The Four Domains of Global Platform Governance

In just 15 years, the online public sphere has become largely privatized and dominated by a handful of publicly traded platform companies. Globally, in complex ways, their interests are determining the quality of our civic discourse, the character of our digital economy and, ultimately, the integrity of our democracies. As Nanjala Nyabola, Taylor Owen and Heidi Tworek write in the introduction to CIGI’s new essay series, platform governance needs a global response.

Over the next few weeks, this series will be presenting the work of a global group of scholars who examine the four distinct domains of the platform governance policy discourse: content, data, competition and infrastructure.

Watch “Exploring Four Policy Domains That Address the Power of Digital Giants” for an overview.

In this paper, Susan Ariel Aaronson examines various governments’ visions and strategies on data to better understand what they hope to achieve. While it is too early to evaluate their strategies’ effectiveness, it’s clear policy makers are recognizing that if they want to build their country’s future on data, they must also focus on trust.

It’s fair to say Canada and the United States invented modern globalized trade with their original free trade agreement of 1987, writes Bruce Heyman, former US ambassador to Canada, in this op-ed cross-posted by the Chicago Tribune. However, as trade protectionism rises, and global health, peace and security face increasing threats, that relationship needs to be broader and stronger.

Matt Malone says that just as they require other safety drills, governments should mandate that certain organizations actively rehearse responses to malicious cyber incidents. Rather than wait for the next malicious hack attack to paralyze the operation of a piece of critical infrastructure, we should act now to legally require these simulation drills.

Diplomatic relations between India and Canada have yet to achieve their enormous collaborative potential; the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) negotiations have been in the works since 2010. Chaitanya Giri writes that the under-explored area of scientific and technological innovation could become a foundation for CEPA.

The digital economy presents complex new challenges for law makers and competition policy. On June 8, a panel of experts discussed these challenges as part of CIGI’s Competition Policy Series. Watch the recording here.