“Panopticons and Chokepoints,” an interview with Richard Byrne

A new view of international relations puts global networks – and how they can be weaponized – at its center. What’s the future of regulation in this new landscape?

“The debate we see at the moment is never going to be about trade and open markets in the same kind of way anymore,” says Farrell. “Once the door has been opened to thinking about these things in terms of their consequences for security, different actors will enter into the scene and begin to gobble up this policy area that you think is defined in these terms, and start redefining in it in very different ways indeed…. We’re not going back to where we were – and once you’ve opened up the door to these kinds of concerns, they are going to metastasize through the entire system.

Access the full interview at the Wilson Quarterly

Other Writing:

Academic Article

Hybrid Institutions and the Law: Interface Solutions or Outlaw Arrangements?

Much discussion of law and e-commerce focuses on the extent to which e-commerce and the Internet weaken sovereign states’ effective control. Recently, in e-commerce, there has been a trend towards “hybrid institutions” which blend public oversight and private enforcement in the international arena. Do these institutions reflect the weakening of state legal orders, and the ...
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Academic Article

Trust and Political Economy: Comparing the Effects of Institutions on Inter-Firm Cooperation

Cooperation between small firms in “industrial districts,” where the production process may be radically dis-integrated, poses an important challenge to current political science theories of trust and cooperation. In this article, the author suggests that the problems posed by these districts—the existence of apparently irrational forms of trust in the political economy and of high-trust ...
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