[governance] Fractalization ?

Fri Mar 7 13:24:24 EST 2008

Dear Ronald,

Sorry for having used a word like fractalization without providing a clearer
explanation. I extract this exchange in a different thread from the original
one. Why did I use the notion of fractalization of sovereignty (indeed a bit
a neologism here) ?

As Milton remarked, the term "fractalization" that I employed indeed comes
from the notion of "fractals", a type of strange and often beautiful
mathematical functions popularized by Benoît Mandelbrot (Wikipedia
bio<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Mandelbrot>)
in his book "Fractal objects" in 1975.

The main characteristic of fractals is their self-similarity : they
reproduce similar patterns at various scales. Another one is they have
dimensions that are not a whole number, ie : 1.3 or 2.6 instead of 1 (the
dimension of a line in the normal 3D euclidian space) or 2 (the dimension of
a plane).  This means for instance that the surface of a fractal object is
not smooth but usually very rugged and that a fractal line is very dented,
down to the infinitesimal detail.

If this seems abstract, some examples from real life can illustrate the
concept, as Mandelbrot himself did in his famous book "The Fractal Geometry
of Nature" in 1982. Familiar fractal-like structures are mountains (small
rocks have the same aspects as whole mountains), clouds, some plants
(including ferns), coastal shores, or vegetables like the Romanesco Broccoli
;-) See more pictures here<http://tiger.towson.edu/~gstiff1/fractalpage.htm>
.

Furthermore, interface motifs like dendrites in percolation systems or
neuronal connections exhibit a fractal-like pattern.

What on earth does this have to do with sovereignty and governance, you may
wonder ? This is the idea :

National sovereignty, the very foundation of the international order we now
live in, is fundamentally based upon physically distinct territories where
the exclusive authority of the national government applies. Only exceptions
are international treaties and other arrangements among governments. This
works very well when the territories are very distinct (and millions of
lives have been lost during history in establishing the exact frontier
lines) and interactions among people from different territories were
relatively rare.

But more recently, the development of air transportation reinforcing links
between people worldwide and, more than anything, the development of the Web
have produced a huge number of unintended side effects, including an
increasingly dense web of interactions through cyberspace among actors
located in different parts of the world. Still , the basic paradigm is
national jurisdictions - and rightly so, in the absence of any other
substitue so far.

Nonetheless, as the examples that we discuss illustrate, some governmental
authorities can have legal means of action through a national actor, towards
others that are not formally under their jurisdiction. We witness therefore
a de facto extension of their sovereign power on citizens of other
territories, outside of a treaty framework, but not on a pure territorial
continuity basis. It's more akin to the dendritic interface I was talking
about above.

The fact that eNom is a US-based registrar gives the capacity to the US
governments - or courts - to ask it to suppress the domain name of a spanish
citizen. But this would not be possible in the same way if this spanish
citizen had registered its domain with a spanish registrar : the US
government would have to go to the registry (Verisign in that case). Hence,
by registering its domain with a US based registrar, this specific non US
citizen has established a link, a connection, that brings it - in part -
within the sovereign power of a foreign governement. And by using a .com
name, also but maybe to a lesser extent. Conversely, the de facto authority
of a european government is reduced, as a perfectly legal activity in Spain
is - temporarily - restricted by the action of another governement.

This is what I meant when I mentionned a fractalization of sovereignty. In
the traditional acception of the term, sovereignty is complete over one's
citizens and nil over citizens in other countries (pending agreements to the
contrary). Here there is an extension of authority to somebody on another
territory, but this authority is not complete : it covers only one very
limited type of action (the domain name accessibility) and no other activity
of this actor. There is a question of scaling here and in order to be able
to handle such problems, the corresponding governance mechanisms must, in my
view, be somewhat self-similarly scalable.

I hope this has not made the idea even more complex. And apologies to the
constitutionalists and specialists of international law on this list for the
inevitable approximations or even errors of this rapid response.

Best

Bertrand

P.S. Consider this post as pernoanl food for thought and certainly not as an
official position ! :-)

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 5:03 PM, <KovenRonald at aol.com> wrote:

> Dear Bertrand --
>
> How about "fragmentation" ?
>
> Amitiés, Rony
>
>
> **************
> It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & Finance.
> (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001)
>

-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
Délégué Spécial pour la Société de l'Information / Special Envoy for the
Information Society
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes/ French Ministry of Foreign
and European Affairs
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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