Simon, Hendrik

English

<intR>²Dok

Governing the world throughinformation (law)Hendrik Simon 2020-04-09T09:00:20Knowledge is power – power isknowledge.While this nexus certainly is a commonplace in the critical sociology of knowledge, itmay actually never have been more topical than today. With the dramatic increase- 1 -of (digital) communicative interactions within and beyond national boundaries,‘information’ has become available in an absolute inflationary manner. This isalso reflected in everyday discourse: The German Gesellschaft für deutscheSprache (Association for the German Language) chose ‘Big Data’ in 2014 (2ndplace), ‘Blockchain’ in 2017 (2nd place) and ‘Fake News’ in 2016 (1st place) as the‘Anglicism of the Year’.While floods of information may appear as purely technological phenomena at firstsight, they are actually highly political: both in domestic and inter-/transnationalaffairs, they generate new cognitive and normative ‘zones of uncertainty’, to borrowthis term from organizational sociology. For it is controversial and contested whichinformation, statement or data set will prevail in processes of knowledge production(as the current Covid-19 crisis underlines again). In other words: To the extent thatindividuals, states and inter-/transnational actors are increasingly becoming objectsas well as subjects of information collection, the question arises which legal normsregulate and structure these processes of governance.Setting the scene: A legal order and its contextual pluralityThis fundamental claim is the starting point of Michael Riegner’s award-winningstudy on The International Institutional Law of Information (IntILI), or, in German:Informationsverwaltungsrecht internationaler Institutionen. As the title of thisinteresting and well-written book, which is based on Riegner’s doctoral thesis,indicates, the Berlin-based legal scholar is interested in the law of information asit relates to international institutions. He aptly summarizes that in ‘the informationage, international institutions increasingly govern (by) information and knowledge.The more influential such global information governance becomes, the more itgives rise to political and legal disputes between international agencies, states andindividuals.’ (540)Thus, the core objective of Riegner’s systematic and reflective pioneer study is tosketch the legal contours that structure global information governance. Riegner’scentral thesis is that the international institutional law of information constitutes analready existing, but not yet systematically treated system of norms regulating theinformation activities of international institutions. While it comprises a plurality ofstructures, actors, legal sources and regulations, according to Riegner, this pluralityresults in a whole constituted by general principles – with informational cooperation,collective informational self-determination, and individual informational autonomybeing the three core principles. Focussing on regulations directed at real acts, theauthor is interested in a legal field, which is particularly susceptible to politicization.Processes of international knowledge production are therefore rightly at the centre ofthis book. The politics of Informationsverwaltungsrecht internationaler InstitutionenRiegner emphasizes the qualitative change in information governance ofinternational institutions: Whereas institutions used to rely primarily on data suppliedby NGO and states, they are now able to collect data themselves and thus fostertheir ‘international cognitive authority’. IntILI is not given, we learn. Rather, it is as a- 2 -co-constitutive element in the process of knowledge production itself: according toRiegner, law actually has a cognitive effect insofar as it co-constructs ‘facts’.Accordingly, innovations in information technology are, in a certain dialecticalsense, accompanied by historical innovations in their politicization and legalization.For readers with an interest in the history of international law, not only is this newdevelopment in the connection between law, politics and information technologyhighly fascinating; Riegner also outlines the historical roots with reference to post-colonial research. Here, the reader learns about the ‘early marriage of internationallaw and statistical knowledge’ in the context of the League of Nations and theInternational Labour Organization after World War I.What makes Riegner’s book particularly worth reading is its critical reflections onthe (emerging) law of information. Informed by various approaches from differentdisciplines – including IR-research on global governance, critical legal theory andsociology of knowledge –, the author points out that international law of informationboth is an instrument of emancipation and of domination. Once again, progressand regress appear as two sides of the same coin in the modern discourse oflegalization. The struggle for information law, or: Who is controlling the controllers?This high politicizability of international institutions’ public authority in the field ofinformation law is exemplified by Michael Riegner mainly with reference to the WorldBank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The example of theUNDP’s Millennium Development Goals and Social Development Goals is interestingas it exemplifies the pitfalls of a data-based quantification of the world. While itmay appear helpful for international institutions in order to establish comparabilitybetween states, this desired standardisation at the same time displaces country-specific and context-dependent methods and statistical deficits. Indeed, it does notdo justice to the multi-layered poverty experiences of those affected.A particularly important case in the book is the ‘Doing Business’-Index of the WorldBank, which the author has described in more detail on this blog. This example,inter alia, illustrates how indicators can affect processes of standard setting,decision-making, and contestation in global governance. ‘Doing Business’ hasbeen comparing economic regulation since 2003 and evaluating it in terms ofeconomic efficiency. According to Riegner, the ranking has also to be criticized formethodological reason, it also has political consequences: For instance, in orderto achieve better results in the ranking, in 2006 Georgia restricted collective andindividual labour rights. From a transnational work sociological perspective, it maynot be implausible to understand these indicators as an expression of recent trendsof neoliberal deregulation policies as the International Labour Organization (ILO) andtrade unions have claimed.The example of ‘Doing Business’ perfectly illustrates that the institutionalisationof information does not necessarily lead to its depoliticization, but rather to plurallegal approaches and institutional oppositions: the ILO saw in the indices of ‘DoingBusiness’ not only a deregulating agenda against the criteria of its own ‘Decent- 3 -Work’-Index, but also a violation against binding ILO conventions, that is againstinternational law. According to Riegner, the cognitive authority of Doing Businesshas in many cases proved to be a more effective incentive than the steering powerof international law, showing that statistical indicators transport social and politicalconflicts. With this, Riegner supports Michael Zürn’s thesis that global governancepoints to a pluralization of governance actors.Moreover, he emphasizes the importance of legal containment of ‘governance byinformation’ constructed by processes of knowledge production such as ‘DoingBusiness’. Thus, I understand Riegner’s plea for a stronger interest in IntILI alsoas a plea to define processes of knowledge production in international institutionsas a struggle for international law (to refer to Rudolf Jhering here). But, of course,this turn to positive law is a normative and political choice in itself, as i.e. BenedictKingsbury has highlighted with reference to Lassa Oppenheim – there is no escapefrom politics into law. In this very sense, the IntILI – as any international legal project– is a normative or even political project sui generis. It ultimately serves purposesoutside the law (albeit linked to it): emancipation, democracy, freedom, humanity,solidarity, self-determination, to name just a few. Not only is law co-constructing the‘facts’, but our scientific view of these processes is a separate knowledge productionprocess in itself.Points of departure: Towards a global information orderSo if we admit to ourselves that the turn from politics to legal norms of IntILIultimately just means to shift the political process on another level, then the questionarises: what is to be done with this project? For Riegner, the central task of IntILI isto provide organizational forms, procedures and standards that both work towardsan appropriate exchange of information and knowledge in international multi-levelstructures. He strives for a legitimating legal framework in which the exercise ofpower, self-determination and the reconciliation of interests in a politically securecontext make economic and cognitive asymmetries impossible. In this context, it isalso a matter of improving the hitherto neglected informational legal status of theindividual in institutional international law. Riegner’s approach seem convincingto me. It highlights the strong contextual dependence of knowledge and its legalsignificance in global governance.As Riegner suggests, analytical analogies can also be drawn beyond the casesof international development institutions, and I agree. One example from my ownresearch (conducted together with Carmen Ludwig) studied the access of Africanworkers to information along Global Value Chains, in particular, with regard toEuropean Works Councils (EWC) as institutionalised workers’ representations.The EWC’s core task is precisely the exchange of information between employees– this right to participation can also account for employees based in Africa, if thecorresponding European company unit includes plants in African states. However,in ethnographic field research conducted in South Africa and Morocco, Ludwig andI witnessed that global companies were vehemently denying African and other non-EU members the legally permissible participation in European Works Councils (seeour chapter in the book edited together with Alexander Wagner).- 4 -In other words: The global cosmopolitan law of transparency and information,which Riegner et al. rightly highlight with a view to international developmentinstitutions must be demanded and enforced even more decisively in other policyareas, e.g. as basic rights of industrial citizenship.  Law alone, however, will notbe enough to achieve progress in this field. Political pressure and solidarity areneeded, as Riegner’s take on the ‘Doing Business’-Index underlines. Much inthis sense, Riegner concludes that looking at processes of knowledge productionthrough the lenses of IntILI provides an interesting perspective not only on thelaw of development institutions, but also on international institutional law moregenerally. By emphasizing that not only knowledge, but also law in processes ofknowledge production constitutes power, Michael Riegner has not only stressedthat a transparent global legal order of information is needed; he has also made animportant contribution to reconstructing it in legal terms. Hendrik Simon is a lecturer and scientific researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt. Cite as: Hendrik Simon, “Governing the world through information (law)”,Völkerrechtsblog, 9 April 2020.- 5 -

Governing the world through information (law)

https://intr2dok.vifa-recht.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/mir_derivate_00008230/Governing_the_world_through_information_law.pdf

Governing the world through information (law)

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

<intR>²Dok