State Power in the Age of Algorithms |
E-governance is often framed as a nonpartisan administrative update, a technical fix for inefficiency, corruption, and bureaucratic stalling, but this framing significantly understates what is unfolding in modern governance systems. In its simplest sense, e-governance represents a paradigm shift in how the contemporary state views, classifies, and exerts control over society through digital technologies that are transforming governance into a data-rich and increasingly automated environment. While governments promote digitization as a means to improve service delivery and transparency, its deeper political consequence is that the state’s ability to monitor, predict, and intervene in social life is quietly expanding, often without serious public debate. This expansion is not dramatic or overtly coercive. It occurs gradually, through databases, platforms, dashboards, and algorithms that normalize surveillance in the language of efficiency and modernization.
In the past, state power was constrained by administrative limitations. Bureaucracies depended on paper records, human intermediaries, and fragmented information flows, which restricted their ability to monitor society in real time. E-governance fundamentally alters this balance by turning citizens into continuous generators of data. Every interaction with the state, whether related to taxation, identification, welfare, licensing, or communication, now leaves a digital trace. Once governance becomes data-driven, the state gains a panoramic view of social behavior that was previously impossible. This allows a shift from reactive administration to anticipatory control. The political implications are significant, as modern governance increasingly relies on information rather than force as a tool of power.
The dominant discourse around e-governance emphasizes transparency and accountability, yet transparency in digital systems is deeply asymmetrical. Citizens become more........