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Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance (Information Revolution and Global Politics) ReviewMilton Mueller's "Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance," continues his exploration of the forces shaping Internet policy across the globe. What Mueller is doing in his work in this book and elsewhere is becoming the early chronicler of the unfolding Internet governance scene. He meticulously reports on, and then deconstructs, ongoing governance developments along the cyber-frontier. He is, in effect, a sort of de Tocqueville for cyberspace; an outsider looking in and asking questions about what makes this new world tick. Fifty years from now, when historians look back on the opening era of Internet governance squabbles, Milton Mueller's work will be among the first things they consult.
Mueller's goal in "Networks and States" is two-fold and has both an empirical and normative element. First, he aims to extend his exploration of the actors and forces affecting Internet governance debates and then develop a framework and taxonomy to better map and understand these forces and actors. He does a wonderful job on that front, even though many Net governance issues (especially those related to domain name system issues and ICANN) can be incredibly boring. Mueller finds a way to make them far more interesting, especially by helping to familiarize the reader with the personalities and organizations that increasingly dominate these debates and the issues and principles that drive their actions or activism.
Mueller's second goal in "Networks and States" is to breathe new life into the old cyber-libertarian philosophy that was more prevalent during the Net's founding era but has lost favor today. Mueller says his "normative stance is rooted in the Internet's early promise of unfettered and borderless global communication, and its largely accidental and temporary escape from traditional institutional mechanisms of control." Mueller makes a convincing case for giving cyber-libertarianism, or what he calls "denationalized liberalism," another chance; a chance that it really never had. "At its core," Mueller continues, "denationalized liberalism favors a universal right to receive and impart information regardless of frontiers, and sees freedom to communicate and exchange information as fundamental and primary elements of human choice and political and social activity." Moreover, "this ideology holds a presumption in favor of networked, associative relations over hierarchical relations as a mode of transnational governance," he argues. "Governance should emerge primarily as a byproduct of many unilateral and bilateral decisions by its members to exchange or negotiate with other members (or refuse to do so)." Finally, he says, "a denationalized liberalism strives to make Internet users and suppliers an autonomous, global polity." In essence, it's about free will, freedom of action, and freedom of association. It's essentially classical liberalism for the Information Age. Mueller admits that "such an ideology needs to answer tough questions about when hierarchical exercises of power are justified and through which instruments they are exercised." But he continues on to make the case for "question[ing] the scope of national sovereignty over communications." "The governance of the Internet needs to explicitly recognize and embrace the principle that there are limits to national sovereignty over the flow of information," he says.
Mueller makes two additional crucial points in formulating his normative approach. First, he argues that from the perspective of Internet governance and individual rights, it is almost impossible to imagine an expansion of global Net governance for speech that does not also entail more significant economic regulation, or vice-versa. Second, he notes that "Denationalized liberalism embraces both property and commons and seeks to leverage their complementarities. It recognizes the coexistence and interdependence of markets, exclusive property rights, and shared/unowned resources in communication and information. It rejects the false idea that commons and property are mutually exclusive, totalizing principles for economic organization, seeing them instead as distinctive methods of organizing access to resources with their own virtues and failings." In other words, a proper understanding of cyber-libertarianism or denationalized liberalism shows that it is fundamentally agnostic as it pertains to proprietary versus commons-based form of production.
Mueller has made a beautiful case for cyber-libertarianism and he has given the movement its marching orders: "In short, we need to find ways to translate classical liberal rights and freedom into a governance framework suitable for the global Internet. There can be no cyberliberty without a political movement to define, defend, and institutionalize individual rights and freedoms on a transnational scale."
Even if you aren't compelled to join the cause, however, I highly recommend you pick up Mueller's "Network and States," anyway. It's a terrific survey of the current state of Internet governance and an important work of political science since it offers us a useful spectrum of Net governance viewpoints. It belongs on the bookshelf of every serious student of cyberlaw and information technology policy.
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