Think of a standard map of the world, showing the borders and capitals of the world’s 190-odd countries. That is the chessboard view.Now think of a map of the world at night, with the lit-up bursts of cities and the dark swaths of wilderness. Those corridors of light mark roads, cars, houses, and offices; they mark the networks of human relationships, where families and workers and travelers come together. That is the web view. It is a map not of separation, marking off boundaries of sovereign power, but of connection.

the Westphalian world order mandated the sovereign equality of states not as an end in itself but as a means to protect the subjects of those states—the people.

The people must come first. Where they do not, sooner or later, they will overthrow their governments.

Open societies, open governments, and an open international system are risky propositions. But they are humankind’s best hope for harnessing the power not only of states but also of businesses, universities, civic organizations, and citizens to address the planetary problems that now touch us all.

when a state abrogated its responsibility to protect the basic rights of its people, other states had a responsibility to protect those citizens, if necessary through military intervention.

But human rights themselves became politically polarized during the Cold War, with the West championing civil and political rights; the East championing economic, social, and cultural rights; and both sides tending to ignore violations in their client states.

The institutions built after World War II remain important repositories of legitimacy and authority. But they need to become the hubs of a flatter, faster, more flexible system, one that operates at the level of citizens as well as states.

U.S. policymakers should think in terms of translating chessboard alliances into hubs of connectedness and capability.

According to systems theory, the level of organization in a closed system can only stay the same or decrease. In open systems, by contrast, the level of organization can increase in response to new inputs and disruptions. That means that such a system should be able to ride out the volatility caused by changing power relationships and incorporate new kinds of global networks.

Writing about “connexity” 20 years ago, the British author and political adviser Geoff Mulgan argued that in adapting to permanent interdependence, governments and societies would have to rethink their policies, organizational structures, and conceptions of morality. Constant connectedness, he wrote, would place a premium on “reciprocity, the idea of give and take,” and a spirit of openness, trust, and transparency would underpin a “different way of governing.” Governments would “provide a framework of predictability, but leave space for people to organise themselves in flatter, more reciprocal structures.”

Instead of governing themselves through those who represent them, citizens can partner directly with the government to solve public problems.

an open international order of the twenty-first century should be anchored in secure and self-reliant societies, in which citizens can participate actively in their own protection and prosperity. The first building block is open societies; the second is open governments.

The self-reliance necessary for open security depends on the ability to self-organize and take action.

The government’s role is to “invest in creating a more resilient nation,” which includes briefing and empowering the public, but more as a partner than a protector.

much of the civil rights work of this century will entail championing digital rights.

Hard gatekeeping is a strategy of connection, but it calls for division, replacing the physical barriers of the twentieth century with digital ones of the twenty-first.

In this order, states must be waves and particles at the same time.

The legal order of the twenty-first century must be a double order, acknowledging the existence of domestic and international spheres of action and law but seeing the boundary between them as permeable.

In many countries, legislatures and government agencies have begun publishing draft legislation on open-source platforms such as GitHub, enabling their publics to contribute to the revision process.

The declaration’s three major principles are transparency, civic participation, and accountability.

In practice, governments must have a legal framework that requires the disclosure of the income and assets of all high government officials and must put in place a set of deterrents against bribery.

Buildings and empires really do topple under their own weight.

Ramo argues that the winner-take-all nature of network effects means that the current platform monopolies are here to stay.

a grand strategy of “hard gatekeeping,” based on the power to grant or deny access to closed networks he calls “gatelands.”

In his book The Seventh Sense, Joshua Ramo recognizes that a “new age of constant connection” has arrived

Dictatorships fare little better than democracies at stopping such attacks, and at a far higher cost to civil liberties.

Peace of Westphalia created a framework of sovereign and equal states.

problems and threats arise because people are too connected, not connected enough, or connected in the wrong ways to the wrong people or things.

The essential fault line of the digital age is not between capitalism and communism or democracy and autocracy but between open and closed.

Alec Ross, a technology expert and former State Department official, lines up countries on an “open-closed axis.” As he argues, “the societies that embrace openness will be those that compete and succeed most effectively.”