Book Symposium on “The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms” by Professor Paul Gowder

Please join Boston University School of Law on Friday, April 5 for a book symposium featuring Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Professor Paul Gowder on his recent book “The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms.” The symposium will be held in classroom 211 from 3:00–4:30pm. 

Panelists: 
Stacey Dogan, Boston University School of Law
Andrew Sellars, Boston University School of Law
Katharine Silbaugh, Boston University School of Law
Jessica Silbey, Boston University School of Law

Paul Gowder’s The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms explores how platform companies have failed at internet governance, leading to a proliferation of disasters like foreign election interference, vaccine misinformation, counterfeiting, and even genocide.  These governance problems stem not from malice but from companies’ inability to manage the complexity of their userbases and products and of their own incentives under the eyes of conflicting internal and external constituencies.  The Networked Leviathan draws upon the knowledge of political scientists, constitutional theorists, and other scholars of governance who have for centuries studied the efforts of states to govern under complexity. The insights from this research counsel that governments and companies should collaborate to build democratic institutions for platform governance. By permitting ordinary people from across the world to participate in the governance enterprise, we allow those with the knowledge critical to making and applying platform rules to deploy that knowledge where it can make an impact. Democratic governance also allows companies to recruit third parties to help manage their own capacity to make and stick to decisions.