A propos de sa visite à la mairie

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The role of the state as meta-regulator

11th April 2007

Some time ago, on one of my travels, I had the opportunity to visit the French city of Brest (Bretagne) and discover the innovative work of the city authorities with their Democratie Locale section under particular impulse of Michel Briand, but supported by many participants from civil society.

Brittany has hundreds of miles of old smuggling paths which are becoming a tourist attraction. The city authorities, in one example of support for the social production of value, are providing to civil society, hardware, software, training modules, etc.. which people can use to produce cultural enrichment activities, for example, giving historical and natural context to the smuggling paths. This information can then be produced and used on the web, but also eventually through multimedia access points which will be accessible on the paths.

This is neither direct production by the state, nor privatisation or outsourcing to a corporation, but the direct stimulation of social production, as a third mode of production and governance. So, in this particular instance, the state is playing a role a meta-regulator, and no longer automatically favouring either itself or commercial interests.

This is one of the answers to the partial disconnect between the fact that social production is creating more and more value, but there are not enough mechanisms to make such efforts more sustainable on a individual and collective level. Both state and private entities are increasingly profiting from social innovation, but what are the mechanisms to recognize such positive externalizations from peer production? So it is entirely legitimate I believe, that the peer to peer movements start asking for such mechanisms, as institutional underpinnings of peer production.