Global governance through the pairing of list and algorithm

Abstract

The work of global governance increasingly entails some pairing of list and algorithm. Across sectors as diverse as environmental conservation, migration, nuclear nonproliferation, humanitarian aid, counterterrorism, and more, the list-plus-algorithm is, it seems, displacing rival juridical forms on the global scale. This paper probes some implications of the proliferation of this conjunctive form of’law’. Beginning with a typology of some types of governance work that the list-plus-algorithm is called to do on the global plane, this paper tracks movements of knowledge from the arcane form of the list into an algorithmic mode, and back again. It considers, too, some difficulties with which these configurations of lawful authority may be associated and the repertoire of techniques that international lawyers typically use to address these. Among these, the endless championing of transparency will be the focus of particular critique. Precisely as the prospect of seeing definitively through these decision-making devices seems, for a range of reasons, almost impossible to achieve, preoccupations with transparency have intensified. But what else might be entailed in making ‘public’ the governance work of these list-plus-algorithms? This paper takes up this question by focusing attention on how lists-plus-algorithms bring peoples, places, and things into lawful relation.

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