Political Networks: Data Exchange as Revolution from Late Socialism to the Information Age in Eastern Europe

• In Event: Politics of Infrastructure across the Soviet/Post-Soviet Transition

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, Estonia has presented itself as the world's leading digital democracy. Underpinning this idea is a technology: the X-Road data exchange layer, which enables (relatively) frictionless traffic between different public registries and databases. Advocates of the "digital republic" argue that after the fall of the Soviet Union, Estonia chose to reject the defining elements of Soviet information politics (centralization, monopolization, and opacity), and embrace the values of the information age (decentralization, distribution, and transparency). Yet the genealogy of the X-Road suggests something different: a history that reaches back well into the era of late socialism, and the development of a National Automated Control System for the Soviet republic. What do we learn about states and information systems, if we take this continuity seriously? And what does this story tell us about the relationship between political revolution and the infrastructures of public administration?

Author

• Aro Velmet, U of Southern California