Digital Commonwealth
Description
Ben Manski et al. :
"Various kinds of territories, polities, and communities have gone under the name “commonwealth,” with many uses of the term suggesting a self-governing community that shares responsibility for the general welfare of the people of a somewhat large and diverse territory. Recent renditions of the concept of “commonwealth” center on shared resources and collective ownership, emphasizing democratic participation, distributed power, and egalitarianism, as opposed to private or state control of capital (Linebaugh, 2008; Hardt and Negri, 2011; Federici and Linebaugh, 2019).
Historical examples of commonwealth projects like Eugene V. Debs’ American Cooperative Commonwealth and Canada’s Cooperative Commonwealth Federation demonstrated how economic institutions could be designed to shape political relations (Brommel, 1971; Deshaies, 2019). What these older conceptions of commonwealth have in common is that they invert state-centered political economy into a participatory economic politics in which the goal is the construction of a particular type of democratic economic polity (Winch, 1977; Alperowitz, 2017).
We borrow from both recent and historical commonwealth concepts to define a digital commonwealth as a holistic system where digital technology is designed to organize economic and social relations that prioritize democracy, equity, sustainability, and solidarity. Thus, the digital commonwealth is not simply a rebranding of the digital commons; rather, it is an extension and integration of various cooperative, commons-based, and participatory efforts into a new form of economic polity (Manski and Manski, 2018). Building upon the various initiatives of the digital commons, which often operate in domain-specific silos, the DC synthesizes these projects into a coherent program for restructuring digital governance, ownership, and life (Hanna et al., 2020). Where existing commons projects often focus on protecting particular sets of resources, commonwealth-building seeks to establish new frameworks for economic organization, across different scales and domains, while maintaining democratic participation (Restakis, 2021; Kioupkiolis, 2022)."
(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1362848/full)
Characteristics
Elements of a digital commonwealth
Dhruv Deepak and Ben Manski:
"The digital commonwealth provides a logical next step in the work of digital commoning. Digital commoner initiatives demonstrate how technical systems can embed democratic principles into the infrastructure of daily life. Platform cooperatives establish collective ownership over digital services. Peer production systems enable collaborative resource management; open-source technologies and knowledge commons are a reservoir for innovation. Data sovereignty movements assert community control, enabling communities to manage digital resources according to shared values. Participatory governance platforms facilitate direct democratic decisionmaking and engage communities in shaping technological development. Thus, many if not most of the constituent elements of a digital commonwealth are already present:
Democratic ownership and governance of digital platforms is widely practiced in collective decisionmaking about technological development and deployment (Scholz, 2023; Papadimitropoulos and Malamidis, 2024).
Data sovereignty and community control over data enable ordinary people to manage digital resources according to shared values and priorities, to prevent extractive data practices, to safeguard privacy from surveillance, and to collaborate in economic production (Singh and Vipra, 2019; Walter et al., 2021).
Open technological standards and interoperable systems allow different initiatives to work together while maintaining autonomy; this promotes collaborative innovation and resists against private enclosure of shared resources (Bauwens, Kostakis).
Participatory design and governance frameworks facilitate democratic decisionmaking across different scales, combining local autonomy with broader coordination, allowing communities to address shared challenges while maintaining control over local resources (Flanagan, 2022).
Solidarity economies and community wealth building center the equitable distribution of value, ensuring that resource allocation recirculates value in local economies, and protecting against extractive practices (Giotitsas et al., 2015).
Ecological design principles center sustainability, creating the conditions for a socioeconomic system that lives within the ecological capacities of the biosphere (Kostakis et al., 2023; Smith, 2024)."
(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1362848/full)
Discussion
Building the economic polity of the digital commonwealth
Dhruv Deepak and Ben Manski:
"The digital commonwealth represents more than a collection of democratic and solidaristic technology projects, it signifies an emerging economic polity with distinct institutional forms and organizational logics. As we have written, where classical political economy is more often concerned with how the design of political institutions shapes economic behavior, the digital commonwealth inverts this relationship, creating economic institutions that enable new forms of democratic participation. This inversion occurs through the deliberate design of technology that embeds democratic principles in economic infrastructure. Platform cooperatives do not simply provide alternative ownership structures, they establish new frameworks for economic coordination that prioritize collective benefit over private accumulation (Scholz, 2023). Community-controlled data systems do not just protect privacy, they enable new forms of participatory planning and resource allocation (Pentland et al., 2021).
And it is here that we begin to see a series of formative processes through which various elements of the digital commons synthesize into the systemic alternative of the digital commonwealth. First, democratic ownership of digital platforms creates new circuits of value that keep resources circulating within communities rather than being extracted by external capital (Papadimitropoulos and Malamidis, 2024). Second, peer production systems establish frameworks for managing shared resources that transcend both market and state logics (Benkler, 2006; O’Neil et al., 2021). Third, participatory governance enables direct democratic control over economic decision-making. Fourth, open technological standards promote autonomy, innovations, and protection from private enclosure (Bauwens et al., 2019). Finally, ecological principles become embedded in economic organization through technology that the biosphere and biological systems as a global commons, and not an externality to be managed (Giotitsas et al., 2015).
The elements of the digital commonwealth gain transformative power through their interaction and mutual reinforcement. While individual projects demonstrate important innovations, their true potential emerges from the synergies between different approaches to democratic technology governance (Dafermos, 2017; Bauwens et al., 2019). When combined, these elements create a robust digital ecosystem where governance, resource allocation, and technological innovation are participatory, equitable, and sustainable.
A thriving digital commonwealth enhances social relations and wellbeing by providing a common technological backbone for collaboration, co-production, and equitable resource allocation. Digital commoners act as key protagonists in this ecosystem, mobilizing the constitutive powers of digital technology—design, affordance, and sovereignty—to champion values like openness, inclusivity, cooperation, and equitable resource distribution (Akerlof et al., 2023). Together, these processes constitute a distinctive economic logic that represents a fundamental departure from both platform capitalism and state-centric digital authoritarianism (Singh and Vipra, 2019; Jung, 2022)."
(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1362848/full)
Toward a digital commonwealth
Ben Manski et al. :
"As the elements of a digital commonwealth emerge on many terrains in many countries, the possibility of a new economic polity becomes visible: A next system with its own logics, powers, and understandings of personhood, sovereignty, community, and solidarity. The work of digital commoners is beginning to converge with solidarity economy, community wealth building, local exchange, participatory planning, municipalist, just transition, constitutional reform, and other initiatives. This convergence is necessary to create a robust and resilient digital commonwealth that can challenge the dominant paradigms of digital capitalism and state control (Jung, 2022). However, it is also insufficient. The realization of a digital commonwealth requires a multifaceted approach that addresses not only technological and economic aspects but also social, cultural, and political dimensions. It necessitates the development of new legal frameworks, educational initiatives, and cultural shifts that can support and sustain these alternative models of digital governance and economic organization (Singh and Vipra, 2019; Pentland et al., 2021; Viljoen, 2021). Moreover, it requires ongoing efforts to bridge digital divides, ensure equitable access to digital resources, and foster digital literacy across diverse communities.
If as we have argued, digital design is a constitutional process, then the construction and consolidation of a digital commonwealth that presents a credible next system alternative will require popular participation. We know that constitutions work best for the most people when the process of constitution-making is truly participatory, inclusive, and taken at the initiative of a social movement (Eisenstadt et al., 2017; Manski, 2018). Just as constitutions derive their legitimacy from the involvement of ordinary people, a digital commonwealth will only succeed if it is shaped by the diverse communities it aims to serve. This necessitates ongoing engagement with the public, the development of new legal and institutional frameworks, and a commitment to equity and inclusivity.
Similarly, popular movements for social progress need closer partnerships with digital commoners. They need the technical expertise of coders and the capital of the technology sector. Beyond this, they require better understandings of the implications of technological change. Just as coop members and community activists have special knowledge often missing to technologists, so too do technologists possess special forms of knowledge needed by communities.
In this period of accelerating system failures brought about through technological change, deepening austerity and social inequality, and ecological collapse, the work of digital commoners offers a hopeful alternative to the extractive and exploitative models of much of the digital economy. But their success requires sustained collaboration with others, and academic institutions have a duty to facilitate, analyze, and support this collaboration. The constitution of a digitalized 21st century is being written, and we must all become its authors."
(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1362848/full)