Clay Shirky on collaborative arrangements replacing traditional institutions—e.g. firms, journalists, etc.—given the right information infrastructure. What he argues is happening at the domestic level seems to be how international institutions (e.g. the GATT/WTO) have long functioned—by decentralizing implementation and enforcement. In that sense, international institutions have always been closer to collaborative arrangements than traditional institutions at the domestic level. This is especially true since whatever collective outcomes that international institutions seek to generate, the state-level behaviors have to be self-enforcing like Flickr users voluntarily choosing to tag their photos with certain keywords in Shirky’s example.
An interesting question is whether international institutions will better utilize the information technology infrastructure that has emerged and is evolving. The best example so far of such an attempt seems to be http://www.globaltradealert.org/
