1966) and Derrick Cogburn's 'Elite Decision-Making and Epistemic Communities: Implications for Global Information Policy' in The Emergent Information Regime (London: Palgrave 2004) edited by Sandra Braman.

For institutional points of reference see works such as Ghislaine Ottenheimer's Les Intouchables: Grandeur et Decadence d'Une Caste - l'Inspection des Finances (Paris: Albin Michel 2004) and Luc Boltanski's Les cadres: la formation dun groupe social (Paris: Éditions de minuit 1982), Ezra Suleiman's Private Power & Centralization in France: Notaires & the State (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1987) and Elites in French Society: The Politics of Survival (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1978). For a broader view see Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States: A Comparative Analysis of Top Officials (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1998) edited by Edward Page & Vincent Wright, Shirley Hazzard's Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-destruction of the United Nations (London: Macmillan 1973), Peter Hennessy's superb Whitehall (London: Secker & Warburg 1989) and Olivier Zunz' Why the American Century? (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1998).

     a matrix of governance

In practice, cosmocracy is an overly simplistic characterisation of the governance of cyberspace.

As suggested in preceding pages of this guide there isn't a single governance mechanism. It is arguably more effective to conceptualise governance of the GII and - more broadly - of cyberspace as a patchwork or matrix, one in which different agencies have complementary (and often conflicting or competing roles and in which it is possible to discern a range of elites and influences.

Some actors in governance are cosmocrats - even cyberspace condottieri, putting their expertise (and, as importantly, their address books) at the disposal of any emerging economy or corporation that's willing to pay in hard currency or enhanced reputation. Others are thoroughly 'grounded', deriving their influence from representation of a national government or membership of a national bureaucracy and seeking what's perceived as national or institutional advantage.

In examining the board membership of ICANN, for example, it is clear that directors have primarily come from what Noel Annan characterised as the 'great & good': people who've attended elite universities, held senior executive positions, have a record of public service and prior to appointment have served on many of the same committees or consultation exercises, often with international bodies.

Detailed cohort analysis of people who've attended the various ICANN public meetings suggests that there's substantial continuity in participation, although the titles of participants (and their employers) have changed. Most participants appear to have postgraduate qualifications; many hold executive positions or advise multinational corporations and civil society bodies; some speak several languages; most are familiar with international travel and form part of what one critic tagged the TLD Mafia. The price of entry to that mafia starts at $10,000 a year for attendance at the organisation's gatherings.

The situation regarding ccTLD administrators - the national counterparts of ICANN - is less clear. Some, as we've noted in the Domains profile, are wholly commercial bodies run by non-residents (eg in the case of Pacific island states that have implicitly 'sold' their ccTLD to a US corporation). Others are run as government agencies. Others still, such as Australia, involve a board that encompasses local enthusiasts and specialists who are affiliated with local/overseas DNS industry interests.

Some members of those boards have made a career progression from academia or government to large corporations or bodies such as the World Bank (whether as executives or consultants), fitting the mould described by Mickelthwait. Others have a depth of knowledge - or merely a strong personal network - but have not worked overseas, have a local perspective and indeed would be unfamiliar with Davos or its denizens.

DNS management mechanisms are only part of the governance of cyberspace, one that's attracted media attention (and activism among some communities) at the expense of understanding the overall matrix.

Moves towards harmonisation of national tax law and consumer protection law have involved the interaction of industry/professional advocates (notably the American Bar Association), the European Commission and Council of Europe, the OECD, United Nations (notably specialists involved in UNCITRAL) and national government agencies. Work on national and international cybersecurity policies has involved a different cast of actors, although particular figures appear in new costumes.

As with negotiations about global intellectual property frameworks, some government policymakers are probably more familiar with airport lounges and Geneva or the hothouse on the East River than with parts of their own bureaucracy. Arguably that reflects the nature of specialisation in large bureaucracies - and elite recruitment patterns - rather than membership of a global new class. The parochial perspective of many decisionmakers - and institutional or other restraints on their action - is illustrated by differing approaches within and between nations (eg wide differences among US states about spam and taxation).

Arguably governance of the net has moved somewhat away from a small and coherent group of cosmocrats as the online population has normalised and national governments (acting directly or through fora such as the ITU and WIPO) have taken a greater interest in cyberspace, asserting that it both should and can be a government responsibility. We've seen a progression from engineers - a technical elite whose mandate is uncertain, although sometimes wrapped in a rhetoric about netizens - to lawyers (another technical elite, the dominant lubricant in advanced economies for the interfaces between commercial, government and NGO interests).




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