From social machines to social protocols:Software engineering foundations for sociotechnical systems

The overarching vision of social machines is to facilitate social processes by having computers provide administrative support. We conceive of a social machine as a sociotechnical system (STS): a software-supported system in which autonomous principals such as humans and organizations interact to exchange information and services. Existing approaches for social machines emphasize the technical aspects and inadequately support the meanings of social processes, leaving them informally realized in human interactions. We posit that a fundamental rethinking is needed to incorporate accountability, essential for addressing the openness of the Web and the autonomy of its principals. We introduce Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering (IOSE) as a paradigm expressly suited to capturing the social basis of STSs. Motivated by promoting openness and autonomy, IOSE focuses not on implementation but on social protocols, specifying how social relationships, characterizing the accountability of the concerned parties, progress as they interact. Motivated by providing computational support, IOSE adopts the accountability representation to capture the meaning of a social machine’s states and transitions. We demonstrate IOSE via examples drawn from healthcare. We reinterpret the classical software engineering (SE) principles for the STS setting and show how IOSE is better suited than traditional software engineering for supporting social processes. The contribution of this paper is a new paradigm for STSs, evaluated via conceptual analysis

The European Citizens' Initiative: A First Assessment

Designed in order to enable the effective use of this new instrument and to guarantee equal access

Mechanism Choice

This chapter reviews the literature on the selection of regulatory policy instruments, from both normative and positive perspectives. It first reviews the mechanism design literature to identify normative objectives in selecting among the menu or toolbox of policy instruments. The chapter then discusses the public choice and positive political theory literatures and the variety of models developed to attempt to predict the actual selection of alternative policy instruments. It begins with simpler early models focusing on interest group politics and proceeds to more complicated models that incorporate both supply and demand for policy, the role of policy entrepreneurs, behavioral and cognitive choice, and public perceptions and mass politics. It compares these theories to empirical experience. The chapter examines literature in law, economics, political science, and related fields, and it draws examples from US, European, and international regulation. It concludes with suggestions for future research. Document is the author\u27s manuscrip