Description

Governments were built for a world that moved slower than this one. Regulatory frameworks designed for industrial economies are now trying to govern algorithmic systems, platform monopolies, and global data flows with tools that were not built for the job. Some institutions are adapting. Many are being captured by the industries they are supposed to oversee. Corporate lobbying shapes legislation before it is written. Enforcement actions result in settlements that amount to rounding errors for the companies paying them. Meanwhile, the state's most effective use of technology has been in surveillance, law enforcement, and military applications, where adoption moves fast and oversight lags behind. Institutional Power covers the relationship between governments and the forces that increasingly outpace them: corporations, capital, technology, and the growing gap between who the rules apply to and who they do not.