Current Projects
Collaborative Information Production, Deliberative Democracy and Cooperative Organizations share fundamental premises as institutions – equality of members, active (voluntary) participation, deliberative (nonhierarchical) decision-making, and non-coercive relations. Collaborative, peer-to-peer information production has emerged on the Internet (e.g., open source, free software) and new approaches to large-scale deliberative political processes are being fostered by the Internet. Cooperative organizations have long been part of the American consumer movement (e.g., farmers cooperatives, credit unions). This project explores the potential for convergence and cross-fertilization between these movements to foster progressive, democratic institutional change by relying on new information technologies. The project is both analytic, studying the elements of similarity and ingredients for success, and practical, seeking to implement new models of collaboration and deliberation within a large, consumer advocacy organization.
Open Networks in the Digital Economy seeks to broaden the appreciation of the importance of open communications networks in democratic, capitalist societies. It examines the long history of the principle of nondiscriminatory access to transportation and communications services in capitalist economies and the important role of open communications in democracy. The study treats the emerging digital communications network as a platform and examines the chilling effects that anticompetitive and discriminatory practices in the physical and code layers of the platform have on innovation and the harm they impose on consumers. It identifies critical decisions confronting both antitrust and regulatory policy.