Control after Decentralization?

                After the Revolutionary War, the United States operated under the Articles of Confederation until 1789.  Functioning as separate governing bodies, each state was autonomous economically and judicially.  Rather than have a central, federal power, states coined their own money and were ultimately responsible for legislating their own territories.  Recognized as a unified country yet operating under a decentralized government, the states encountered conflict in regards to their economic progress and national defense.  Issues such as paying soldiers for their service in the Revolutionary War (which prompted Shay’s Rebellion) and levying taxes for national defense caused the states to reconsider their need for a stronger central power.  In the late 1780’s, the Constitution was ratified and ultimately replaced the Articles of Confederation in order to implement a stronger federal government capable of taxation and supreme judicial decisions in order to provide the guidance necessary to ensure the success of the nation.

                Unlike the workings of the internet discussed by Alexander R. Gallaway in his article “Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization,” the American government of the late 18^th century failed to maintain control with decentralized state powers.  Providing the contemporary American judicial system as an example of a centralized network, Gallaway suggests that although states have some power, they are ultimately at the mercy of the Supreme Court.  In this way, US citizens are subject to the rulings of one supreme power that mandates all legislation.  According to Gallaway, the current structure of the internet is “noncentralized, nondominating, and nonhostile… and the material substrate of network protocols is highly flexible, distributed and resistive of hierarchy”(29).  With this approach, it seems that decentralization may provide an answer to the socioeconomic inequalities and governmental corruption which have existed in the American government.  Without a central government to which all must answer, institutionalized policies based on religious and patriarchal ideals may be rethought and reworked.  Since one hierarchy would no longer be responsible for dictating social and economic interactions, minorities and oppressed groups could possibly rise from their marginalized position.  This loss of hierarchy is beneficial on a social and cultural level yet it seems that it would ultimately destabilize the economy.  While helpful to theoretically rethink social interactions, decentralization also suggests some level of dissolution of the nation.

Although Gallaway’s description of the internet reveals a type of network which allows for some degree of equality, tolerance and adaptability, posing the internet as an example for other social or governmental networks seems somewhat problematic.  While decentralization offers a chance at equality which has been disabled by certain institutionalized policies and longstanding hierarchies, governmental decentralization might allow for the type of conflict which existed during the brief period when America used the Articles of Confederation as their governing document.  With early America as an example of decentralized government, it seems difficult to imagine a functioning nation that is not centralized or regulated by one main body.  Centralized nations allow for a certain pooling of resources and check and balance which seems hard to achieve in a non-hierarchical manner.