In November 2021, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) joined King’s College London (KCL) to host a virtual conference as part of KCL’s Project for Peaceful Competition. It brought together an intellectually and geographically diverse group of experts to discuss the geoeconomics of new digital technologies and the prospects for governance of the technologies in a multi-polar world.
This essay series collects the papers prepared for discussion at the conference, along with related videos. An introduction summarizes the principal analytical conclusions emerging from the conference, together with the main policy recommendations put forward by participants.
Setting the Scene
Managing Rivalry in the Digital Era through Peaceful Competition
Rohinton P. Medhora and Oliver Letwin
Keynote Address
Kevin Rudd
States and Markets
Technological Revolutions and the Role of the State in the Governance of Digital Technologies
Caetano Penna
Platform Governance in a Time of Divide: Navigating the Paradox of Global Tech and Local Constraints
Ronaldo Lemos and Christian Perrone
The Path Dependency of Infrastructure: A Commonly Neglected Aspect of Platform Governance
Heidi Tworek
Platform Governance through an Economic Lens
Vikram Sinha
Trade and Data Flows
E-commerce Governance: Back to Geneva?
Henry Gao
Regulating the Digital Economy: Reflections on the Trade and Innovation Nexus
Douglas Lippoldt
Unfree Flow with No Trust: The Implications of Geoeconomics and Geopolitics for Data and Digital Trade
Dan Ciuriak
Semiconductor Supply Chain Regulation in the Service of Geopolitics: Implementation Hurdles and Collateral Damage
Dieter Ernst
Implications for Global Arrangements
Global Digital Governance: The Role of Major Economies, Institutions and Agreements
Ashkay Mathur
Global Governance of Data and Digital Technologies: A Framework for Peaceful Cooperation
Robert Fay
Toward a Digital Bretton Woods?
John Zysman
The Future of Global Relationships
China’s Three Key Macroeconomic Risks
Mark Kruger
Big Tech vs. Red Tech: The Diminishing of Democracy in the Digital Age
Samir Saran and Shashank Mattoo
Existential Gap: Digital/AI Acceleration and the Missing Global Governance Capacity
Yves Tiberghien, Danielle Luo and Panthea Pourmalek