Ruling The Root

In Ruling the Root, Milton Mueller uses the theoretical framework of institutional economics to analyze the global policy and governance problems created by the assignment of Internet domain names and addresses. "The root" is the top of the domain name hierarchy and the Internet address space. It is the only point of centralized control in what is otherwise a distributed and voluntaristic network of networks. Both domain names and IP numbers are valuable resources, and their assignment on a coordinated basis is essential to the technical operation of the Internet. Mueller explains how control of the root is being leveraged to control the Internet itself in such key areas as trademark and copyright protection, surveillance of users, content regulation, and regulation of the domain name supply industry. Control of the root originally resided in an informally organized technical elite comprised mostly of American computer scientists. As the Internet became commercialized and domain name registration became a profitable business, a six-year struggle over property rights and the control of the root broke out among Internet technologists, business and intellectual property interests, international organizations, national governments, and advocates of individual rights. By the late 1990s, it was apparent that only a new international institution could resolve conflicts among the factions in the domain name wars. Mueller recounts the fascinating process that led to the formation of a new international regime around ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In the process, he shows how the vaunted freedom and openness of the Internet is being diminished by the institutionalization of the root.

The Minnesota Historical Society Pamphlet Collection contains pamphlets and printed ephemera relating to history of state inspection and weighing of the grain trade, specification and tolerances for scales and measures, etc.

An account of the complex, frequently contentious, issues of Internet governance and the formation of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

China is growing in importance to the economies and governments of the world, and it has been run by men with very different ideas. How China copes with the pressures for good governance with the Asian economic model, treats its ethnic minorities under scrutiny, and gathers resources to fuel its dynamic economy, impacts us all.

Der Band versammelt Beiträge zu aktuellen Herausforderungen der Europäischen Union, die im Kontext der "Conference on European Democracy (EuDEM) 2015" in Wien von namhaften Autorinnen und Autoren verfasst worden sind. Sie fokussieren sich auf das Spannungsverhältnis von Nationalstaat und Europäischer Union und stellen Konfliktpunkte zu wichtigen Schwerpunktthemen wie Außenpolitik, Demokratie und Governance auf europäischer Ebene heraus. Die gesamte Konferenz wie auch die einzelnen Beiträge werden als Vermittlung zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis einerseits sowie als Austausch von Politik, Recht und Verwaltung andererseits verstanden. Mit Beiträgen von: Alexander Balthasar, Sven Biscop, Alexandra Dancasiu, Klemens H. Fischer, Hendrik Hansen, David Jaklin, Markus Kornprobst, Joanna Kulesza, Hiroko Kudo, Eva Lichtenberger, Edoardo Ongaro, Sofia Maria Satanakis, Werner Schroeder

This book is about an epochal shift in ideas that changed the nature and meaning of coercion in modern political thought. It begins with a review of Foucault, Arendt, and Habermas, and points out a discrepancy in the way each thinker understood coercion in modern politics. From here, Varma examines Plato’s Republic, Laws, and Gorgias to provide a framework and context for thinking about this. As the author shows, each work demonstrates a particular style of Platonic statecraft that corresponds to the amount of power the philosopher holds in a city. The Republic demonstrates the philosopher’s rule as a monarch; the Laws demonstrates his rule when he must share power with a few spirited statesmen; and the Gorgias demonstrates his rule in a democracy where power belongs to the people. Ultimately, Varma argues that the philosopher used coercion as a supplementary tool to help harmonize man’s soul with the heavens. When Hobbes recast the cosmos as matter in motion, however, power became the highest ordering principle for political life.

The U.S. government, complicit with the well-connected corporations, since the so-called Civil War, continues to wage war and destruction. Lincoln's revolutionary war, supported by Marx and Engels, caused at least 618,222 and perhaps as many as 700,000 deaths, including about 50,000 Confederate civilians. Soldiers who were fighting, dying and killing during that war were in training for future wars. If Americans could kill fellow citizens, then they would use force against foreign citizens, in behalf of the government. That war foreshadowed the devastating global warfare that followed with the Spanish American War, two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War and the current wars in the Middle East. They do not include the bombings in the Baltic and elsewhere or the CIA's covert warfare wherein millions of people died. In the First World War, soldiers killed 9,911,000 people in action, and wounded 21,219,500 people, while 7,750,000 people were missing in action for a total of 38, 880,500. In the Second World War, there were over 24,000,000 military deaths and 49,000,000 civilian deaths totaling 73,000,000 deaths, not including the number of wounded or missing. That is 82,911,000 deaths in two world wars. The real question is WHY?

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.