Group Three.

The notions of power explored in Sangeet Kumar's article, "Google Earth and the Nation-State: Sovereignty in the Age of New Media,"are not only instructive for study of the power of new media institutions and non-state actors, but also of institutions of supranational governance. Kumar argues that non-state actors such as Google gain a diffuse form of power in the act of claiming to "speak" for the interests of everyone. It's remarkably reminiscent of the power wielded by certain technocratic transnational institutions; namely, the European Union. The technocrats at the core of the EU have done a remarkable job since the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 of fabricating a "European" identity, whole cloth, simply by claiming to act in the interest of all member-states. Member states have, in turn, consented to a gradual but steady loss of sovereignty—subjecting themselves to, as David Grewal called them, "choice-eliminating structures."

In fact, the EU is a perfect example of the exercise of network power as we've discussed over the last few weeks. While it has no collective defense force and thus no military might ("hard" power), the EU wields significant "soft" power. Using the lure of membership—demonstrating Castells' notion of inclusion vs. exclusion—it has pushed states to "harmonize" standards and practices, from railroad track gauges to annual deficits. It then wields additional power in programming the goals, standards and practices of the Union. European states seem to find the benefits of membership (including free movement of labor, capital and services across European borders) worth the corresponding loss of sovereignty—the Union has expanded from 12 member-states after the "founding" Maastricht Treaty in 1992 to 27 today, with plenty more waiting in the wings.