Network Society

Network society refers to the argument that a global form of society is emerging where new communications and information technology media have enabled a significant increase in the capacity of networks of relationships to form that are no longer bounded geographically. The networks of the network society are composed of a series of complex and interacting information nodes, markets, organizations, knowledge, and individuals. The approach has conceptual affinities with macrosociological work on reflexive modernization.

The concept of the network society challenges traditional notions of governance and has been explored in various levels of global competitiveness. When applied to governance, the idea challenges classical notions that levels of government, from small-scale local to regional, national, and ultimately international levels can remain relevant to a newly emerging global society. The emerging society that is the network society is composed of a complex of networks adapting and changing. Many of these networks cut across the old organizational structures of civil society, rendering traditional lines of governance irrelevant. Topdown approaches to governance dissolve, and new forms of political action occur at many different levels. For example, it is argued that the centrality of party politics is challenged and, in some cases, the media become a new political force generating issues that can emerge as new frameworks for the organization of further networks of action.

Governance in a network society is governance under the conditions of a sustained and widespread challenge to centralized planning. It is argued that we no longer live in an era of certainty and that subsequently politics must continue under the conditions [Page 606]of a radical uncertainty. Under these conditions, new arrangements for governance are sought that involve a continuous approach to problem solving and an adversity to risk.

Other complicating themes for governance associated with the network society include finding pathways through the languages and discourses of difference. The implication is that new configurations for governance will emerge involving, for example, a role for politics as a generator of trust. It is when the notion of trust is discussed that its partner term reciprocity emerges. Both these concepts seem to direct attention toward the underpinning function behind networks that they are mediators of reciprocal relationships. Governance associated with the condition of such relationships, we are told, needs to grasp the potential for an enhanced democracy through alternative approaches to participation that ideally seeks to enhance autonomy and involvement.