Short abstract:

How can inter-organizational dynamics be mobilized to study governmental networks? Drawing on research on the infrastructural management of populations, this presentation mobilizes organization studies to show how information infrastructures can influence the broader structural conditions of Europe.

Long abstract:

How can inter-organizational dynamics be mobilized to study and shape governmental networks? The re-ordering of national functions at the European scale constitutes one of the contemporary most contested but also visionary societal and institutional transformations. In this institutional re-ordering, states and Europe are understood as polities. And yet operational continuity among member states is often assured at the administrative, rather than political or policy levels. This is especially true of highly contested areas, such as the management of population in Area Freedom Justice and Security (AFJS), where political agreement might result impossible. Following the deployment and use of data infrastructures supporting operational agency in population management reveals a different assemblage than a unified political body with clear boundaries. It rather reveals conflicting, jeopardized and contingent networks of inter-organizational relations among bodies at local, national and supranational scale, and non-governmental actors, as well.

This evidence raises a series of question. Which concepts from organization studies can be mobilized to make sense of such de facto re-arrangements of digital sovereignty? What would their added value be with respect to traditional political theory and policy conceptualizations? Which new directions of research would conceiving of European agencies and states as inter-organizationally linked open up?

Drawing on a twelve-year-long research trajectory and on ERC-funded research on the infrastructural management of borders and populations on the move to Europe, this presentation mobilizes organization studies concepts to show how information infrastructures can influence the broader structural and organizational conditions of Europe in multiple ways.