Building and sustaining new network sovereignties

By Gilad Abiri, Peking University School of Transnational Law | Yale Law School

Introduction

New network sovereignties exist in an internal tension between liberation and community. This can be seen in what Primavera De Filippi identifies as these new entities’ potentially transformative attributes that set them apart from the territorial nation-state system. First, network sovereignties are “more concerned with the concept of ‘functional sovereignty’, emphasizing the importance of governance functions over territorial boundaries.” This non-territorial nature allows them to transcend the rigid boundaries and jurisdictional limitations that constrain the nation-state, enabling them to be more fluid, adaptable, and responsive to the needs of their members. Second, “Since participation is opt-in, new network sovereignties promote individual autonomy and self-determination.” This emphasis on voluntariness and decentralization resonates with deep-seated human yearnings for freedom and self-determination, as these networks aim to create spaces where individuals can freely associate and disassociate based on their own choices and preferences.

The tension between community and liberation arises because the shared goal of the various digital projects discussed by Vitalik Buterin, is to allow individuals to operate beyond the constraints of state-based and market-based social orderings. These projects seek to create alternative spaces and ways of life that are not beholden to the traditional power structures that govern our societies. The most straightforward examples of this are the digital nomads and satellite towns which operate in the cracks and interstices of the current state-based order.

However, achieving truly effective liberation that can challenge the dominant social order and create new forms of networked social organization requires more than just operating in the margins of the existing system. It necessitates the creation of what De Filippi calls “Network States” or “New Network Sovereignties” – entities that represent genuine alternatives to the territorial states that currently define our political landscape.

These new forms of social organization must leverage the power of community and solidarity to push back against the encroachment of both the market and the state. But herein lies the central dilemma: the more these communities assert their autonomy and challenge the status quo, the greater the pressure they will face to develop robust internal structures of governance and control. They will need to find ways to maintain a strong sense of shared identity and purpose among their members, while also resisting the forces of homogenization and coercion that they seek to escape.

The Böckenförde Dilemma

In this way, the concept of network sovereignties reflects the same basic paradox posed by Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde when he wrote “The liberal, secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself.” As he notes, the liberal state’s endurance depends on “some regulation from the interior, both from a moral substance of the individuals and a certain homogeneity of society at large.” Yet, crucially, the state “cannot by itself procure these interior forces of regulation … with its own means such as legal compulsion and authoritative decree.”[1]

Here again we find the dilemma between liberty and community. The liberal state, like a digital state, in order to maintain its `liberal character,` cannot impose the very conditions necessary for its own survival. It must rely on pre-existing sources of social cohesion and moral order that it cannot generate through its own apparatus. This is why there are no `liberal states` but just `liberal nation-states` wherein liberalism co-exists with state imposition of a common political identity over the citizen body.

I don’t mean to suggest that digital political communities are merely a new iteration of the attempt to create liberal nation-states. The global market and territorial state orders, despite their triumphs, have failed to serve the needs of a vast swath of humanity. For those excluded (such as refugees of exiles) or yearning to break free from the current system’s constraints, these new digital communities offer hope. They provide potential means to push back against the status quo, forge new bonds of meaningful association, and cultivate the capacity for collective resistance.

However, to realize this potential, like liberal territorial states before them, these communities will need to invest in the hard work of building effective political structures and institutions. This will inevitably pull them away from purely voluntary, anarchic associations and towards the creation of more stable, organized, and influential political entities. The process of developing a shared sense of purpose, establishing decision-making procedures, and fostering a cohesive political identity will be essential for transforming these digital spaces into sustainable and impactful communities capable of challenging the dominant order. It’s a daunting task, but one that must be undertaken if these communities are to become more than just fleeting experiments in alternative social organization.

Making and Sustaining Networked Political Communities

As Böckenförde’s paradox illustrates, the liberal state has long grappled with the need to sustain forms of social cohesion and shared identity that it cannot directly impose through coercive means.

In this sense, the project of building effective networked political communities can draw valuable lessons from the last 300 years of state-based political community building. The tools and strategies that states have used to forge common political identities, such as creating shared narratives, symbols, and myths of origin, may offer insights for digital community builders seeking to foster a sense of solidarity and purpose among their members.

However, there are also key differences between the territorial nation-state and the emerging landscape of digital communities. The role of technology in enabling new forms of social organization that transcend geographic boundaries remains uncertain, and the specific challenges and opportunities presented by the digital realm may require novel approaches to political community-building.

In the following sections, I will explore how the toolkit of nation-building might be adapted and reimagined to meet the unique demands of creating sustainable networked political communities. This will involve grappling with questions of how to balance the centrifugal forces of individual autonomy with the centripetal pull of collective identity in a digital context, and how to forge bonds of solidarity that are resilient in the face of the fluid, often fragmented nature of online association.

Crafting a National Narrative: Creating a community requires a story that gives common meaning to membership and collective action. This shared conception usually includes a standard historical narrative, an emphasis on the commonality of certain cultural artifacts (such as language, religion, and values) and a common political project. These narratives aim to foster a particular intergenerational community among the citizen body (however defined), demarcate the difference between members and non-members, and promote loyalty and affinity towards the community. The history of nation-building seems to show that there are no necessary ingredients for such a communal narrative, although many of them seek to utilize powerful pre-national identities based on religion, ethnicity, common historical trauma etc. There are, however, national movements —such as those of the US and India—that are mainly focused on a common political project, and therefore less reliant on past identities.

The history of diaspora communities, from the Overseas Chinese to the Jewish and Sikh diasporas, demonstrate that the cultivation of a unifying narrative is not contingent upon the sharing of a common physical territory. These groups have successfully fostered a sense of shared identity and purpose despite being geographically dispersed. Consequently, networked digital communities are not inherently disadvantaged in this regard, as they too can leverage the power of storytelling and collective mythmaking to forge bonds of solidarity and belonging among their members.

A good example of an attempt to craft a national narrative around a digital nation is the Afropolitan project, which seeks to create a digital nation for Africans worldwide. Afropolitan’s narrative emphasizes the shared experience of scarcity, weakness, and poverty among Africans, and the failure of the nation-state experiment to provide abundance and opportunity. It calls for the creation of a new society based on choice and collective action, enabled by the internet’s ability to connect people across the planet. This is quite a classical national liberation narrative, with the caveat of it being independent of a physical territory.

Creating a Civil Religion: Establishing a shared set of beliefs, symbols, and practices that culturally disseminate the community narrative and reinforce a sense of unity and common purpose among members. This involves fostering what sociologist Robert Bellah called a “civil religion,” which he defined as a “collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that sanctified the national community and conferred a transcendental purpose to the political process.”[2] Nation-states establish civil religion through national symbols, public rituals, civic education, and mythmaking that evoke a shared identity, mark significant events, promote common values, and glorify the nation’s past and present.

Since networked political communities are still in their early stages, it is difficult to predict exactly what forms their civil religions will take as they evolve and mature. Despite this uncertainty, there is no inherent reason to believe that networked communities are at a disadvantage compared to territorial states when it comes to creating and sustaining a vibrant civil religion. As Michel Bauwens rightly points out in his essay, traditional religions are forms of trans-national, non-territorial entities that helped create a sense of shared identity across the globe. The digital landscape offers ample opportunities for communities to develop and spread their own sacred symbols, myths, and practices, and to forge a shared sense of identity and purpose among members.

Institutionalizing Citizenship: Citizenship has long been the hallmark of democratic belonging – the means by which a political community constitutes itself by differentiating between included members and excluded aliens. The rights and responsibilities of citizenship create common identities and shared practices that bind the polity together. Citizenship serves to distinguish “us” from “them” and therefore serves as a crucial tool in community building.

But what exactly defines the boundaries of that polity? Conventional conceptions of citizenship have depended upon geography and legal nationality – citizenship as the relationship between an individual and a sovereign territorial state. This view presupposes that democratic self-governance requires a coherent and bounded “people” organized within specific jurisdictional lines.

The rise of blockchain-enabled digital communities like Bitnation and Estonia’s e-residency program put pressure on these spatial premises of citizenship.[3] They suggest that a political community need not be tied to territorial presence, but can instead coalesce around different types of practices and associational bonds. From this perspective, citizenship relates less to subjecthood within a legal jurisdiction, and more to participation within a fluid sphere of shared services, rights, duties and modes of collective governance. As De Filippi states in her essay, these forms of citizenship emphasize “the importance of governance over territorial control.” Blockchain facilitates new ways for individuals to signal commitment to, and derive benefits from, political entities unmoored from physical geography.

Controlling Education and Media: Nation-states have long used education systems and media networks to spread their national narrative and cultivate a shared identity among citizens. For networked political communities, the challenge of using these tools to instill a common political identity is daunting, given their lack of institutional capacity and centralized control.

However, the rise of digital education platforms and decentralized media networks offers new possibilities. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have demonstrated the potential for scaling education beyond traditional classrooms. Using educational tech can enable the socialization of children and families into networked political communities. At the same time, the rise of global social media platforms have already disrupted the nation-state’s monopoly over information production and dissemination.

To harness these digital tools, networked communities will need to develop engaging educational content and curricula that effectively convey their values and vision, while cultivating a sense of shared identity among learners. They will also need to find ways to cut through the noise and reach their intended audiences with compelling narratives and messaging.

Conclusion

In the end, for networked political communities to truly challenge the dominance of territorial states and global capitalism, they will need to move beyond the realm of pure idealism and voluntarism. The vision of a world where individuals can freely associate and disassociate without the constraints of borders or governments is a seductive one, but it risks ignoring the hard realities of power and collective action.

If these communities hope to build a genuine alternative to the status quo, they must be willing to engage in the messy, difficult work of creating stable institutions, forging shared narratives and identities, and mobilizing their members towards common goals. This will require a degree of structure, coordination, and yes, even coercion, that may sit uneasily with some of their anarchist and libertarian ideals.

[1] Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, “The Rise of the State as a Process of Secularization [1967].” Religion, Law, and Society: Selected Writings (2020): 167.
[2] Bellah, Robert N. “Civil religion in America.” Daedalus (1967): 1.
[3] Reijers, W., Orgad, L., & De Filippi, P. (2023). The rise of cybernetic citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 27(2), 210-229.