Rise of the Info-States

Edging toward the sweet spot of new-century governance, the info-state represents a growing number of dynamic and entrepreneurial cities, city-states or small nations scattered around the world that govern as much through data as via democracy [..]

Building on this logic of the economic over the political, Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles (2002) traced the advent of the ‘market state’ era, in which the maximization of individual commercial opportunity defines national power and success. Japanese business strategist Kenichi Ohmae then set the stage for the info-state era in The Next Global Stage (2005), which argued that urban agglomerations of city-states resembling the medieval Hanseatic League would become the world’s power centres [..].

[T]he info-state also presents new mutations that were not conceivable in previous technological periods – a peculiar convergence of the Information Age and the devolved authority of city units and clusters. The critical shift lies in the manner of policy-making enabled by new technologies: governance is practiced in ‘real-time’ – through constant consultation, rather than through traditional, staggered democratic deliberation. In a sense, this is a post-modern democracy – or even ‘post-democracy’ [..].

Already there are notable info-states across several continents and cultural zones, underscoring how this is already a worldwide phenomenon set to grow at the intersection of technological spread and pragmatic governance. New York City, for example, [.. has] undertaken to bolster its own security and intelligence capabilities, and then to diversify into IT and bio-sciences research – thereby becoming the US’s second technology hub after Silicon Valley. Switzerland is in effect a ‘cities-state’ – a conglomeration of specialized centres in banking, research, engineering, hospitality and other sectors. Israel has also made economic diversification into technology sectors a national priority, distributing so much funding for small-scale entrepreneurs that it has earned the title ‘start-up nation.’