From Nation-State to Nexus-State

By David Ronfeldt and Danielle M. Varda

David Ronfeldt and Danielle Varda are political scientists affiliated with RAND. Ronfeldt specializes in network forms of organization, while Varda specializes in public and private organization management.

Big Brother may not be watching, but someone or something soon will be. People and organizations in advanced societies are deploying hosts of new sensors and linking them into vast networks to monitor what is happening in their societies and around the world. Sweeping up gobs of information like this is not new, especially for governments and businesses. What is new is the expanding role of nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, and how information is pouring across local and national boundaries, publicly and privately.

The new “sensory apparatuses” are too myriad for easy categorization. Many pertain to perceived perils: Crime and terrorism are impelling the installation of new systems to watch cityscapes, monitor communications, and map potential hotspots. Other sensors are being deployed to detect and respond to disease outbreaks, forest fires, bird migration, and electricity spikes. Environmental and human-rights activists are developing new media to keep watch and to speed mobilization in case of an abuse somewhere, say against the Zapatista movement in Mexico. In a sense, the partisan blogospheres amount to gigantic, reactive sensory apparatuses in the American body politic.

Many technologies are involved: cameras on satellites, moisture sensors in trees, Web pages that broadcast user postings, silent alarms linked to remote monitors. Today’s computers, cameras, and radio-frequency identification tags will soon be enhanced by advances in nanotechnologies, robotics, biometrics, and alternative energy sources. Before long, what are called “anticipatory technologies” will become so widespread and effective that many surroundings will acquire ambient “intelligence” — leading to “smart” buildings and “sentient” cities that can monitor everything from leaky pipes to lost children. Concerns about top-down surveillance may be countered by bottom-up “sousveillance” (inverse surveillance).

AP IMAGES/MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY  A weather monitoring station near Coldwater, Michigan, checks wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity, precipitation, solar radiation, leaf wetness, and soil moisture and temperature. A modem links the station, one of 57 statewide, to a Michigan State University wireless network that gives Michigan farmers free online advice on when to plant, fertilize, irrigate, and harvest.

The scope and scale of these apparatuses are growing far beyond what government, business, or civil society has ever had at its disposal or had to cope with. People across all sectors will be challenged to figure out proper designs for the sensory technologies they prefer — and how to regulate them. While this trend may sharpen conflicts between privacy and security, it may also open new pathways for transparency and accountability.

Government and business will benefit from this technology, for good and ill. Less noticed, but we think equally likely and significant, is that these tools will help spur the rise of a new social sector — distinct from the established public and private sectors — by providing networked nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations with tools not only for checking on the behavior of governments and corporations, but also for collaborating with them. We can already find evidence of these transformations in health care, integrated social services, and environmental and consumer protection.

The advance of network forms of organization and related strategies and technologies will enable policymakers, business leaders, and civil-society actors to challenge aging contentions that “government” or “the market” is the solution to particular policy problems. Inspired new ideas will arise such that, in some areas, “the network” will be the solution.

From this, we predict the emergence of the “nexus-state” — something quite different from the traditional nation-state or recent notions of an approaching market-state or network-state. The nexus-state will integrate multiple modes of governance. It will be stronger than the nation-state but also more embedded and circumscribed. It will revolve around a new kind of administration in which officials remain concerned about what is happening in their offices but become increasingly oriented by the new sensory and sectoral networks into which they are plugged.