A curated collection of papers, essays, and books relevant to the theory and practice of network nations, networked sovereignty, and self-governing digital communities.
Papers & Essays
Key papers from the Network Nations Alliance and the broader research community:
- “Network Nations: Reclaiming Sovereignty in the Digital Age” — Primavera de Filippi & Felix Beer — see full text in the garden
- “Introduction: New Network Sovereignties: the Rise of Non-Territorial States?” — Primavera de Filippi (CNRS | CERSA, Harvard, EUI). Read at EUI
- “Network Sovereignties Are at Least Four Different Concepts in One Category” — Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum). Read at EUI
- “Network Sovereignties in the Context of Macrohistorical Patterns” — Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation). Read at EUI
- “Notes on Old Religion for New Network Sovereigns” — Nathan Schneider (University of Colorado Boulder). Read at EUI
- “Building and Sustaining New Network Sovereignties” — Gilad Abiri (Peking University School of Transnational Law | Yale Law). Read at EUI
- “Functional Local and Network Sovereignties” — Jonathan Hillis (Cabin). Read at EUI
- “Coordi-nations: A New Institutional Structure for Global Cooperation” — Jessy Kate Schingler. Read on Medium
- “Decentralized Web3 Reshaping Internet Governance: Towards the Emergence of New Forms of Nation-Statehood?” — Igor Calzada. Read at MDPI
Detailed Reading Notes
Garden pages with extended analysis of key texts:
- Imagined Communities — Benedict Anderson (1983)
- The Rise of the Network Society — Manuel Castells (1996/2004)
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
- Blockchain Governance — De Filippi, Reijers & Mannan (MIT Press, 2024)
- The Network State — Balaji Srinivasan (2022) — critical reference
- Media Virus — Douglas Rushkoff (1994)
- Platform Capitalism — Nick Srnicek (2016)
- Modular Politics — Schneider, De Filippi et al. (2021)
Sovereignty, Governance & Political Theory
- The Network Nation — Starr Roxanne Hiltz & Murray Turoff (1978) — foundational precursor
- Panarchy: Political Theories of Non-Territorial States — Tucker & deBellis (Routledge)
- Governance in Blockchain & Social Contract Theories — Reijers et al. (Ledger)
- Digital Social Contracts — Proudhon-inspired code-is-law framework
- Oligarchy, State, and Cryptopia — Power dynamics in crypto-governance
- Two Visions for Data Governance: Territorial vs. Functional Sovereignty
- Digital Sovereignty in the BRICS Countries — Cambridge University Press
- Decoding Digital Authoritarianism — Berggruen Institute
- Attestation Based Governance Systems — WIP paper
Cities, Nations & Movements
- Free Global Cities — Safe harbours and migration (Bloomsbury)
- Let’s Split! — Separatist movements and aspirant nations (Roth, 2015)
- Invisible Countries — Journeys to the edge of nationhood (Keating)
- Success and the City: Charter Cities — How charter cities could transform the developing world
Commons & Regenerative Economics
- Participatory Commons White Paper — Clearwater & VillageLab (2020)
- Commons Sense — Austin Wade Smith / Regen Foundation
Recommended Reading
Foundational and influential works that inform the network nations design space:
- “The Network State: How to Start a New Country” — Balaji Srinivasan (2022). A framework for building cloud-first communities that eventually acquire territory, introducing the concept of network states to a broad audience. See reading note.
- “Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action” — Elinor Ostrom (1990). Nobel Prize-winning research on how communities self-organize to manage shared resources without top-down control. Essential reading for understanding commons-based governance.
- “Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code” — Primavera De Filippi & Aaron Wright (2018). Explores how blockchain technology challenges existing legal frameworks and enables new forms of decentralized governance.
- “Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy” — Trebor Scholz (2016). A vision for democratically governed digital platforms, relevant to mutualization and cooperative network infrastructure.
- “Polycentricity and Local Public Economies” — Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout & Robert Warren (1961). The foundational paper on polycentric governance — multiple overlapping centers of decision-making rather than a single hierarchy.
- “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty” — Albert O. Hirschman (1970). A classic framework for understanding how people respond to declining institutions — directly relevant to the logic of network nations as communities of choice.
- “The Meaning of Decentralization” — Vitalik Buterin (2017). A widely cited essay distinguishing architectural, political, and logical decentralization — useful for thinking about network nation design.
- “Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society” — Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl (2018). Proposes market-based mechanisms for collective governance, including quadratic voting and common ownership systems.
Full Resource Library
For a comprehensive catalog of all resources — including videos, talks, tools, events, and additional references — see the Resource Library.
See also: Key Concepts for the theoretical foundations underlying these works.