Dissertation committee:
Αριστοτέλης Τύμπας, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης, ΕΚΠΑ
Ευστάθιος Αραποστάθης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης,, ΕΚΠΑ
Βασίλης Γαλής, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Business IT, IT University Copenhagen
Θεόδωρος Αραμπατζής, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης, ΕΚΠΑ
Σταύρος Δρακόπουλος, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης, ΕΚΠΑ
Jennifer Light, Καθηγήτρια, Program in Science Technology and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Jan-Hendrik Passoth, Καθηγητής, European New School of Digital Studies, European University Viadrina
Summary:
In this dissertation I focus on the relation between modern states and technology. My main research question concerns the ontological nature of state formation and state power investigated from the perspective of the technical materialities that perform them.
My research is further focused on the case of the Greek state and its digital transformation through the development of e-government projects. I argue that such projects are not politically neutral technical interventions, but are imbued with politics. E-government is portrayed, then, as a form of the technopolitics of state transformation.
Initially, I try to open the space in state theory for new understandings of statehood, that bring to the fore its sociotechnical nature. I attempt such an intervention in state theory by reverse-engineering and reassembling the state with the help of STS insights. The idea of the state as a coherent and self-standing macro-actor is challenged, through showing how states are assembled, ordered and stabilized by sociotechnical materialities, that constitute an integral part of their ways of being. States should be grasped as inherently technoscientific effects of processes, practices and sociotechnical arrangements that endow them with particular forms and powers. To paraphrase Machiavelli’s description of the state as a centaur that is half man, half beast, I would argue that modern states are half man, half machines or, more accurately, half man, half information systems.
Systems analysis and systems management are shown to comprise the origins of that sociotechnical transformation of states that nowadays goes by the name of e-government. Most of the structural, organizational and technical changes that e-government strategies aim at can be found in the visions and practices of the systems approach, as developed in post-war liberal democracies. Most prominent among them is, of course, the use of ICTs in administrative and governing processes.
The transformations induced by e-government projects are further analyzed in terms of their effects on different facets of modern states. Intra-governmental processes, inter-governmental relations and government to citizens relationships are being drastically reconfigured with the help of various ICTs. E-government is described as a sociotechnical and technomanagerial assemblage that shifts and transmogrifies many dimensions of the modern state. E-government is, therefore, shown to be a project for reinventing governing arrangements and restructuring the state.
The case of the Greek state’s digital transformation is initially explored through the policy documents on e-government. A technopolitical effort is taking place under the name of e-government, aimed at moving away from the Greek state’s centralized, regimented and monolithic administrative tradition, so as to relate it to society in sociotechnically mediated ways and to equip it with new technpolitical apparatuses. The latter would enhance its governing, policy-making, and policy-implementing powers. This is to be achieved by struggling to make strong institutional centers, by developing large, horizontal information systems and by reordering state space, in order to establish a more integrated spatial formation.
My empirical research focuses on three case studies of recent e-government projects; the Interoperability Center (IC), the G-cloud Infrastructure and the E-prescription system. My emphasis is on the sociotechnical affordances of the ICTs deployed in each particular case. I try to grasp the technopolitics involved in them and the state effects they bring about in terms of state-building and governing processes.
In the case of the IC, due to the specific software architecture that is deployed, the state is broken down into small information units and is then reassembled taking the form of a system of modular centralization. Much of its power and ability to become a macro-actor is derived from its modular reconstruction and the administrative capacities this ensures. Interoperable connections seem to unsettle the balance of power in state-society relations, as new forms of data gathering and exchange reconfigure the state’s totalizing and individualizing tendencies.
The G-cloud infrastructure, in addition to virtualization technology which provides many of the former’s affordances, have technopolitical implications for the state’s infrastructural power, as they render possible new forms of inter-governmental control through a strong institutional center. At the same time, they contribute to reordering the state’s different parts; its singular and multiple ways of being. Last but not least, these technologies make possible the respatialization of the Greek state, in topological, namely in relational and non Euclidean, ways. Topological space becomes both a novel spatial crystallization of state formation and a powerful resource for governing purposes.
The E-prescription system is analyzed as a technopolitical apparatus that stands between the everyday governing of physicians’ prescribing behavior and the restructuring of the Greek state. The sociotechnical scripts that are embedded in it are analyzed as technopolitical arrangements that steer and govern physicians’ medical practice in manifold ways. At the same time, a central information system and database empowers central authorities in their decision-making, policy-making and policy-implementing jurisdictions. Technopolitics is argued to imbue both sides of the system’s interface. It enhances the state’s infrastructural power, it helps transform state-citizens relations and it contributes to their respatialization. Topological space, as relational space par excellence, is generated by network connections and central databases and is a sine qua non technopolitical arrangement both for novel state formations and for the exercising of state power though the E-prescription system.
Keywords:
E-government, digital transformation, technopolitics, Greek state, ICTs, interoperability, cloud computing, E-prescription system.
