INTRODUCING DIGITAL INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Technology, Agency and Order
Markus Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
Introduction
What are digital international relations and how are we to study them? Paraphrasing Gramsci, we see the widespread perception of systemic crisis that digital technologies have induced in international politics in the past two decades as a potential moment of rejuvenation: the old international relations is dying, the new digital international relations is yet to be born, while the interregnum lacks the proper conceptual vocabulary to make itself understood. This book seeks to bridge this knowledge gap.
Thus far, the discipline of International Relations has been slow to address digital international relations. The field, for the most part, continues its longstanding neglect of studying how technological aspects of international relations are interwoven with political ones (Fritsch, 2011; Ruggie, 1983). For sure, in recent years, highly insightful research on various aspects of digital international relations has been published, some within and much more outside the discipline. We find, for example, ever more detailed studies on cybersecurity (Eriksson & Giacomello, 2007; Gomez & Whyte, 2021; Harknett & Smeets, 2022; Kello, 2013, 2017; Valeriano & Maness, 2018) and digital economics (Bebia, 2022; Carmel & Paul Regine, 2022; Liu, 2022; Raskin & David, 2018; Welfens & Weske, 2007). A number of approaches explore how particular kinds of digital international communication are put to use, ranging from manipulation (Bantimaroudis, Sideri, Ballas, Panagiotidis, & Ziogas, 2020; Culloty & Suiter Jane, 2021; Gerrits, 2018; Karpf, 2017) via changes in diplomatic communication (Adler-Nissen & Drieschova, 2019; Barberá & Zeitzoff, 2018; Bjola & Holmes, 2015, Bjola & Manor, 2023; Jackson, 2019) to transnational advocacy and emancipatory potentials (Baer, 2016; Keller, Mendes, & Ringrose, 2018; Yin & Sun Yu, 2021). What
is missing, however, is a better grasp of the bigger picture. Our discipline is reluctant to study the transformation from analogue to digital international relations more comprehensively.
Such a ‘bird’s eye view’ is highly warranted. While paralleling elements pertaining to past waves of technological development up to a point (Drezner, 2019), the current digital transformation raises a series of novel theoretical and empirical questions about global affairs that require a broader overview of how key processes hang together. Technological leaps can have tremendous implications for world politics, for better or for worse. Without the Industrial Revolution, for example, there could have been no colonisation at scale because there would have been no hard limit to a non-industrial economy’s appetite for raw materials, and no total war without cheap steel and precision manufacturing (Drum, 2018). Performing a similarly systemic evaluation for the digital revolution is an arduous exercise. This is partly because we still lack adequate conceptual tools and methods for benchmarking the scope and depth of digital transformation in international relations and partly because, in the grand scheme of things, the technological revolution may just have started. Yet, we do have already enough ‘digital crumbles’ to start articulating an ambitious and coherent theoretical frame for studying digital international relations.
We define digital international relations as the disruptive interplay of digital technologies and power structures in global politics responsible for altering ontological foundations of agency, shaping hybrid patterns of conflict and cooperation, and streaming the formation of new international political orders. This definition moves beyond narrow interpretations of digital international relations as a form of ‘digitisation’, involving the technical conversion of analogous entities (e.g. states, IOs, NGOs) and mechanisms (e.g. diplomacy, balance of power) into a digital format. It instead suggests that something qualitatively different takes place in the digital age in which the ‘old’ international relations are thoroughly transformed by digital technologies and that new international phenomena (e.g. hybrid entities, relations and orders) emerge as a result of digital disruption.
The introduction develops a digital disruption map that is meant to provide researchers, employing different angles, with guidance on how to put under scrutiny different processes contributing to the transformation of digital international affairs and how they hang together. Building upon research on digital transformations, mainly in disciplines other than International Relations (Hocking, Melissen & Hofmeister, 2016; Naimi-Sadigh, Tayebeh & Mohammad, 2022; Schmidt & Cohen, 2010; Vives, 2019), we view digital disruption as prompting a fundamental alteration of agential and ordering processes within global politics. The term ‘disrupt’ originates from the Latin words ‘dis’ meaning ‘doing away with’ and ‘rumpere’ meaning ‘break’ or ‘burst’. While it refers to replacing old systems with new ones, disruption ultimately depends on human agency. The new systems may bring about progress such as political emancipation and economic development,
but they may also result in exploitation and inequality. Figuratively speaking, ‘disrumpere’ means to pave the way. The digital disruption map we propose in this chapter is meant to help researchers study how the digital finds its way into international relations and how this transforms international relations.
For heuristic purposes, the map distinguishes technological, agential and ordering processes. When it comes to identifying these processes, we cast our net widely in order to arrive at a ‘big picture’ that transcends the usual dividing lines among perspectives, approaches and research foci in International Relations and helps International Relations scholars to engage with debates in other disciplines. We study three major technological sources of digital disruption (datafication, speed and pervasiveness), examine three broad agential mechanisms (forcing, enticing and winning over) and investigate two ordering layers (foreground and background).1 The digital disruption map links these processes together, placing the agential ones at the centre. While technological processes exert pressure on agential processes to digitally disrupt the usual ways of doing things, there is no automatism. Agents succumb to these pressures to varying degrees and in different ways. Some of these more fluid digital doings come to ‘cut new digital lanes’ into the temporarily more fixed ordering processes. These agential and ordering processes, in turn, feed back to the technological ones, adding to the sources of digital disruption and so on.
This introduction is organised into seven sections. First, we discuss our (meta-)theoretical building blocks. Second, we inquire into how technological processes digitally disrupt international relations as we have come to know them. Third, we discuss how these technological processes make it into agential processes. Fourth, we move on to examine how digitally disrupted agential processes leave a mark on ordering processes. Fifth, we address feedback mechanisms from agential and ordering processes to technological ones. Sixth, we preview the book chapters. Finally, our conclusion briefly summarises our argument.
(Meta-)theoretical Building Blocks
This section discusses the meta-theoretical premises of our digital disruption map and identifies its key conceptual components: technological, agential and ordering processes.
Deep ontological divides cut through much of the Social Sciences (Lohse, 2017; Schatzki, 2003; Sewell, 1992) in general and International Relations (Jackson, 2008; Smith, 2021) in particular. Most notably, while some authors assume that material forces are ontologically prior to intersubjective ones, others presume the reverse. Whereas some researchers put agency ahead of structure, others do the opposite. This risks, as Lohse (2017, p. 18) puts it, for overly narrow meta-theoretical assumptions to ‘determine’ theory. This is especially unwarranted in a, comparatively speaking, new field of study such as digital
international relations. Embracing a pragmatist epistemology, we seek to be ontologically more ‘flexible’ than that, aiming for ‘horizons of conceptual possibilities’ (Pratt, 2016, p. 523).
Researching digital international relations raises all kinds of questions about materiality and intersubjectivity as well as structure and agency – and a range of related questions – that should be addressed through empirical research rather than meta-theoretical assumptions, and we should remain open to the possibility that even then it is often up to constellations of actors and their doings in a concrete encounter how ontological objects relate or do not relate to one another (Bryant, 2011, p. 265; DeLanda, 2013, p. 47). How do what kinds of digital technologies make actors depart from their established ways of doing things and what kinds of actors, embedded in what kinds of contexts, more so than others? How do new ways of doing things sediment into the repertoire of actors and how do they reach into the making of new digital technologies?
The digital disruption map is meant not to make important questions disappear behind ontological blinders. At the same time, it is to provide a heuristic that facilitates research and debate about digital international relations. Thus, we identify three conceptual building blocks that transgress ontological divides: technological processes, agential processes and ordering processes. We perceive these building blocks as essential for understanding how the process of digital disruption is reconfiguring and remoulding power structures within global politics, as well as facilitating the transition to digital international relations. Technological processes are material, while agential and ordering processes may feature material and intersubjective forces. Furthermore, we cast our net widely when it comes to the range of agential and ordering processes we investigate into.
In the spirit of ‘analytical eclecticism’ (Katzenstein & Sil, 2008), we investigate three broad conceptualisations of agential processes: forcing, enticing and winning over. Most research in International Relations converges on a variant of one of these mechanisms. To briefly illustrate, forcing features prominently in Realist accounts (Mearsheimer, 2021; Morgenthau, 1948; Schweller, 2006; Waltz, 1979) but also in others, for example, rhetoric-inspired research (Krebs & Jackson, 2007; Mattern, 2005). Liberals write a lot about incentives (Friedman & Rapp-Hooper, 2018; Keohane, 1986; Snidal, 1985) but so do others, for example, critical scholarship on how incentives drive exploitation (Le Billon & Spiegel, 2021; Mezzadri, 2016; Williams & Lee, 2009). Winning over may be the broadest category of them all, including research on advocacy (Carpenter, 2007; Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998), argumentation (Bjola & Kornprobst, 2010; Risse, 2000), public justification (Abulof & Kornprobst, 2017; Wong, 2022) and performativity (Braun, Schindler, & Wille, 2019; Hedling & Bremberg, 2021).
In the same spirit, we cast our net widely when it comes to ordering processes. Following Adler (2019), we distinguish foreground and background. Foreground ordering is about designed institutions, studied, for example, by neoliberal institutionalism (Colgan, Keohane, & Van de Graaf, 2012; Keohane, 2001) and regime theory (Green, 2022; Krasner, 1982). Background ordering is about doxic
(Authors’ creation)
(Adler-Nissen, 2016; Neumann, 2002; Pouliot, 2008), epistemic (Adler & Haas, 1992; Danso & Aning, 2022; Doty, 1993; Ruggie, 1993), ideological (Destradi & Plagemann, 2019; Huo & Parmar, 2020; Steger, 2008) or hand-on knowledge (Adler, 2019; Qin & Nordin, 2019; Sondarjee, 2021) and practices that enact these. The concept of ‘background’ was coined by Searle (1980), who referred to it as the usually invisible context that makes intelligible communication possible by implicitly filling in the blanks that explicit aspects of a communicative encounter do not articulate.
Figure 0.1 previews the map for tracing the evolution of digital international relations, which we will develop in the remainder of this introduction. Sources of digital disruption do not automatically change international relations. Depending on the doings of agents, they find their way into their interaction in more fleeting ways (agential processes only) or more sustainable ones (also ordering processes), and all of this, in turn, has repercussions for technological processes.
The following three sections provide a more detailed account of the technological, agential and ordering processes, respectively.
Technological Processes
This section, drawing from contributions to the literature across the social science and natural science divide, identifies three major technological sources of digital disruption: datafication of social relations, speed of digital-technological progress and pervasiveness of digital technologies in our everyday lives.
Big Data, the ‘bloodstream’ of the digital revolution, has become the most valuable commodity of our age, the ‘new oil’ to fuel the next stage of economic development (Nolin, 2019). According to recent statistics, 60% of the world’s
FIGURE 0.1 Digital disruption map.
Markus Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
population has internet access and generates an average of 1.7 MB of data per second. In 2021, the total amount of data produced by digital users reached 74 zettabytes (one ZB is the equivalent of one trillion GBs). This number is projected to increase to 149 zettabytes by 2024 (Finances online, 2021). While data constitutes the digital disruption’s ‘raw material’, it is the companion process of ‘datafication’ (Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier, 2013; Mejias & Couldry, 2019) that is responsible for value creation by tracking, aggregating and analysing the underlying information and data points that the ‘raw material’ offers (Lomborg, Dencik, & Moe, 2020). Through datafication, the informational aspect of a resource is ‘liquefied’ and separated from its use in the physical world, subjected to algorithmic treatment and machine-learning calibration by which relevant patterns, trends and relationships are identified, and then ‘re-bundled’ and mobilised via data visualisation methods to generate new analytical insights and representations of the world (Lycett, 2013).
One important implication of this process is that information, and the datafication techniques developed for processing it, are increasingly treated as a strategic resource, which in turn facilitates the rise of a new era of information geopolitics (Rosenbach & Mansted, 2019). The ability of state and non-state actors to deploy datafication methods to understand, predict and generate events of strategic relevance thus becomes as valuable as their ‘hard’ material power. At the same time, the growing belief that datafication is a winner-takes-all environment could also see states and their domestic tech industry develop much closer relationships together, a situation which is already evident in China, but also emergent in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States. Digital protectionism is not inevitable (Fan & Gupta, 2018), but efforts to establish and enforce different conceptions of ‘digital sovereignty’ are being already pursued by various international actors (Eldem, 2020; McKune & Ahmed, 2018).
The second important source of disruption is the unprecedented speed at which new digital technologies enter the global market and are mass adopted. As a consequence, processes of data generation and datafication are increasingly expected to take place in real time, making it possible for knowledge to be accessed and experienced instantly. Virilio (2007) has long insisted that the ever-increasing speeds that mould and drive forward the modern society may eventually cause traditional political structures to implode. Given the current pace of technological innovation, his prediction may finally begin to sink in. Rosa (2016, p. 37) captures this temporal pathology through the concept of social de-synchronisation, which refers to the mismatch between (or within) social spheres that are ‘speedable’ (i.e. cope well with technological advances and social changes), and those that lack the economic, social and cultural resources necessary to keep up with technological and social acceleration.
Therein lies both the attraction and the potential for disillusionment with digital technologies: on the one hand, digital technologies and data-driven analytics create incentives for institutions and actors to ‘speed up’ to gain and maintain a
competitive advantage; it also creates an incentive for those ‘left behind’ to try to catch up and make sure that technological acceleration does not place them in a situation of structural disadvantage. On the other hand, digital technologies come with the side effect of providing the means for speeding up social systems even further, thus triggering a ‘temporal rebound effect’: the attempt to re-synchronise leads to a new round of escalatory pressures to speed up; this generates, in turn, more de-synchronisation (Rosa, 2016, p. 40). Applied to international relations, the rapid rate of digital innovation introduces a powerful fault line of de-synchronisation between those global systems, actors and processes that can better adapt to the pace of technological disruption and close the temporal gap between opportunities as well as possibilities, and those that fall further behind.
The third major source of digital disruption, digital pervasiveness, refers to the increasing ubiquity, embeddedness and dependence of digital technology in all aspects of life from communication and entertainment to economic investment and political decision-making (Gkeredakis, Lifshitz-Assaf, & Barrett, 2021; Lakhani & Iansiti, 2014; Park, Straubhaar, & Strover, 2019). Digital pervasiveness is driven by the rapid development of new technologies, such as social media, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and the metaverse, enabling new forms of human behaviour and generating new values, norms, interests and forms of knowledge structuring social interaction in the public and private spheres. Digital technologies can no longer be thus viewed as simple tools assisting humans with their tasks and can be discarded once the job is done. They instead weave themselves into human activities to such an extent that the resulting actions are the product of hybrid entities and doings, containing both human and digital elements, and featuring different degrees of machine autonomy.2
Whereas datafication and speed, as sources of digital disruption, primarily challenge international politics at the structural level by transforming information and digital acceleration into critical assets of political, economic and military power at a scale never seen before, pervasiveness has the potential to disrupt the microfoundations of international relations. As digital technologies gradually become more complex and sophisticated, posthuman agential configurations are bound to become not only more prevalent, but also more influential in shaping the context of social interactions (Lupton & Watson, 2020; Tastemirova, Schneider, Kruse, Heinzle, & vom Brocke, 2022). In digital international relations, traditional (anthropocentric) and posthuman forms of agency are thus expected to compete with one another for hybrid (online and offline) influence.
One can depict the extent to which digital technologies are allowed to exercise posthuman agency on a spectrum, from synthesising data for human analysis via providing data-driven suggestions for human action (Brundage et al., 2018) to autonomously deciding and executing a decision without any human input (Haas & Fischer, 2017). Furthermore, algorithms may exert posthuman agency in subtler ways by warping the ways by which humans experience and perceive the world. In recent years, for instance, much ink has been spilled over the corrosive role of social
Markus Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
media algorithms in fomenting political polarisation, radicalisation and extremism which has translated into offline violence from Daesh-inspired ‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks, to full-scale ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar in 2017 and to the US Capitol Riot on 6 January 2021.
The three sources of digital disruption discussed earlier constitute the permissive conditions that enable and make disruption possible in international affairs. They are the ‘physical propensities’, as Karl Popper would argue, that ‘load the dice’ in a particular direction, and influence future situations without, however, determining them in a specific way (Popper, 1990, p. 18). What makes them have a stronger or weaker disruptive effect on the adjacent political space are the agential and ordering processes that inform and shape how these sources are projected, combined and deployed.
From Technological to Agential Processes
No matter which of the agential perspectives is chosen by a scholar, datafication, speed and pervasiveness as identified in the previous section increasingly come to re-constitute agential processes. They profoundly shape and re-shape forcing, enticing and winning over.
Digital disruption has important repercussions for processes through which actors come to (threaten to) use force. Superior datafication capabilities, able to sabotage vital civilian infrastructure and/or military capabilities of another actor, are means that can compel. It is no coincidence, therefore, that cyberwar, cyber conflict and cybersecurity have become very often used terms in recent decades (Liebetrau, 2022; Robinson, Jones, & Janicke, 2015). States – great powers, middle powers and small powers – invest heavily in digital analytical instruments that can identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the cyber defences of their opponents (Kostyuk & Wayne, 2021). Non-state actors such as terrorist networks can make use of digital capabilities, too (Gross, Canetti, & Vashdi, 2016; Venkatachary, Prasad, & Samikannu, 2018).
Public-private partnerships are also to be taken seriously. Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team (AWCFT), was established, for instance, by the US Department of Defence (DoD) in partnership with Google and later with the Big Data analytics company Palantir, to ‘turn enormous volume of data available to DoD into actionable intelligence and insights at speed’ (Deputy Secretary of Defense, 2017). AWCFT is a good example of how digital infusions into agential processes may work. Big Data was recognised by DoD as a possible ‘game changer’ due to its potential ability to provide the US military with a competitive advantage on the battlefield in terms of real-time actionable data. Datafication was then experimentally used to build an AI-powered counterterrorism capability, which in turn advanced a novel conception of forcing as a data-driven mechanism of coercive power.
If forcing is about sticks, enticing is about carrots. In this reading, agential processes open up international relations more and more to digital interaction by reconfiguring disincentives and incentives for how to cooperate. This comes in many shapes and forms. Some authors expect ever stronger networks of tech cooperation among self-interested and like-minded states (Brands & Edel, 2021; Cohen & Richard, 2020). This kind of cooperation is likely to come at the expense of new barriers. Consider the case of Huawei which has achieved market dominance by outperforming American companies in investing in 5G technology. Its success has prompted the US government to embark on a strategy of ‘reverse enticing’, which, apart from targeting Huawei directly, also seeks to dis-incentivise US allies from purchasing and integrating Huawei equipment in their domestic telecom infrastructure (Lee, Han, & Zhu, 2022).
After being outflanked by China’s active policy to build digital partnerships in the Global South, the EU has recently accelerated its technological outreach efforts. The EU’s 2030 Digital Compass emphasises opportunities for further cooperation in the European Union and much beyond, ranging from neighbouring states in Europe to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.3 Last but not least, a number of authors point out that wherever there are winners, there are also losers. Digitalised health promotion, for example, may serve tech companies and pharmaceutical companies more than patients (Lupton, 2014), transnational social media empires promise great profits for their owners but much less so for the prospects for pluralist media systems and democracy (Dahlberg, 2015; Hardy, 2017), and major tech companies create new ‘digital subjects’ (Chandler & Fuchs, 2019).
Winning over is about making meaning for others. In our days, attempts to win over others are characterised by novel channels and networks of digital communication (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Roselle, Miskimmon, & O’Loughlin, 2014). These allow governments to pursue a broader yet tailored approach to conducting public diplomacy, international negotiations or crisis communication (Bjola & Manor, 2018; 2022; Duncombe, 2017). At the same time, algorithms can be put to use to distort communication for one’s own ends (Bucher, 2017; Zuboff, 2019) and even to ‘pierce, penetrate or perforate the political and information environments in the targeted countries’ (Walker & Ludwig, 2017). The rise of echo-chambers, ‘fake news’, ‘deep fakes’ and the deliberate weaponisation of information by state and non-state actors has actually reached a point where the ‘dark side’ of digital doings can no longer be overlooked (Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Pomerantsev, 2015).
While research, about a decade ago, was rather upbeat about the democratic and transparent repercussions of digital communication, more recently, it focuses much more on manipulative techniques. To some extent, this tendency follows what has happened in the world we study. In the early 2010s, there was a considerable scholarly interest in social media and the onset of the Arab Spring
Markus Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
(Frangonikolopoulos & Ioannis, 2012; Markham, 2014; Wolfsfeld, Segev, & Sheafer, 2013). In the late 2010s, students of political communication still tried to grapple with understanding the election of Donald Trump as US President and, more generally, the rise of populist governments worldwide (Boczkowski & Papacharissi, 2018; Enli, 2017; Gerbaudo, 2018; Karpf, 2017; Postill, 2018). Our map cautions against any kind of technological determinism. Agency matters. But the technological possibilities for distorting communication are likely to increase in manifold fashion. The 5G technology is likely to usher into a whole new level of technological disruption, which could introduce a new range of immersive tools of growing relevance for political engagement, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) platforms.
From Agential to Ordering Processes
This section contends that digital disruption does not stop at the level of agential processes. No matter what major IR perspective and approach to world order we employ, digital sources of disruption can sediment via transformations of agential processes into ordering processes. This applies to the foreground and background of the international order.
Digitally infused agential processes of forcing can reconfigure the foreground4 of world order, that is, the institutions that actors design to regulate their relations with one another. This is implicit in research of scholars working on cybersecurity, no matter whether they are optimistic or pessimistic about the prospect of new foreground institutions to be built or not. Forsyth and Pope (2014) contend that the costs of an unregulated cyber arms race push great powers into converging on rules and norms about the possession and usage of cyber capabilities. In this reading, new institutions are likely to be designed. More pessimistic scenarios point to the inherent difficulties of arms control and apply these to cyberwarfare, without however denying the possibility of new rules and norms, tailored to cyber capabilities (Mazanec, 2015). Even Harknett and Nye’s caveat that cyberwarfare makes deterrence obsolete is, in between the lines, an argument about the digital disruption of ordering processes. A particular ordering element – the balance of power – is no longer viable because of cyberweapons (Harknett & Nye, 2017).5
On the one hand, Segal’s concept of the ‘hacked world order’ is also an account of how the doings of actors, especially great powers, break away from established patterns of behaviour when they put to use new digital technology in their interaction with one another. On the other hand, there are even hints about new background knowledge being put to use by actors when they try to force one another into a particular behaviour. Their taken-for-granted understandings of how to fight, trade, manoeuvre and manipulate come to increasingly make use of digital technology, thus transforming the patterns of their interaction (Segal, 2016). Kello (2021, pp. 9–10), too, writes about what we refer to as background when he describes something akin to an order of ‘unpeace’, a new pattern of ‘harmful action whose
magnitude of physical harm does not rise to the level of war, and whose instruments therefore do not apply, even as it breaches the acceptable bounds of peacetime competition’. Digitally infused ways of pursuing incentives may also sediment into ordering processes. The United Nations, approaching what we referred to as digital disruption as an opportunity for more equality in the world, has launched many initiatives and fora, including the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, the Internet Governance Forum, the EQUALS partnership to counter the digital gender gap, the UN Innovation Network, the Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGs and Tech Against Terrorism. There are also more ambitious documents, including the High-Level Panel Report on Digital Cooperation, entitled ‘The Age of Digital Interdependence’ and the corresponding Report of the Secretary-General ‘Road Map for Digital Cooperation’, although it remains to be seen to what extent these will end up ordering world politics. These initiatives seek to add foreground institutions, regulating digital transactions.
Far from these kinds of assumptions of a digital positive sum game, critical scholarship chastises the digital divide. Usages of this concept come in two major variants. First, there is the argument about access to digital technology, underwritten by economic inequalities (Cullen, 2001; Rogers, 2001; Soomro, Kale, Curtis, Akcaoglu, & Bernstein, 2020; Van Dijk & Kenneth, 2003). Second, there are arguments that tie these economic and access inequalities in with social hierarchies (Atintande, 2020; Jandrić & Kuzmanić, 2015; Kamil, 2020). In this interpretation, there is a hierarchical background that structures opportunities arising from digital disruption highly unequally across the globe. There is a linkage between these kinds of argumentation and the reconfiguration of authority discussed later.
Digitally winning over can also leave a mark on the foreground. Since the corona pandemic, digital platforms have become increasingly salient for preparing international negotiations and diplomatic summits. They shape communication that designs institutions (Bjola & Manor, 2022). Recent studies show, for instance, that virtual venues affect not only the format but also the substance of international negotiations (Bjola & Coplen, 2022; Ashbrook & Zalba, 2021). Yet digital processes of winning over can sediment further into the background. Digital processes of winning over generate new forms of knowledge, rationalities and representations of the world. Just as advances in geographically mapping the world in the 16th and 17th centuries made it possible to imagine something like a territorially demarcated state (Ruggie, 1993), today’s networks of actor groupings point towards an episteme that revolves around complex and multiple relations of digital interconnectedness (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Hayles, 2016).
Some time ago, this prompted scholars such as Choucri (2000, p. 256) to write about the ‘global citizen’ as a possible trajectory of future world politics. More recent scholarly contributions are more sobering in nature (Hall, 2022; McKay & Tenove, 2021). There is not just overcoming intersubjective boundaries, there has also been plenty of building new ones and strengthening existing ones. Transnational right-wing populist networks, for example, are very much based on Self
Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
versus Other representations of relations, which digitally re-shape not only international but also domestic orders (Engesser, Ernst, Esser, & Büchel, 2017; Geva & Santos, 2021), ranging from Brazil to the United Kingdom and India to the United States, and the evolving domestic orders feeding back into international ordering processes. In extreme cases, digital channels of communication are abused to dehumanise the enemy, for example, the Rohingya in Myanmar (Cosentino, 2020, pp. 144–122).
Processes of winning over, usually as a – unintended but very consequential –side product, generate background knowledge on who is entitled to speak online and who is not. Judging by the available evidence, there are two contradictory trends. Some voices do come to the fore that were previously silenced. Some feminist scholars show, for example, that recent advocacies such as the MeToo movement could not have gained momentum outside cyberspace, especially not in authoritarian states (Tan & Xu, 2022; Yin & Yu, 2021). Yet there is also research dubbing the Tim Berners-Lees, Steve Jobs and Mark Elliot Zuckerbergs of this world colonisers of cyberspace (Jandrić & Kuzmanić, 2020) and cautionary tales of small elites dominating online debates even in established democracies (Kelly, Hindman & Kazys Varnelis, 2009). In Bourdieu’s language, digital disruption gives rise to a new form of capital, labelled information capital or digital capital. Some actors possess the digital hardware and skills necessary to prevail (Ignatow & Robinson, 2017). Voice, overall, continues to be distributed very unequally, even though there are occasional windows of opportunity for a more inclusive debate.
From Agential and Ordering Processes to Technological Ones (and So On)
Many authors listed earlier, most notably realist and liberal but also a fair share of constructivist and critical theories, assume linear causality. Studying digital international relations, however, necessitates taking feedback loops seriously. Whenever agential and ordering processes come to be infused by digital doings, these add to pressures to augment the sources of digital disruption. More digital disruption in the technological processes, in turn, puts again more pressure on agential processes, from there on to ordering processes, and so on.
There are two pathways through which international relations comes to add to digital technological processes. First, agential processes feed back into the sources of digital disruption. To give a few examples, states using digital technology to coerce or prevent from being coerced look for ever more novel technological ways of doing so. Relations between Russia and Estonia, for example, are characterised by such a pattern, resulting in a small power punching much above its weight in the digital realm (Veebel & Ploom, 2016). Reaping benefits resulting from advances in digital technology, many state and non-state actors seek to digitally advance
further. This ranges from agricultural production (Liu et al., 2021) via pandemic preparedness (Whitelaw et al., 2020) to global trade (Ahmed, 2019) and finance (Sibanda et al., 2020). Technologically sophisticated authoritarian governments, above all China’s, push for the invention of technological means to ever tighten the control of the internet, spread their messages, put new tools to use to increase the surveillance of their own population and strengthen their international digital competitiveness (Feldstein, 2019; Yu, 2020).
Second, ordering processes channel agential processes over and over towards putting more pressure on technological processes. A balance of power system, for example, may appear stable for a while (Lee, 2018) but arms races, adding technological innovation after innovation to existing offensive and defensive military capabilities, are likely to lead to a situation in which one power gains the advantages over its rival(s) (Chin, 2019). This is, so to say, a digital reading of Mearsheimer’s tragedy of great power politics (2001). Ontological security, linked to digital practices, are prone to sustain patterns of moving back and forth between technological, agential and ordering process (Liebetrau & Christensen, 2021; Lupovici, 2022). Debates about the future of the liberal world order need to take the digital dimensions of international relations into account, too. There are different scenarios, but they all have a lot to do with how much ordering processes put pressure on technological ones. Given the global competition for innovative digital technology, Lund and Tyson (2018) see China as the power that gains the most. Due to its technological edge, they claim that the centre of gravity of the global order moves eastward and, therefore, away from the liberal order. An alternate scenario posits the emergence of a more limited liberal world order, comprised of tech-democracies engaged in a competitive dynamic with a digitally authoritarian order. They seize upon the opportunities to deepen cooperation by embarking on digital innovation together and excluding others (Cohen & Richard, 2020). Such a scenario points towards an ever-increasing global digital divide – among states but also within them (Chen & Wellman, 2004; Heeks, 2021).
There are all kinds of plausible future scenarios involving ordering processes linked to agential processes of winning over as well. They, too, point towards adding to the sources of digital disruption. On the one hand, a more deliberately minded order could put pressure on digital innovation in order to make deliberation run more smoothly. Digital technology, opening up new communication channels, making communicative encounters more transparent, presenting arguments in clearer ways, can foster ‘augmented deliberation’ (Gordon & Manosevitch, 2011). On the other hand, ordering processes resting on manipulative communication exert pressures to introduce ever more sophisticated technologies to suppress some messages and diffuse others. In a ‘post-truth world order’ (Cosentino, 2020) or even a ‘hacked world order’ (Segal, 2016), state and non-state actors rely on technological innovation to outmanoeuvre one another.6
Markus Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
Studies on digital performing point towards different scenarios for reconfiguring power, authority and even agency itself, thus pushing for more novelty in technological processes. When hand-on background knowledge comes to be increasingly digitalised, it may also become increasingly attuned to resort to new technological solutions (Smith, 2018). Over time, we may be headed towards algorithmic kinds of governance (Aradau & Blanke, 2017), where seeking technological solutions to governance problems becomes something akin to second nature to the actors. Hybrid or even digital agency would push this co-evolution of technological and ordering processes into directions that are yet to manifest for us today (Ågerfalk, 2020). A key feature of hybrid or posthuman agency is that agency will not be located with a singular specific agent. It will be rather rooted in an uneven topography of assemblages, associations and relationships by which humans and technologies combine and co-evolve to make sense of the world (Chandler, 2013).
Chapter Preview
The first part of the book, entitled ‘Re-conceptualizing International Relations’, examines how we need to overhaul our usage of frequently employed concepts such as power, sovereignty and knowledge in order to explore the interplay of technological, agential and ordering processes. The second part zooms in on agential processes, putting under scrutiny how they are affected by technological processes, and vice versa. The third part focuses on ordering processes and explores their linkages to technological and agential processes.7
The first part of the book starts with a chapter by Richard Harknett, who rewrites realism for the purpose of studying digital international relations. The key concepts of power, security, structure and interests remain very much in place, but the author amends them in important ways. The fundamental organising principle of cyberspace is technological interconnectedness. This creates a core condition of constant contact among actors and leads to a dynamic of persistent action in the pursuit of security through sustaining initiative in anticipation of exploitation of vulnerabilities inherent in the system of network computing. Focusing on state sovereignty, Lucas Kello explores how the emergence of computer technology has challenged states’ customary dominance in core areas of national security. Yet challenges such as the rise of multinational technology firms and non-state threats to state security notwithstanding, he contends that states push back successfully, especially in the security realm. Giampiero Giacomello and Johann Eriksson conclude the first section of the book by analysing how knowledge and power hang together in digital international relations. They contend that technological shifts, the growing salience of the private sector and the rise of what they refer to as ‘super-individuals’ reconfigure international relations. They put particular emphasis on the latter. Navigating cyberspace requires increasingly specialised knowledge and expertise, and not many actors have these capacities.
The second part of the book turns the spotlight on agential processes. Marcus Holmes and Nicholas Wheeler elaborate on the conditions under which social bonds can be expected to be formed between individuals, including diplomats and leaders. They argue that diplomats and leaders are not wrong to point out the limitations of video conferencing technologies, but they have not articulated the fundamental nature of the problem, which includes a lack of information richness, the preclusion of serendipitous encounters, and crucially, a reduced ability to exclude outsiders. Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook analyses networked urban diplomacy. Re-defining paradiplomacy, she submits that major cities networking with one another increasingly harness power around transnational issues in order to pursue shared interests. Studying three institutionalised networks, C40, Global Parliament of Mayors and Global Covenant of Mayors, she sketches scenarios for how networked cities and nation-state diplomacy could change patterns of competition and collaboration on an enlarged diplomatic stage and perhaps even contribute to resolving collective action problems. Nina Hall examines advocacy organisations during the COVID crisis, a time when most had to organise themselves digitally. She finds that digital advocacy organisations rarely campaign across borders. Most were focused on national concerns. Overall, this chapter suggests that the internet enables new tactics, strategies and organisational forms but it does not always lead to more transnational advocacy. The state remains a strong focus for activists even in the digital era.
The third part focuses on ordering processes. Claudia Aradau discusses the evolution of the global security order. She contends that security professionals have added the language and methods of computing for the purposes of prediction to other forms of anticipatory knowledge such as pre-emption and prevention, that the dichotomy of individual/mass intersects more and more with self/other dichotomies, and that we are witnessing a shift from risk societies to targeted societies. These transformations reach deeply into the background of the global security order. Miguel Otero-Iglesias zooms in onto the global economic order. Adapting Susan Strange’s structural power framework to digital international relations, he argues that the interaction between the United States, China and the EU (and to a lesser extent Russia) will be crucial for shaping the structure of the international system and its geopolitical dynamics in the 21st century. Studying contestation in the global climate order, Alena Drieschova contends that social media change the opportunity structure for social movements. This applies to the climate strike movements as much as it does to climate sceptics. Yet the former were significantly more successful in making use of this newly evolving opportunity structure. Victoria Baines investigates attempts to build foreground institutions in the nascent global digital order. She contends that there are, on the one hand, significant barriers such as the transformative power of digital technologies that frustrate efforts towards their regulations. On the other hand, there are also promising new practices such as new multi-stakeholder models and new alliances, that may be able to overcome some of these hurdles.
Markus Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
At the end of the book, the editors summarise the findings of the chapters, compare and assess the interplay of technological, agential and ordering processes, and formulate an agenda for further research. The latter makes us move from digital international relations to Digital International Relations (DIR). Digital international relations will re-shape international relations more and more. This means that International Relations (IR), that is, the discipline studying it, has to adapt as well.
Conclusion
It is not that International Relations scholars overlook digital aspects of international relations. As reviewed earlier, there is important research on how digitalisation affects particular dimensions of international relations such as security and communication. What we as International Relations scholars are still missing, however, is the big picture. What is digital international relations? How does it evolve? How are we to study it?
Defining digital international relations as the disruptive interplay of digital technologies and power structures in global politics leading to changes in agency, conflict patterns and ordering dynamics we proceeded to develop a map for studying digital international relations. The map links technological, agential and ordering processes. It is meant to help scholars study the transformations that sources of digital disruption, via agential or via agential and ordering processes, bring about in global politics. The contributors to this edited volume generate fascinating new insights into how digital international relations evolves, and how technological, agential and ordering processes are involved in this evolution. This will prompt us, towards the end of the book, to tackle the question of what digital international relations means for our discipline of International Relations. We will make a case for Digital International Relations (DIR), that is, upgrading, augmenting and rewiring our field of study. We conceive of this field as a pluri-discipline that is in constant exchange with other disciplines, including across the great divide of the social and natural sciences. If our field is to lay bare the sites, issues and forms of contestation that digital disruption has activated in global politics, it simply cannot continue business as usual.
Notes
1 We borrow the differentiation of agential and ordering processes from Adler (2019) but cast our net much more widely when it comes to discussing them. We do not push for particular conceptualisations of these processes but rather seek to demonstrate that whatever major International Relations angle researchers put to use, digital international relations matter more and more.
2 Putting strong emphasis on how these processes transform agency, Fouad (2022) moves away from ‘anthropocentric’ concepts of agency, making a case for the ‘agency of syntactic information’.
3 See https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/en/digital-compass
4 We borrow this distinction between foreground and background again from Adler (2019) and, again, interpret these categories more broadly in order to use them as signposts to discuss the existing literature.
5 From this, according to some authors, follows a strategy of ‘persistent engagement’ (Fischerkeller & Harknett 2019). Those authors contending that building and maintaining a balance of power are still possible are vigorously opposed to such a strategy (Klimburg, 2020; Klimburg & Almeida, 2019).
6 Note that in our multifaceted world order, different kinds of pressures, such as ‘augmented deliberation’ and ‘post-truth’, can put pressure on technological processes simultaneously.
7 The chapters focus on functional fields of world order, including security, economics, environment and human rights as well as what happens in the interstices or liminal spaces through which they interconnect (Bátora & Hynek, 2014; Coleman, Kornprobst, & Seegers, 2019; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).
References
Abulof, U., & Kornprobst, M. (2017). Introduction: The politics of public justification. Contemporary Politics, 23(1), 1–18.
Adler, E. (2019). World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Adler, E., & Haas, P. M. (1992). Conclusion: Epistemic communities, world order, and the creation of a reflective research program. International Organization, 46 (1), 367–390.
Adler-Nissen, R. (2016). Towards a practice turn in EU studies: The everyday of European integration. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(1), 87–103.
Adler-Nissen, R., & Drieschova, A. (2019). Track-change diplomacy: Technology, affordances, and the practice of international negotiations. International Studies Quarterly, 63(3), 531–545.
Ågerfalk, P. J. (2020). Artificial intelligence as digital agency. European Journal of Information Systems, 29(1), 1–8.
Ahmed, U. (2019). The importance of cross-border regulatory cooperation in an era of digital trade. World Trade Review, 18(S1), S99–120.
Aradau, C., & Blanke, T. (2016). Politics of prediction. European Journal of Social Theory, 20(3), 373–391.
Ashbrook, C. C., & Zalba, A. R. (2021). Social media influence on diplomatic negotiation: Shifting the shape of the table. Negotiation Journal, 37(1), 83–96.
Atintande, M. (2020). Digital communication in Africa at crossroads: From physical exploitation in the past to virtual dominance now. In K. Langmia & A. Lucy Lando (Eds.), Digital Communications at Crossroads in Africa (pp. 41–69). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Baer, H. (2016). Redoing feminism: Digital activism, body politics, and neoliberalism. Feminist Media Studies, 16(1), 17–34.
Bantimaroudis, P., Sideri, M., Ballas, D., Panagiotidis, T., & Ziogas, T. (2020). Conspiracism on social media: An agenda melding of group-mediated deceptions. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 16(2), 115–138.
Barberá, P., & Zeitzoff, T. (2018). The new public address system: Why do world leaders adopt social media? International Studies Quarterly, 62(1), 121–130.
Bátora, J., & Hynek, N. (2014). Fringe Players and the Diplomatic Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Markus Kornprobst and Corneliu Bjola
Bebia, Y. (2022). Digital era governance and the political economy of digital communication control in Tanzania. International Journal of Social Science Research and Review, 5(9), 97–123.
Bennett, W. L., & Livingston, S. (2018). The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions. European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 122–239.
Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768.
Bjola, C., & Coplen, M. (2022). Digital diplomacy in the age of the coronavirus pandemic: Lessons and recommendations. In P. W. Hare, J. Manfredi-Sánchez, & K. Weisbrode (Eds.), Handbook of Diplomatic Reform and Innovation (pp. 323–342). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bjola, C., & Holmes, M. (2015). Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. London: Taylor & Francis.
Bjola, C., & Kornprobst, M. (Eds.). (2010). Arguing Global Governance: Agency, Lifeworld and Shared Reasoning. London: Routledge.
Bjola, C., & Manor, I. (2018). Revisiting Putnam’s two-level game theory in the digital age: Domestic digital diplomacy and the Iran nuclear deal. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 31(1), 3–32.
Bjola, C., & Manor, I. (2022). The rise of hybrid diplomacy: From digital adaptation to digital adoption. International Affairs, 98(2), 471–491.
Bjola, C., & Manor, I. (Eds.). (2023). Oxford Handbook of Digital Diplomacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boczkowski, P. J., & Papacharissi, Z. (2018). Trump and the Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Brands, H., & Edel, C. (2021). A grand strategy of democratic solidarity. Washington Quarterly, 44(1), 29–47.
Brass, I., & Hornsby, D. (2019). Digital technological innovation and the international political economy. In T. Shaw, L. Mahrenbach, R. Modi, & X. Yi-chong (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary International Political Economy (pp. 615–631). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Braun, B., Schindler, S., & Wille, T. (2019). Rethinking agency in international relations: Performativity, performances and actor-networks. Journal of International Relations and Development, 22(4), 787–807.
Brundage, M., Avin, S., Clark, J., Toner, H., Eckersley, P., Garfinkel, B., . . Scharre, P (2018). The malicious use of artificial intelligence: Forecasting, prevention, and mitigation. URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07228
Bryant, L. (2011). The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: Pre Press.
Bucher, T. (2017). The algorithmic imaginary: Exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms. Information, Communication and Society, 20(1), 30–44.
Carmel, E., & Paul, R. (2022). Peace and prosperity for the digital age? The colonial political economy of European AI governance. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 41(2), 94–104.
Carpenter, R. C. (2007). Setting the advocacy agenda: Theorizing issue emergence and nonemergence in transnational advocacy networks. International Studies Quarterly, 51(1), 99–120.
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project
Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form
accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
