The Cybernetic State: Digital Government in the EU, India, and Singapore

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 9. Digitalization & Transnationalism

Abstract

How does digitalization shape relations among states, markets, and citizens? To explore this question, I examine the ways in which state-issued digital identity systems are being linked with digital payment systems in the EU, India, and Singapore. I focus on five related institutional changes: the character of digital payments; the diffusion of “platform” and “stack” organizational forms; the use of “agile” management strategies; the adoption of modular design principles; and the emergence of new understandings and practices of citizenship. Together, these developments suggest that the modern state is being re-imagined as a kind of computer. While this will have profound implications for the theory and practice of statecraft and citizenship, contra singularizing accounts of digitalization, my work finds two notable sources of variation.

First, while digitalization is a global process, its modular logic enables a wide array of organizational possibilities. Thus, the design of these institutions will have important consequences for the character of the political regimes that adopt these systems. Second, while each digitalization project seeks to harness technology for the common good, these visions of the Good vary profoundly and are increasingly articulated in “civilizational” terms, which is illustrative of a more general shift from nationalist toward “civilizationalist” discourse.

While this research responds to calls for scholarly attention to civilizations and digitality, its stakes are not merely academic, as “civilizationist” language represents a fundamental challenge to the liberal international order. As digital governance spreads and societies shift in a “postliberal” direction, grappling with these questions is a matter of no little importance for those of us observing the collapse of global liberalism, and trying to puzzle out what will emerge in its wake.

Author

• James Rosenberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison