Westerners, and especially their elites and social media "influencers" of mass opinion, tend to wax ever so eloquently about the dangers of data driven governance. They worry especially about social credit systems, and more pointedly those "oriental" systems that are both hierarchical and managed by the state. They fear a social control that manages people into certain behaviors defined and enforced through state organs (or the administrative organs of enterprises pursuing their own aims). But they also worry about the enterprises whose operations make such systems possible (e.g.,
here).
And yet, in the most banal of ways, liberal democratic society continues to construct its own contextually relevant social credit and data driven governance systems. These are the very systems that the so-called protectors of core liberal democratic values caution against. And so they do. . . . unless it suits projects for the (re)construction of people and institutions into some sort of ideal type. That construction now clearly has two quite distinct faces.
The first--and the one that most anyone with any pretension influencing public opinion tends to focus on--includes compliance and ratings systems developed in the context of economic activity and overseen by enterprises, the state, or both. Usually these are understood in the context of compliance and risk prevention, mitigation, and remediation, initiatives. Sometimes they are indirectly managed by the state--for example through guidance letters circulated by administrative officials to individuals or enterprises subject to their authority. These include the Department of Justice circulars on guiding the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to charge enterprises (DoJ,
Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (April 2019)), and the controversial circular by the Obama Administration "dear colleague letter respecting the management of claims made under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in universities (
HERE). Often, and more criticized are data driven interventions by enterprises, especially where such systems focus on data gathering for their own management of stakeholders or consumers, or where such data is monetized in data markets, or especially where the data is used for decision making that may reflect social bias.
The second--and the one that tens to be ignored or more often lauded by that group of influencers--includes ratings systems (sometimes with rewards and punishments usually for those who consent to participate in the programs). These are both criticized and utilized by all social actors (relative ease with which they may be developed and deployed by just anyone. It is perhaps for this reason that ratings systems have become popular among non-giovernmental organizations e.g.,
The Credit Rating Controversy;
What’s (Still) Wrong with Credit Rating Agencies)--from credit rating (
here) to university (
here) ratings systems. Increasingly, ranking have become the means through which the business of state--and of the business of exercising administrative discretion in the public and private sector--is undertaken. And indeed, it appears that the more the systems of rankings are criticized, the more important they are in managing and ordering the structures of everyday life.
Deliciously ironic is the current absurdity of elite life in liberal democratic states where the increase in criticisms of ratings systems increase in proportion to their use by the very people delivering these criticisms for consumption by the masses or (usually more well targeted to their own social "in group set").
What makes the second form of ratings both more potent and more banal, is the ease with which they can be created and used. Even more easy is the flexibility built into markets driven democratic systems for private parties to seek to strengthen their data driven ratings systems by algorithms that produce punishments and rewards depending on where on the ratings scale the object of ratings falls. I have spoken about the ease with which these ratings systems can be constructed, and can be converted into a proper social credit regime (see
"Social Credit and Foreign Enterprises Along the Silk Road": Remarks prepared for a Lecture
Delivered at the Institute for East Asian Studies Cologne, Germany
October 2019).
All that is needed for the construction of a ratings system is: (1) access to data; (2) a means of rationally analyzing the data on the basis of ordering principles; and (3) a way of reducing that analysis (e.g., of flattening the analysis) to a relational identifier that signals the conformity of the object of analysis to an ideal type. Given this simple framework--this framework that values bias (one is not looking for "facts", one is instead looking to create incentives to change behaviors measured against an ideal that is itself the product of ideological choices made by the person or institution seeking to construct the rating system, and thus its inherent political nature)--it becomes easy to see how anyone can construct such systems as long as one has access to data and analytics as well as a clear vision of the object of rating.
It is for this reason, of course, that both non-governmental organizations and enterprises value data driven ratings as an easy means of attempting to (1) control narrative; (2) change behavior; (3) augment the legitimacy of the ideological positions buried within the ratings metrics. Ratings, in this sense, becomes banal. And so banal--and uncontrolled, another object of markets for the management of stakeholder. In this sense it is value producing not just as politics but as ideology as well. And to the extent it can be monetized, it represents a means by which an organization can make money by"
preaching through ratings.
All of this comes clearly into focus in the recent efforts by Harry, the current Duke of Sussex, to change the way that people think about traveling. To that end, the Duke has shown how virtually anyone, with access to economic and financial power, can dive into the ratings management arena and leverage the power of data driven rankings to change the behaviors of targeted individuals or institutions. That effort, of course, was not undertaken b y the Duke himself. He no doubt is far too busy to actually gather data, construct analytics, develop the ideologically based principles, and produce the ranking necessary to undertake this project. Rather, he serves as a nexus point around which those institution that might find such an enterprise useful (in every sense of the word) top do the work over which he presides. But that is the point! As long as one can aggregate the necessary factors for the production of rankings, anything is possible.
The rest is politics and one's placement on the hierarchies within the aristocracies of Western liberal democracy. And yet that also holds a second essential point of automated governance. It is this: while anyone (me included) can develop a data driven system of ratings with governance effect, the extent of that effect can also be measured. And the measure of that effect is in part a function of the power and authority of those doing the ratings. It is not enough, then, to be able to build a ratings scheme. It is also necessary to amass enough power (whether measured by influence, authority, control, or other measures) to induce stakeholders to pay attention and to believe that the ratings will have consequences for their own welfare (in the case of companies an effect on their ability to generate revenue; in the case of consumers their belief that ratings affect their place within the societal order they inhabit).
In the case of the Duke of Sussex's efforts, that involved "partnering" with key actors to create
Travelyst, an effort to produce ratings related to the carbon footprint of travel. Note here the nexus of connection between the idea--sustainability--and the leading group which together effectively creates a regulatory joint venture that is vertically integrated for the production and utilization of data; which have the economic capacity to develop and operate analytics based systems, and which have the technical know how to design and broadcast the ratings. They each, and together, also have the capacity to produce the sorts of rewards and punishments necessary to convert a ratings into a social credit system (e.g., by adjusting the price of their services for individuals and organizations who conform to behavior standards as evidenced by increases in the positive value of their ratings). This sets the stage for an effective (within the ambit of its "jurisdiction") automated regulatory system. "We want to be the driving force that paves a new way to travel, helping everyone explore our world in a way that protects both people and places, and secures a positive future for destinations and local communities for generations to come." (Travelyst website)) But it also suggests the peril of behavior modification through ratings systems as politics where the proponent, himself, my be subject to criticism for failure to modify his own behavior.
News coverage of this new ratings effort and its partners follow below. I leave it to readers to form their own conclusions within the greater context of data driven behavior changing ratings and its growing ubiquity within the societal structures of the West. What is clear, however, is that there is a certain perversity in the emerging systems of automated law. In this case, even as its challenge for conventional principles of human rights is noted, it is sometimes irresistible by those who defend human rights and old fashioned principles of liberal democracy to use the very tools they might find troubling (e.g., where social objectives do not align) to advance their own aims for behavior modification and attainment of the perfected individual engaging with perfected institutions within a perfected social system.
The images above are all from the
Travelyst website (with the exception of the picture from Oxfam's "Behind the Brands Scorecard."
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Roundtable organizers welcome questions before the event. Participants
will respond to questions received in advance of the conference.
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