Technology of Global Governance: Historicizing Authority and Technical Systems

• In Event: The Historical Roots of 20th Century Global Governance

Abstract

Historicizing global governance helps us interpret today’s world politics. Yet, current histories have tended to neglect the constitutive role of scientific and technical change in the evolution of global governance. They thus often fail to recognize the historical context within which recent events such as the rise of Big Tech corporations and the development of artificial intelligence in global governance take place. In this paper, I argue that global governance could not have become (1) global without the development of particular technical systems and (2) governance without particular techno-scientific discourses. The main contribution of this paper is to differentiate between technology and technical systems and propose what I call a technology of global governance – i.e., a genealogical analysis (logos) of the constitutive role of technical systems (techne) for the exercise of supranational authority. Based on archival work at the International Telecommunication Union, this paper contends that the global governance discourse promotes a particular kind of exercise of supranational authority: one that is (1) materially dependent on large information and communication technical systems (LICTS) - from the electrical telegraph through the telephone to the Internet - and (2) ideologically oriented by the cybernetic discourse towards an ideal structure (networks) and process of governing (steering). This history sheds light on both ideological and material structural forces and contradicts the widespread notion that technical systems are mere tools in the hands of 'men.'

Author

• Adrian Calmettes, The Ohio State University