Carla M Bonina
email: c.m.bonina@lse.ac.uk

Building ICT Critical Infrastructures for Trade Regulations: Implications from a National Initiative in Mexico

Keywords: e-government, ICT infrastructures, modernisation reforms, trade, Mexico

New information and communication technologies (ICT) promise an era of remarkable changes for society. In this paper, I propose to reflect on the processes underlying a national ICT initiative in Mexico aimed at improving foreign trade regulationthe Single Window for Foreign Trade. The case offers an example of the complexities of building ICT critical infrastructures in a given context. Using a narrative approach, I address the challenges and potential strategic lessons that can be learned from the case. Overall, the study offers implications that can serve as a point for comparison to similar projects.

Introduction

The use of the internet and new information and communication technologies (ICT) promises an era of remarkable changes for society, particularly in terms of opening up new channels of connectivity and organisation among business, governments, individuals and civil society groups. Governments around the world have been investing large amounts of money in public information systems. The main rationale for these investments relies on the strategic potential of these new ICT to reorganize tasks, routines and internal processes [10, pp.10-12], as well as them being a low-cost medium to interact with citizens more broadly [START_REF] Fountain | Building the virtual state: information technology and institutional change[END_REF]. Yet ICT adoption in the public sector (otherwise known as e-government) is a complex undertaking. Research in the field suggests that there have been over-optimistic and highly descriptive claims of the actual benefits that the internet has delivered to governments [START_REF] Coursey | Models of E-Government: Are They Correct? An Empirical Assessment[END_REF], [START_REF] Heeks | Analyzing e-government research: Perspective, philosophies, theories, methods, and practice[END_REF], [START_REF] Yildiz | E-government research: Reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward[END_REF]. My research focuses broadly on technology-motivated programmes (egovernment) within the process of public sector reforms that has been dominated by the global discourse relating to new public management, economic individualism and neoliberalism [START_REF] Bozeman | Public values and public interest: Counterbalancing economic individualism[END_REF], [START_REF] Fairclough | Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language[END_REF]. Although there is a vast literature on e-government, the process of organising technology within the public sector in the context of broader modernisation reforms remains understudied.

In this paper, I propose to reflect on the processes underlying a national ICT initiative in Mexico aimed at foreign trade facilitation. More precisely, the case focuses on the trajectory of events to build a digital single window (hereafter single window) for foreign trade. It represents an enormous effort of coordination between government agencies, the private sector and business associations. The aim of the paper is to address the potential strategic directions that can be drawn from the case, and to reflect on the main challenges that are presented when developing an ICT critical infrastructure for foreign trade. 1Deconstructing a large-scale and longitudinal case such the one described here is by no means straightforward. I reflect on the role of national governments in shaping the e-government strategy. Thus, my focus will remain on the organisational aspects of the case, its negotiating tensions and the potential effects on society as identified by looking at the various discourses of the champions involved in the project. To do so, I employ a narrative strategy to present the main events of the longitudinal case. This entailed a mixture of different collection methods: 38 in-depth interviews, direct observation, and extensive archival research. Employing a narrative approach seems fruitful to account for the particular design features, and process contextual factors and their interactions that underlie the case under study [START_REF] Barzelay | Learning from Second-Hand Experience: Methodology for Extrapolation-Oriented Case Research[END_REF].

Theory on studies of e-government is not well developed (i.e. [START_REF] Heeks | Analyzing e-government research: Perspective, philosophies, theories, methods, and practice[END_REF], [START_REF] Yildiz | E-government research: Reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward[END_REF]). To overcome this limitation, this work studies networked technologies in government not only as information processing tools and communicating technologies but also as elements of socio-technical systems composed of humans, technologies, politics, values, knowledge and tensions [START_REF] Fountain | Building the virtual state: information technology and institutional change[END_REF], and does so in context. The usefulness of this approach relies on the distinctive characterisation of technology within social contexts [START_REF] Avgerou | The significance of context in information systems and organizational change[END_REF]. This distinction between technologies and their social context is of importance, because it rejects the common tool view of technology, which generally assumes that technology is neutral, unproblematic, or can be treated as a black box [START_REF] Orlikowski | Research Commentary: Desperately Seeking the "IT" in IT Research--A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact[END_REF].

E-government and Modernisation Reforms

During the last two decades the diffusion of affordable networked technologies appeared as a useful tool to reinforce a powerful wave of reforms in many countries.

Usually referred as New Public Management, these reforms were initiated in the 1980s in the developed economies (i.e. Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States of America) and then spread globally. The reforms' motto, of a government that 'works better and costs less', led to a growing interest in adopting CT to support the reform of public administrations [START_REF] Gruening | Origins and theoretical basis of New public Management[END_REF], [START_REF] Hood | A Public Management for All Seasons?[END_REF], [START_REF] Kettl | The global public management revolution[END_REF] and to reinvent citizen-government relations, giving growing attention to the term e-government. In many countries, most research on e-government is understood as a tool to reinforce the objectives of public administration reforms [START_REF]OECD: E-government for better government[END_REF], [START_REF]OECD: The e-Government imperative[END_REF], although the connection between broader institutional reforms and e-government is less explicit. Egovernment has been studied from many perspectives, from a means to achieve something else (i.e. administrative reforms) or as an end in itself [START_REF] Yildiz | E-government research: Reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward[END_REF]. Yet the most common view understands e-government as the generalised use of new ICT to provide better public services, to improve public administration performance and to broaden citizen participation and democratic processes [START_REF] Bhatnagar | E-government: from vision to implementation: a practical guide with case studies[END_REF], [START_REF] Cordella | E-government: towards the e-bureaucratic form[END_REF], [START_REF] Fountain | Building the virtual state: information technology and institutional change[END_REF], [START_REF] Heeks | Reinventing Government in the Information Age[END_REF], [START_REF] Yildiz | E-government research: Reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward[END_REF].

From a normative perspective, there have been many claims that new ICT will make citizen-government transactions easier, cheaper and faster. These claims have been mainly supported by models that build on stages of development and different levels of e-government maturity that were originally developed for e-business processes [START_REF] Layne | Developing fully functional E-government: A four stage model[END_REF]. Usually, the models depict a transaction-oriented view in which electronic government development occurs in three general maturity phases: the early, middle, and later stages. The more mature the stages, the levels of interaction, collaboration and management increase in complexity both, in terms of government's back office functionality and the interactions with citizens. These models imply a sequence towards more e-government, assuming that more e-government is better. However, they usually remain limited as they cannot account for processes, contextual factors, and triggers that make some strategies more successful than others.

Research in the area of ICT and development has provided valuable insights into the multiple social, political, economic and technical dimensions that shape, and are shaped during, modernization reforms that include building technological platforms (see for example [START_REF] Avgerou | The significance of context in information systems and organizational change[END_REF] and [START_REF] Madon | E-Government Policy and Health Information Systems Implementation in Andhra Pradesh, India: Need for Articulation of Linkages Between the Macro and the Micro[END_REF]). The fact that political forces together with other multiple socio-technical factors shape the design, implementation or use of ICT in government does not remain an exclusive domain of research on development. Studies in the particular area of e-government that have been conducted in other settings such as Europe and the United States of America have already demonstrated that political influences shape the outcomes of public information systems [START_REF] Fountain | Building the virtual state: information technology and institutional change[END_REF], [START_REF] Dunleavy | Digital-era governance. IT Corporations, The State, and E-Government[END_REF].

Mexico presents hybrid characteristics that make it hard to classify the country simply as a developing economy. For example, Mexico has been a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD since 1995, and has been recently classified as a newly industrialised countries (NICs) suggests a more complex scenario. Yet it is not the purpose of this article to enter into a classification debate. Rather, the aim is to suggest that a contextualist approach is crucial to understand not only the local dynamics embedded in the case but also those particular features that shape the organisation, its actors and the technology employed [START_REF] Avgerou | The significance of context in information systems and organizational change[END_REF]. The narrative approach will thus be used to highlight these processes.

A Brief Context of Mexican Reforms and Foreign Trade

Mexico is the 13th largest economy in the world, the second largest in Latin America after Brazil, and the third major merchant of the emerging economies, after China and Russia. Mexico's international trade is crucial for its economy, representing about 60% of the total gross domestic product (GDP). 2 For the last 30 years, Mexico has implemented strong economic and political reforms, ending its welfare state model, and embarking on drastic economic liberalisation based on neoliberal ideals. In economic terms, the country is one of the most open in the world, and has stable and strong macroeconomic indicators. Liberalisation of trade was undoubtedly achieved in 1994 when Canada, Mexico, and the United States launched the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the largest free trade agreement in the world. Yet, social inequalities and distribution of income remain unresolved. Gradual modernisation reforms were started in the public administration, partly because of the economic, market-driven reforms, and partly because of f political democratisation. As a result, the Mexican public administration has also been transformed from a clientelistic and highly political bureaucracy towards a more professionalised and impartial one. In sum, these broader institutional changes that Mexico has started in the mid-1980s have persisted as the contextual features of this case 3. My entrance point in this case is the regulatory activities of Mexican foreign trade. In Mexico, the administrative procedures related to foreign trade activities involve the issue of around 37,000 export licenses, 1 million import licenses and 10 million importation requests per year. There are more than 55 thousand foreign trade users and around 30 main actors from several sectors, including government agencies, exporters, importers, logistics and trade associations. The regulatory requirements and normativity of trade procedures are complex: a common operation of foreign trade entails the presentation of at least 40 different documents that include between seven and 14 paper sheets. The government estimates that at least 65% of single data points are captured on more than one occasion (i.e. the identification of a given enterprise).

The events I will introduce correspond to several developments that the central offices of the government in Mexico put in place to build a single window for foreign trade procedures from 2008 to 2012 ("Ventanilla Digital de Comercio Exterior"). The initiative aims to simplify, and make more efficient and transparent the trade regulation. The case entails an enormous back-office integration effort -that is still ongoing-intended to support the facilitation of international trade, based on efforts that can be traced back to mid-1990s. Given the fact that Mexico faces important challenges related to economic growth, income distribution and social policies, gains from international trade are considered key for improving the country's welfare.

4

The Mexican ICT Infrastructure for Foreign Trade

The case description is structured into three chronological periods. Period 1 (SICEX phase I) goes back to the mid-1990s and covers the award-winning technological platform to support international trade procedures, called SICEX (Integral System for Foreign Trade). I pay particular attention to this phase's initial problems and what problems the platform came to resolve as well as its main achievements. Period 2 (SICEX phases II and III) presents very briefly the main actions, developments and results from 2000 until 2008. From 2008 to 2012 (period 3), I review more extensively the recent developments and advances towards the design and preimplementation of "the Mexican Digital Window for Foreign Trade". The phases, main events and contextual factors are summarised in the figure 1 below. The entry point is the Ministry of Economy which has been the agency leading the initiative.

Period 1: Building an ICT Platform for Trade Procedures from Scratch (1995-2000)

Back in 1995, the Mexican government started its first steps to build a new technological platform to support administrative simplification [START_REF]Un caso de éxito en la administración de autorizaciones de comercio exterior[END_REF]. The initial motivation behind the project was the need to have clear rules and procedures to eliminate the disparate variations in decision-making, performance, and results of foreign trade regulation in an increasing competitive environment created by NAFTA.

The absence of a clear system of rules co-existed with disparate and precarious technological platforms, each operating according to its own logic. Moreover, there was at best a weak communication infrastructure to connect databases in different locations. This means that the diverse offices of the Ministry of Economy (i.e. the central office and the 52 federal delegations) analysed procedures that drew on different information standards. Security was not robust and, together with the different interpretations of decision standards, there were notable differences between offices when issuing administrative decisions.

With the help of its own "clients" (foreign trade companies), the government started several actions in parallel: a process redesign, a rationalisation of procedures, and the design of a unified, central database that would enable the decentralisation of the administrative operations. By the end of 2000, trade procedures were standardised, responded to newly created rules, and were broadly incorporated into a single and integrated database. By 2000 it was also possible to comply with certain regulations over the internet, mainly those that were informative such as annual reports from the beneficiaries of special export programs. 4 The implementation of the technological platform meant that foreign trade procedures (i.e. rules of origin certificate approvals, authorisation and management of import quotas and licenses) became integrated under a single and unique database, registered and standardised into one information system that could be accessed from decentralised points across the country.

Overall, average response times were reduced, and also allowed the first steps towards collaboration with other government agencies. In particular, the connectivity with Customs became a salient feature. These initial efforts may seem modest compared to the progress that other countries were making at the same time (i.e. International Trade database in the United States of America) or in terms of scope. After all, one may argue that the case was simply all a matter of putting things in order, and streamlining processes with the help of a single database. Yet, the system represented a milestone for the Mexican public administration and set a precedent for other e-government programmes. In 1999, the National Institute of Public Administration awarded the Ministry of Economy with the most prestigious national prize in public administration for its innovative achievements and possibilities of replication. During the next phase (2000-2006 and 2006-2008) the project was strengthened in terms of continuity, although but with modest achievements in comparison to the changes in the previous period. Updating the technological platform remained a priority for the Ministry, mainly because the volume of administrative procedures was growing and more technological capacity was needed. To do so, the government occupied a mixed strategy of in-house and outsourced deals.

The outsourcing entailed two failed intentions. The first outsourcing deal was awarded in September 2002 and entailed a general diagnosis of the system features, the revision of procedures (a classic business process re-engineering exercise) and areas in which SICEX should be upgraded. 7 Only three months later, the contract was rescinded as the Ministry alleged that the company lacked sufficient expertise and technical capabilities [26]. After the first failed attempt, the system update was replanned. With a clearer roadmap in hand, the Ministry set out an open tender and awarded the contract to pursue the upgrading tasks to a private company in September 2004. After no more than one year, and with no major achievements in hand, the government cancelled the contract again [26]. The arguments that the Ministry set forth were no different from before; the government officials argued that the second company had failed to meet the deliverables agreed in the contract, a claim that the private contractors challenged by taking the case to court. While the dispute remained in the court for several years, operationally, the budget was frozen and no further external upgrades were possible.

While the general upgrade of the system failed, other parallel and internal actions took place, especially in the area of digital security and coordination agreements with other agencies to share the information and availability for the electronic validation of a growing number of formalities. By 2008, most of the results concentrated on updating and maintaining the technological capabilities internally (both the platform and the digital connectivity with Customs), continuing the efforts towards simplification and elimination of red tape (such as unnecessary trade regulations), and building the basis for international collaborations with other countries. In technological terms, there were neither major changes in the ways in which the system worked or was operated nor was there a notable change in the main features the system could support.

Period 3: From SICEX to the Digital Single Window for Foreign Trade (2008-2012)

In August 2008, a new Minister of Economy was appointed, and with him, new leaders in trade regulations took office. 8 From then onwards, SICEX's fate was to be converted radically: the idea of 'seriously' building a single window for foreign trade was born.

A number of institutional forces contributed to this new idea. The first came from a technical opinion that the Mexican Competition Authority (Comisión Federal de Competencia, (CFC)) produced in May 2008 regarding issues affecting Mexico's performance in foreign trade. In the opinion, which was grounded in economic terms and international statistics, the CFC identified that Mexico could achieve a significantly better performance in economic growth and competitiveness by investing in foreign trade facilitation policies [START_REF]Opinión con el fin de promover la aplicación de los principios de competencia y libre concurrencia en el diseño y aplicación de políticas y regulaciones del comercio exterior de mercancías[END_REF]. The CFC recommended the reduction in the levels and dispersion of tariff regulations, to simplify and deregulate customs clearance procedures and to build institutional capabilities for government agencies that regulate foreign trade. The use of new ICT to support the processes of simplification of trade procedures, especially for customs clearance, was also highlighted. The opinion was timely with regard to Mexico's concerns concerning its relative worsening position against China as a main export supplier for the United States of America (the main market for Mexico's exports). The Ministry of Economy adopted this opinionin conjunction with others coming from international bodies (i.e. World Bank, OECD)so as to support an ambitious trade reform that included a massive reduction in tariffs, and a more strategic use of networked technologies, to support the trade facilitation process. The policy was grouped under the label "Programme for Trade Facilitation" and was initiated in 2008 with clear goals to achieve before the end of the Presidential period (December 2012).

A further fact, also related to the CFC's opinion, had to do with Mexico's poor performance in world's competitiveness and trade facilitation indexes. The World Bank's [START_REF]Doing Business 2010: Reforming Through Difficult Times[END_REF] report entitled Doing Business positioned Mexico number 41 across 183 economies for doing business in 2010. Yet, in terms of trading across borders (a subcategory on which the total score is built), Mexico scored as number 69. Given the complexity of the current system of trade procedures, according to government data, Mexico could advance at least 40 positions with the single window [28]. Not surprisingly, escalating positions in a world ranking such as the World Bank Doing Business or the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Report, translates into a strong political incentive, given the publicity and visibility of the two reports both nationally and in global trade forums.

Within this context, after a series of informal meetings between Customs, the Ministry of Economy and other members of the Foreign Trade Commission, the initiative was formally founded within a working group for the simplification of trade procedures that was set up in July 2009. The people participating in the sub-group knew each other wellat least in their majority. In some cases, they had worked together in setting up the first steps towards coordination mechanisms between Customs and the Ministry of Economy back in the 1900s. In other words, there was a history of collaboration or coordination that had started several years before. Yet, it was not until 2009 that this sub-group gained a rather more formal status.

The two following figures can offer a clearer illustration of the main policy ideas behind the single window. The left hand side of figure 2 In June 2010, Customs set forth an open tender to outsource the project, which was awarded later in October of the same year. The contract includes an exhaustive revision of procedures, the design and implementation of the web-based platform, the digitalisation of five years of paper-based procedures (archival information of Customs daily operations), and the mobile operation of the entire system. The contract was awarded for five years, had tough deadlines, and stipulated achievable results within the current presidential administration.

With the contract awarded, one of the major milestones of the project was the passage of the Presidential Decree on January 2011. In order to avoid relying on the "good will" the governmental agencies, the passage of a decree gave a strong political and legal support to the single window for foreign trade. The legal tool, entitled "Decree that establishes the Mexican Digital Window of Foreign Trade", put firm deadlines for interagency integration and required that each authority should facilitate the necessary infrastructure required. In addition, it established three phases for the project implementation (article III) on a progressive calendar of integration which was due to be finished by the end of 2012 9 . The decree also gave legal support to the above-mentioned working group for trade facilitation, by setting up officially an Inter-Secretariat Commission for the Single Window. The Commission has provided the basis for negotiating, debating and coordinating the tight deadlines that the project set forth. The Ministry of Economy retained the lead role in the project, even though the funds for building the single window come from the Customs budget.

In parallel, there were two important institutional changes in the area of digital policy agenda in Mexico that contributed towards the trajectory of the project. The first one was the approval for the use of the advanced electronic signature (FIEL) in Mexico. In June 2009, the Mexican Tax Authority implemented a federal resolution that made the electronic submission of patrimonial tax declaration mandatory for all public servants. That was the starting point for making the use of FIEL a reality, and was also an example of the public sector relying on the monopoly of the use of authority [START_REF] Benington | Public value in Complex and Changing Times[END_REF]. In the context of the case, it meant a strategic step: from 2009, the rollout of authorised digital signatures among public servants became pervasive. A second institutional change entailed a tough agenda for digital electronic procedures. In 2010 the President announced a big step towards regulatory clearance, which set forth to automate 70% of all government services by 2012. Together with other measures, such as the raising importance of the Digital Government Agenda and the Austerity Decree, it gave even more support to the Ministry of Economy-Customs single window initiative.

In January 2012, the President formally inaugurated the Single Window for Foreign Trade, which is still operating within a trial period and limited to some locations and only 21 trade procedures. In March 2012, more than 24,000 companies have registered as potential users of the single window (half of the entire universe of users). There have been around 25,000 digital invoices, even when they are as yet optional until June 1st, 2012. The process of digitalisation of the paper-based archive of trade procedures has reached around 70% of completion, while the website has had more than 280,000 visits since its opening in October 2011. From June 2012, the use of the single window will be mandatory for every foreign trade operations with Customs.

Concluding Remarks

While at first glance the progress and results that the project achieved between 2008 and 2012 look impressive, a more detailed understanding of the case shows that the single window project has been immersed in a strong, longer history of broader institutional dynamics. On the one side, for example, the constant work towards simplifying and eliminating unnecessary regulation has been supported by broader modernisation reforms in the public administration in Mexico. On the other side, economic reforms and the opening to trade, particularly after the enforcement of NAFTA in 1995, changed remarkably the scenario of trade in Mexico. As a senior Mexican official in foreign affairs put it: "the changes that NAFTA brought into the economy of Mexico were impressive... You could not explain Mexico's trade today (2012) without considering NAFTA and all the concomitant regulatory changes that it meant for trade operations". There were lots of tensions and negotiations that happened during the years and, particularly, within the latest three. A salient and visible feature is the strong political support that the project achieved, especially with the passage of the Presidential Decree in 2010. But many other less 'visible' factors contributed to what in a first sight could be seen as an easily replicable experience. A remarkable characteristic is the longstanding process of building state capacity in the agencies involved (Customs and Economy) and the level of expertise and collaboration that the members of the project achieved throughout a process of more than 10 years. Another characteristic is the personal capabilities of senior government officials to drive the project to the highest levels of support possible. And a third characteristic involves the broader institutional dynamics that push for more use of technology in government, red tape elimination, and the space that foreign trade policies occupy in the national agenda. In addition, the presence of international bodies, whether providing technical support (i.e. OECD and the World Bank) or opening up platforms for sharing knowledge (Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA), Inter-American development Bank (IADB), has also helped to shape the trajectory of the project. This is not to say that the international bodies imposed their own views and agendas. Rather, Mexico enacted some of them to achieve its own policy on trade.

The conclusions of the 3rd Latin American and Caribbean Regional Meeting on International Trade Single Windows held in November 2011 summarised what the Mexican project has seemed to have achieved so far: "The plans to establish International Trade Single Windows form an integral part of the structure of public services and promotion of competitiveness... Such projects should take due account of fundamental variables, such as: support from governments, formulation of public policies on the matter, the consolidation of a legal and regulatory framework, the linkage of the agencies involved with trade processes, and the establishment of the Single Windows architecture, based on an all-encompassing vision of the institutional framework for foreign trade and its stakeholders" [25, pp.3].

Although the implementation effects on trade flows, transparency and control mechanisms are yet to be seen, the steps that the Mexican federal government has taken are remarkable. The focus of the narrative has been to reflect on the government role and the processes underlying the construction of an ICT critical infrastructure such as that on trade in Mexico.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Case timeline: from SICEX to digital-window for foreign trade. Source: own data 5 .

6

 6

4 . 2 Period 2 :

 422 Turning into a Slower Pace (2000-208)

  depicts the complexity of foreign trade procedures in the year 2010. The right-side figure portrays the Ministry of Economy and Customs' view on how the trading across borders would (or should) look like once the project is put in place.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Current versus planned scenario of foreign trade procedures. Source: [28]

I use the term 'ICT critical infrastructure' in a rather loose way to refer to a technology-based information infrastructure that have a vital importance for the country, which its destruction or disruption can have negative impacts on the national economy, national security or the efficient operation of government.

Data for the year 2010; based on a nominal GDP list of countries. Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, April 2011: Nominal GDP list of countries.

[START_REF] Benington | Public value in Complex and Changing Times[END_REF] For reasons of space, I have been very brief on the Mexican reforms. For a review of the economic and social policy aftermath in Mexico see[START_REF] Moreno-Brid | Economic Development and Social Policies in Mexico[END_REF]. For changes in the bureaucratic structure and Mexico's steps towards democratisation, see[START_REF] Cejudo | Explaining Change in the Mexican Public Sector: The Limits of New Public Management[END_REF] and[START_REF] Panizza | Second Generation Reform in Latin America: Reforming the Public Sector in Uruguay and Mexico[END_REF].

The capabilities of the system, by 2000, where mainly reduced to streamlining the processes of reception, authorisation and resolution inside the ME. Submission or collection of procedures was vastly done face to face.

SE stands for Ministry of Economy; SICEX stands for Integral System for foreign trade; PND stands for National Development Plan.

In Spanish, the Prize is called "Premio Nacional de Administracion Publica", and it is the only one granted to the Ministry of Economy and to an e-government programme in Mexico.

The whole contract included the revision of 18 modules that were on SICEX. The total length of the contract was about three months.

In Mexico is common that, one a new Minister is appointed, he or she will pick new undersecretaries and eventually, new General Directors. In terms of the project, a new Deputy Secretary of Industry and a new General Director of foreign trade were appointed accordingly.

The phases of implementation were described according to the actors that should be operating in different points in time. Thus, phase I establishes that the Ministry of Economy and Customs start operating no later than 30 September 2011; and all the other ten Ministries with inference in trade (i.e. the Ministries of Agriculture, Health, Environment) should be included on the platform no later than 30 June 2012).


Yingqin Zheng
email: yingqin.zheng@rhul.ac.uk

Cheng Zhang
email: zhangche@fudan.edu.cn

Cyberactivism and Collective Agency: Cases from China

Keywords: cyberactivism, collective action, collective agency, social movements, rhizome

de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction: Cyberactivism in China

The so-called "new media power" [START_REF] Bennett | New Media Power: The Internet and Global Activism[END_REF] has never been more manifested than the current global social movements mediated by a growing array of Internet affiliated technologies, including mobile and smart phones, cameras and video cameras, Personal Digital Assistants and Global Positioning System. Compared to democratic countries, China embraces the Internet in a distinct manner in that it is largely disconnected from the global movements yet full of vigor on its own playing ground. The Chinese cyberspace has been found to give rise to alternative communication practices, supporting an emerging public space and facilitating collective action [START_REF] Yang | The co-evolution of the Internet and civil society in China[END_REF], [START_REF] Zheng | Information Technology, Public Space, and Collective Action in China[END_REF]. Cyberactivism started soon after the Internet was brought to China in the late 1990s and has gone through three different technological platforms as central players: Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) entering China in 1998, blogs in 2002, and weibo (Chinese microblog platform, similar to Twitter) in 2010. The latter two are connected to, but have not replaced, previous platforms. In 2010, there are over 148 million BBS users, 294.5 million blog users, and over 63 million microblog users [4]with overlaps among the three groups. It is reported that 54.5% of Chinese bloggers prefer to express their views about social affairs in their blogs [START_REF]China Internet Network Information Center[END_REF]. While blogs have played a leading role in cyberactivism since their birth, they have been overtaken by weibo as the leader in promoting public participation. For example, in 2011 representatives attending the People's Congress publicized their policy proposals on weibo, which were open for public comments and discussions --a preliminary type of political participation that never existed before.

Cyberactivism in China is embedded in a social institutional context with the following characteristics: there is a persistent hegemony of state media, which no longer inspires trust from the people; an emerging middle class is increasingly discontent with the lack of public space and political participation; and, more importantly, the perceived deficiency of social justice under the current regime combined with a sense of powerlessness. Cyberactivism, thus, arises as a partial pursuit for freedom of speech and democratic debates. Despite the panopticon of state and commercial censorship, the Chinese cyberspace has over recent years expanded the boundaries of public expression, public debates, as well as explicit criticism on government.

Conceptualization of Collective Agency

Rodríguez-Giralt [START_REF] Rodríguez-Giralt | Social Movements as Actor-Networks: Prospects for a Symmetrical Approach to Doñana's Environmentalist Protests[END_REF] argues that collective action should be considered results, effects, generative consequences of heterogeneous networks of action and interaction, and collective action that is performed: "rather than seeing the 'social movement' as a 'centre of calculation' that successfully coordinates and manages a series of networked organizations, resources and materials, we actually have a series of operators (both human and nonhuman) that create a network and relate to each other, and that, through their interaction, perform a movement" (p. [START_REF]The Surrounding Gaze 围观[END_REF]). The paper extends from this conception and seeks to move beyond seeing cyberactivism as series of technologymediated collective actions. Instead, it is considered a form of empowerment, a construction of "collective agency" of which collective actions are instantiations. Collective agency is emergent, dynamic and irreducible to the success and failure of specific actions. It is rather a disposition, property, or propensity of the sociomaterial configuration of the information society in contemporary China.

To develop a conceptualization of "collective agency," we need to draw upon the posthumanist school of thought. The traditional concept of agency attaches exclusively to human, starting from Kant's vision of moral autonomy to Giddens' image of voluntary and knowledgeable actors [START_REF] Giddens | The Constitution of Society, Outline of the Theory of Structuration[END_REF]. On this basis collective agency is normally viewed as human agency expressed through collectivities, or a collectivity that exerts human-like agency, with intentionality, directionality, and causality, such as a government. The posthumanist school of thought rejects such an asymmetrical account of agency and argues that even "human agency" is bound with and exercised through materiality. This not only includes material that humans live and act with, such as clothing, building, tools, but also components inside the human body that are not susceptible to human intentionality. The posthumanist stream of research presents a broad philosophical movement in social science that seeks to challenge the modern dualistic perception of reality.

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, put forward an ontology of becoming [START_REF] Deleuze | A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia[END_REF][START_REF] Chia | A 'Rhizomic' Model of Organizational Change and Transformation: Perspective from a Metaphysics of Change[END_REF][START_REF] Sørensen | Gilles Deleuze and the intensification of social theory[END_REF][START_REF] Williams | Deleuze's Ontology and Creativity: Becoming in Architecture[END_REF]. Similarly, Andrew Pickering has been discussing the double dance of human and nonhuman agency, the "politics of becoming", and the need to recog-nize phenomena of temporal emergence [START_REF] Pickering | The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science[END_REF], [START_REF] Pickering | The Mangle of Practice: Agency and Emergence in the Sociology of Science[END_REF]. A key concept from Deleuze is assemblage. What is an assemblage? As Bennett [START_REF] Bennett | The agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout[END_REF] explicates:

"An assemblage is, first, an ad hoc grouping, a collectivity whose origins are historical and circumstantial, though its contingent status says nothing about its efficacy, which can be quite strong. An assemblage is, second, a living, throbbing grouping whose coherence coexists with energies and countercultures that exceed and confound it. An assemblage is, third, a web with an uneven topography: some of the points at which the trajectories of actants cross each other are more heavily trafficked than others, and thus power is not equally distributed across the assemblage. An assemblage is, fourth, not governed by a central power: no one member has sufficient competence to fully determine the consequences of the activities of the assemblage. An assemblage, finally, is made up of many types of actants: humans and nonhumans; animals, vegetables, and minerals; nature, culture, and technology" (p.445).

Another metaphor developed by Deleuze and Guattari [START_REF] Deleuze | A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia[END_REF] is rhizome. In botany, rhizome refers to horizontal, underground plant stem capable of producing the shoot and root systems of a new plant, ranging from potato, ginger to weed. As a metaphor, Deleuze and Guattari contrast it to the image of a tree, and characterize it with the following principles:  Connection and heterogeneity: "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be.

[… ] A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles" [START_REF] Deleuze | A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia[END_REF].  Multiplicity: "reflects the multidimensionality of a rhizome and its process character. This principle acknowledges the variety of horizontal, vertical and lateral relations within a network, as well as its alterability over time [START_REF] Hess | Spatial' Relationships? Towards a Reconceptualization of Embeddedness[END_REF].  A signifying rupture: "a rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. […] Every rhizome contains lines of segmentation according to which it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified, attributed, etc., as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees" [START_REF] Deleuze | A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia[END_REF].  Cartography and decalcomania: 'The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. [. . .] The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, and susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by any individual group, or social formation" [START_REF] Deleuze | A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia[END_REF].

Collective agency is thus conceptualized as the agency of assemblages [START_REF] Bennett | The agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout[END_REF], not possessed by any member of the collective, although it certainly does not deny the agentic performativity of each member as an actant. Instead, it is distributed and emerges temporally from the interactions among actants, constantly influx. The inclusion and exclusion of actants in the assemblage are often ad hoc and unpredictable, as the image of rhizome implies, so a clear boundary is difficult to define. Collective agency is rhizomatic in the sense that it "operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots" [START_REF] Deleuze | A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia[END_REF]. It thrives in multiplicity by forming connections in all dimensions without the coordination from a central power. Collective agency could grow rapidly by coalescing into a great number of participants over expansive spatiality. It could also be broken, subdued, "shattered" at one point, yet emerge again at another time and place, extending the previous connections or starting new ones.

Bennett [START_REF] Bennett | The agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout[END_REF] links the notion of agency of assemblages to the Chinese character shi, which implicates the level of energy in a force field and serves to "illuminate something that is usually difficult to capture in discourse: namely, the kind of potential that originates not in human initiative but instead results from the very disposition of things [START_REF] Jullien | The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China. Zone Books[END_REF]." The character of shi, 势,, is constructed by two characters piled togetherhold and force. However, rather than referring to the possession of power by individuals, it depicts the position or shape of a "spatiotemporal configuration" and the potential force to which that the configuration gives rise. Power and status result from being attached to a strong or well positioned shi. So state of affairs is xing (shape)-shi, advantage is you (better)-shi, aggression is qiang (strong)-shi.

Shi is dynamic and always flows. It is possible to build up shi, for example via publicity campaign, to ride shi to a more advantageous position, and to lose shi, usually due to broken connections to powerful networks. Extensively used in ancient military strategy, shi is typically assessed by taking into account material elements like geographical conditions (e.g., mountain and river), weather (e.g., such as wind direction, armaments, food supply, as well as social elements like soldiers' morale), and capability (e.g., are they used to fighting on boats?). A Chinese idiom says "times and shi create heroes," in contrast to the individualistic and self-made image of heroes in Western mass culture. The Chinese culture, thus, sees heroes, or individuals, as the effect or outcome of a particular configuration of time, space and the energy that flows through. In this sense, it endorses a decentered ontology of becoming.

The Collective Agency of Cyberactivism in China

There has been a wide range of cyberactivism since the late 1990s mediated by BBSs, blogs, and weibo. They are mostly self-organized, unplanned and rhizomatic, namely, decentered. In this section, we will examine different types of online activism on the Chinese Internet in terms of the effect they produce, especially in relation to public events which trigger online contention. The Internet projects "the gaze" from netizens to authority, a leveling effect of rhizomatic assemblage, and at times leads to direct impact on government behavior (i.e., instantiations of shi). Cyberactivism is found to be "fluid, episodic, and emergent", engaging in "informational politics" which asserts widespread influence and public pressure on the authority, and in some cases, result in changes in governmental behavior or even institutional and regulatory changes [START_REF] Yang | Activists beyond Virtual Borders: Internet-Mediated Networks and Information Politics in China[END_REF].

With rapid economic progress and a rising middleclass, the Chinese people are increasingly frustrated with the lack of access to public information, or truthful information, given the low credibility of state-owned media sources and the Great China Firewall. New media technologies have become the most important source of information in the Chinese society mostly gathered and communicated by netizens themselves, namely online citizen journalists [START_REF] Yang | Activists beyond Virtual Borders: Internet-Mediated Networks and Information Politics in China[END_REF]. For example, a famous blogger Qu Minglei runs a blog called "One Man's Newspaper", which includes real time photos and reports sent by villagers defending their land from being enlisted by local government, as well as in-depth investigation on the silence of earthquake warning in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake with 85,000 dead or missing [START_REF] Zhai | China's Bold Bloggers: The Power of Civil Discourses in the New Media Era (Zhongguo meng bo: xin mei ti shi dai de min jian hua yu li liang)[END_REF]. His blog is pushing the limits of critical journalism in China where traditional media are still handicapped.

The challenge to traditional media is even more obvious with weibo, where users can follow a large number of microbloggers, ranging from celebrities and media to public intellectuals and opinion leaders. Weibo provides faster, wider, more diverse, more direct, and less censored information. News agents often release firsthand news briefs on weibo before broadcasting them through their formal channels. The press actively follows and responds to emerging public issues and sentiments on weibo. Some weibo accounts owned by international or Diaspora users serve as bridges across the two sides of the Great Fire Wall. One prominent example is Lao Rong, a Muslim businessman devoted to broadcasting news from foreign media, covering the Libyan civil war by transmitting information from the Al-Jazeera and Western news programs. Publicly opposing to state-led public opinion that initially perceived Gaddafi as an anti-American hero, Rong supported the revolution, attracting hundreds of thousands of followers on weibo.

The most critical agentic performativity emerging from cyberactivism is sustaining the virtual "Gaze", referring to focused public attention on specific public events. One of the earliest and most cited examples is the famous case of Sun Zhigang in 2003 [START_REF] Yang | Activists beyond Virtual Borders: Internet-Mediated Networks and Information Politics in China[END_REF], whose death in a custody and repatriation centre led to public outrage on BBSs and blogs, and consequently the repeal of a state regulation aimed to control mobility of population. In the years that followed this even, slow and painstaking changes were seen, which indicated that some of those in government are reluctantly learning to respond to an unprecedented level of bottom-up attention and criticism, as opposed to being solely accountable to superior authority as in the pre-Internet era.

The gaze on the cyberspace has a Chinese term weiguan, the surrounding gaze [START_REF]The Surrounding Gaze 围观[END_REF] which literally means "crowds of people gathering around some kind of public spectacle." On the cyberspace, weiguan constitutes a collective gaze from numerous people on public events, mediated by posts, blogs, and weibo on the topic. Some believe that the power of the weiguan can "transform" China. One of the recent examples is the Yihuang public incident [20]. A couple of Zhong sisters escaped abduction from local government rescued by real time weibo broadcast by a journalist Deng Fei who was connected to them by mobile phone. The two young women were cornered in an airport toilet by local government agents blocking them from flying to Beijing to report the dismantling of their house by local authority, which led to the selfimmolation of three members of the family in protest. Within hours of the incident, the tweets on weibo were followed and re-tweeted by tens of thousands of netizens and brought local journalists to the live scene. With the event publicized, the Zhong sisters and their family members were released after brief detainment, and a number of local government officials were disciplined afterwards.

In 2009, the Propaganda Department of Yuannan Provincial Committee invited ten netizens to participate in the investigation of the death of a man Li who died in pris-on 1 . The cause of death given by the local police was that Li accidentally hit his head on the wall while playing "duomaomao" (hide and seek) with his eyes covered. The incredulous excuse sparked discussion among netizens. While those who participated in the investigation complained that they were unable to reach the core of the issue, the police eventually admitted that Li died of violent abuse from fellow inmates. Some argue that the participation of citizens in a criminal investigation was not necessarily beneficial to the rule of law, yet it clearly indicates the intensification of the public gaze on the authority.

"Duomaomao" subsequently became a popular Internet catchphrase as a mockery on the corruption and absurdity of authority. Other similar phrases include "push up" (referring to a suspected case of rape murder that led to a local riot) and "to buy soy sauce" (referring to apathy to public events). The cyberspace in China, albeit censored, seems to produce a type of public discourse characterized by subdued satire, dark humor underlined by suppressed discontent. This online discourse is an extension of the "nonofficial discourse universe" carried on short messaging services (SMS) [START_REF] He | SMS in China: A Major Carrier of the Nonofficial Discourse Universe[END_REF]. Similar to SMS practices that are disorderly, disposable, and ephemeral [START_REF] Latham | Sms, Communication, And Citizenship in China's Information Society[END_REF], public discourses constitute an alternative form of media to the top-down, durable and purposeful traditional Chinese media. In face of the abuse of power, social inequality and institutionalized injustice, many people express their discontent through satire and subtle critique. The remarks are often not directly subversive to the political regime, but constitute a moderate form of cultural and ideological challenge to existing social conditions, contributing to increasingly pluralistic political undercurrents that defy the discursive hegemony of the Communist Party [START_REF] He | SMS in China: A Major Carrier of the Nonofficial Discourse Universe[END_REF].

The creativity and versatility of the Chinese language is fantastically demonstrated in new media discourses. A rich and innovative vocabulary has evolved from new media and spread on the Chinese Internet. New characters, words, phrases, and expressions have been created (or modified from the original to bypass censorship) that can be easily grasped by anybody immersed in the new media habitats. For example, the verb "harmonize" has been used to mean state censorship or crackdown, a sarcastic reference to the state slogan of "a harmonious society". A person could be "harmonized," meaning excluded or disappeared; a "harmonized" public scandal means it was covered up or censored. Later the phrase evolves to "river crab," a synonym of "harmony" (he-xie), to avoid censorship.

Weibo discourses often reveal people's emotions which reflect social sentiments in that period. For example, the majority of netizens showed sympathy towards a young man who killed six police officers at a police station as revenge for the abuse and humiliation he received from the police when he was accused of bicycle theft. While he readily pleaded guilty to manslaughter, many viewed him as a victim. This sentiment of netizens clearly pointed to the tension between citizens and the police representing the authority with unrestrained power and minimal accountability. In contrast, many netizens were elated at the death penalty of another young man Yao Jiaxin who stabbed a middle age woman eight times to death when she tried to write down his car plate number after being run over. A well-behaved university student with elitist par-ents, Yao repeatedly apologized and shed tears on TV yet failed to receive public sympathy, especially from those who perceived him symbolic of the dehumanizing effect of social inequality. Rational or not, public emotions related to social justice could be expressed and debated via new media and traditional media. Various voices can be heard and different perspectives are allowed to interact publicly. Even though radical comments are likely to be "harmonized", the virtual civil space is closer to the Habermasian "public sphere" than what was ever conceivable before the Internet era.

4

The Case of South China Tiger

Described above are aspects of collective agency performed and enacted by cyberactivism, what Yang [START_REF] Yang | The co-evolution of the Internet and civil society in China[END_REF], [START_REF] Yang | Activists beyond Virtual Borders: Internet-Mediated Networks and Information Politics in China[END_REF] calls "information politics," which are bottom-up and highly inclusive. It should be noted that the assemblages of cyberactivism are deeply intertwined with the lifeworlds of actors; hence, there is the possibility of practical social changes. Cyberactivism rhizomatically extends to, and becomes intertwined with offline activities, through mobilization of individual or collective action. The following case of the South China Tiger serves as one such example2 . The South China Tiger is believed to have been extinct for half a century. In 2007, a villager Zhou Zhenglong in Shaan'xi province reported that he spotted one in the local woods with a number of photos he claimed to have taken within a short distance from the tiger. Zhou was given financial rewards and praised as a "hero," and the provincial Forest Bureau set up a natural reservation park in the area. One week after the news appeared in press, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Science commented in his blog that the photo could be a forgery, while others disputed such accusation and the provincial Forestry Administration dismissed any unofficial challenge. With growing public attention, the State Forestry Bureau (SFB) subsequently decided to start an investigation to verify the claim but did not reach any conclusion.

In November, a legal scholar Hao Jingsong appealed to the SFB to investigate the case further. His request was denied. A few days later, on a photography BBS, it was pointed out that the tiger in the photos resembled a painting on a Chinese calendar. A lawyer filed a formal complaint to a local police station, which turned the case into criminal investigation. In December, Netese (www.163.com), organized a collaborative analysis of the case among a group of experts including a biologist, forensic experts, a criminal detective, a digital image analyst and a telecommunication professor, who concluded that the photos were fabricated. Later, legal scholar Hao Jingsong filed a lawsuit at the Beijing Intermediate People's Court against the SFB's decision to deny his request. Again losing the case, he appealed at the Beijing High People's Court. Meanwhile, more academic publications disputed the authenticity of the photos. In May 2008, Dr. Li Changyu, a famous American Chinese detective, discredited the tiger photos. Drawing upon the Act of Government Information Openness that took effect on 1st May 2008, Hao requested the State Forestry Bureau and Shaan'xi Forestry Administration to release information on the case. Under relentless public pressure, at the end of June 2008, the Shaan'xi government admitted that the South China Tiger was a "paper tiger". Zhou was arrested, the award withdrawn, and a number of government officials penalized.

Analysis

This case shows that heterogeneous actors and actants form connections that constitute a socio-material assemblage. While the assemblage was decentralized, networked and fluid, strategic actors play critical roles in translating and mobilizing the network. For example, the legal scholar Hao perseveres in enacting legal procedures to hold the authority accountable. However, his agency would be unproductive without the support of weiguan and participation from netizens, which builds up the shi of the assemblage and changes the power dynamic between the state and citizens. Artifacts also serve as important actants in the assemblage, which demonstrate significant performativity in the mobilization processes. While the new media tools, the Internet, computers and smart phones, and the weibo platform provide infrastructural support to cyberactivism, the tiger photos serve as "boundary objects" [START_REF] Star | Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39[END_REF] of the networks which link participants, while legal procedures have agency strong enough to change the momentum of the mobilization of the assemblage.

In our case, it is easy to observe the rhizomatic and temporal emergent character of the movement. Unexpected connections are forged contingently, for example, a blog post, a publication, an individual, or an organization, could join the assemblage without centralized, and pre-conceived design. Linkages could be broken, dissipated, modified, resumed or reinforced. With cyberactivism, participation is usually voluntary and ties tend to be loose among actors, so it is normal for people or things to come in and out of the network at any point. The outcome of the movements is contingent upon the rhizomatic movement, and "things can always be otherwise".

While the case reported here has produced visible institutional result (whether the result has any sustaining effect is another point), there are numerous cases where the assemblage is not sufficiently mobilized to mount to any significant public event, or are simply suppressed by the regime, as in the China Red Cross scandal in 2011 3 . From the perspective of collective action, they may be considered failures. If, however, we take the perspective of collective agency with a rhizomatic ontology, the failures should not be dismissed as insignificant, because they are deeply connected to collective agency emerging from cyberactivism.

If cyberactivism can be said to be contributing to an emerging civil society, it is through the reconfiguration of relative shi of social actors, thereby partially and gradually transforming power relations under the current institutional and political settings. Shi is defined by the temporal, spatial and resourceful position of an actant. The collective agency of the assemblage of citizens, technologies, and relevant social and civil groups can be perceived as the shi of this collective as opposed to the authoritative actors. A formerly powerless individual becomes empowered when connected to the sociomaterial assemblages in cyberspace and in real life, as shown in the examples presented in this paper. While shi is fluid and constantly changing, it depicts dynamics of the field of civil society with potentially institutional consequences.

Conclusion

The traditional concept of collective action is not sufficient to account for new forms of social movements in the cyberspace. This paper suggests that collective actions are instantiations of collective agency, which does not necessarily feature pre-defined identities, groups or organizational strategies. The conceptualization of collective agency is based on a decentered ontology of becoming, constantly in flux and flows and its instantiations are often episodic, improvised, and ephemeral. The performance of collective agency of Chinese netizens is deeply entangled in the tension and power dynamics between authority and citizens. While far from deliberating democratic processes, collective agency has opened up a public sphere as an important pre-cursor to a civil society. This expanding capability of public participation and civic engagement constitutes a type of collective agency that is not reducible to individual agency, although individual agency is very important and can be well exercised if enacted. It is not the intention of this paper to paint a rosy picture of cyberactivism in China as democratic vehicle. It is clear that the majority of Internet users show little interest in public affairs and political issues. Cyberactivism are often perceived as chaotic, destructive and irrational. Faced with waves of public discontent, State censorship on the Internet has strengthened in recent years rather than loosened. The authority has greatly increased its effort in deploying technological and political strategies to divert, dissipate, or suppress online contention. Nevertheless, this paper attempts to move beyond a deterministic view of cyberactivism. What distinguishes online activism from conventional collective action lies with, at one level, structural manifestation as decentered networks and diversified identities, and at another level, temporal and situational fluidity. A more long-term perspective that accommodates rhizomatic dynamics may be more suitable for us to understand cyberactivism.

If we consider cyberactivism a type of social movement, it is perhaps short-sighted to focus solely on success and failure or particular episodes of collective actions. Rather, the ontology of becoming with rhizomatic dynamism allows us to move away from a perception of social progress as a linear process to that of temporal emergence that entails both "successes" and "failures", uncertainty and spontaneity, improvisation and struggles, growth and disruption, and progress and regress. The collective agency emerging from cyberactivism can be compared to tides with ebbs and flows, and moments that are high or low. As indicated by recent global movements and societal changes transitions, the power of tides is too easily predictable.

http://news.sina.com.cn/z/ynduomaomao/

http://news.sina.com.cn/z/hnhzhpyy/

http://news.hexun.com/2011/gmm/


Silvia Masiero
email: s.masiero@lse.ac.uk

The Importance of Targeting Structural Causes of Failure in E-Government

Keywords: e-government, failure, ration cards, Public Distribution System, Kerala

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

ICTs have been applied to a plethora of objectives, among which the construction of a better government that maximizes the state's capacity of serving its citizens. The logic behind the onset of e-government practices lies in the idea that by automating the interaction between public officers and recipients ICTs remove the discretional power of street-level bureaucrats, and are, therefore, instrumental in eliminating the inefficiencies derived by human management of this relation [START_REF] Bovens | From Street-Level to System-Level Bureaucracies: How Information and Communication Technology is Transforming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control[END_REF]. This idea, over the last decades, has been largely applied to the domain of less-developed countries (LDCs), generally characterized by institutional frailty and flawed accountability of the state.

In this paper we look at the application of ICTs to the improvement of state-citizen relations in a developing country context. Our argument is that, to maximize responsiveness of the government, ICTs need to "get it right," which means that they must target exactly those structural problems from which unresponsiveness of the state to citizens is generated. Failure arises from the fact that the solution to structural problems, affecting interaction between the state and citizens, is not necessarily a politically appealing objective, whereas ICTs tend to be conceived primarily as a means to achieving and maintaining political support. Mistargeting of ICT policies, towards politically popular objectives and away from structural problems, lies at the root of perpetuated interaction problems and citizen dissatisfaction.

To illustrate this proposition, we focus on an information system devised by the government of Kerala, southern India, to deliver ration cards to citizens. A ration card is the document needed, in all India, to access subsidized food and supplies under the Public Distribution System (PDS), the biggest national anti-poverty programme. The government of Kerala has invested on automating front-end procedures for application performance; though, it emerged from our work that structural problems with ration card delivery lie at the level of application processing, because procedures for managing citizen requests are uncertain and largely unknown by bureaucrats. Failure emerges from the fact that the government, instead of using ICTs for addressing structural problems in the application procedure, has focused on a politically appealing objective, namely amelioration of a single, front-end component of the process.

This paper is structured as follows. First, we outline our theoretical perspective, as a context-oriented vision inscribed in the field of ICT for development (ICT4D). Then, we look at the Keralite experience with the Ration Card Management System (RCMS), an information system which arises as a paradigm of technology usage for maximizing responsiveness of the state to disadvantaged citizens. In our discussion of the case, we deconstruct the procedure behind ration card delivery, and the role of technology at each stage of the process. It emerges that, while application performance has been fully computerized in Kerala, RCMS has not targeted the structural node of the process (i.e., application processing by government bureaucrats). We conclude by discussing the contribution of this case to theory, as a cause for failure is identified and de-constructed in the domains of ICT4D and practice, as an orientation to structural problems is recommended for ICT designers and policymakers.

Theoretical Perspective: Context Orientation in ICT4D

The field of ICT4D, in which digital technologies are conceptualized as potential or actual agents of human development, is the focus of a burgeoning amount of literature. Our reading of ICT4D draws on the domain of Information Systems (IS), and is therefore concerned with IS research conducted with respect to developing countries.

In spite of the proliferation of research, the field still lacks a stable conceptualization of the causes of e-government failure [START_REF] Heeks | Health Information Systems: Failure, Success, and Improvisation[END_REF]: anecdotal evidence prevails, and reflection on the etiological roots of negative experiences is ultimately overlooked. Here, we concentrate on the level of causal linkages between actors' decisions and failure, in order to foster reflection on this scarcely analyzed component of ICT4D.

Our point of departure is that of Avgerou [START_REF] Avgerou | The Significance of Context in Information Systems and Organizational Change[END_REF], according to whom it is fundamental for IS research to associate technology innovation with the context in which it is em-bedded. The key implication of this approach for our research is that the idea of "good government," should be defined with specific respect to the context of analysis provided in our work by a state in southern India. To unpack the idea of "good government", we rely on the work of Corbridge et al. [START_REF] Corbridge | Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India[END_REF] whose account identifies good government with the possibility for citizens to "see the state" in a better way, which means accessing governmental provisions in an equal and frequent manner.

The idea of "seeing the state," elaborated with specific reference to India, relies on a system of institutional characteristics that are specifically proper for this nation. In the heavy fabric of Indian bureaucracy, interaction between citizens and the central government is problematic [START_REF] Bardhan | Poverty Alleviation Efforts of Panchayats in West Bengal[END_REF], [START_REF] Corbridge | Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India[END_REF], [START_REF] Kochar | The Effectiveness of India's Anti-Poverty Programmes[END_REF]. Lacking capacity to access government arises perhaps as the main problem of contemporary India, perpetuating the issues of a poor quality of life. Encounters with the state systematically turn into frustrating experiences, especially for the poor and disadvantaged. People can be left for hours waiting outside a public office, just to be attended to by time-pressed and unwilling bureaucrats, or not to be attended to at all. As we engage with observing ICTs for statecitizen relations in the Indian context, we need to keep these specificities into account. As a result, we postulate that in our case a better government is a government that maximizes its responsiveness to the citizens. That is, a better government responds to its citizens' requests in a prompt and timely manner, without hidden costs.

This leads us to deconstruct the idea of governmental technologies [START_REF] Rose | Powers of Freedom[END_REF] on which the vision of government by Corbridge et al. [START_REF] Corbridge | Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India[END_REF] is grounded. Technologies of rule comprise all the government-led instruments that enable spaces of encounter between citizens and the bureaucracy. ICTs, the logic goes, are able to make these encounters more fruitful, as they can infuse effectiveness and accountability through automation. In our context of analysis, constituted by the frailty and complexity of Indian institutions, a good technology of rule is one that allows citizens to better "see the state" in that it maximizes responsiveness of the government to the citizens. Therefore, it is important to illuminate the mechanisms that flow from ICT adoption to better governmental technologies.

Hence, our work is grounded on a context-oriented approach, according to which concepts are to be analyzed with specific reference to the space of action in which they are embedded. Thus our idea of "good government" is conceptualized with specific reference to India, whose core problem is identified as lacking capacity of citizens to "see the state" in equal terms. As a result, our idea of "good government" coincides with a government that can maximize responsiveness of the state to its citizens, especially the poor and disadvantaged. As noted above, ICTs arise as potential actors in the improvement of this responsiveness, due to capacity of automating statecitizen relationships. The system at the centre of our case study, implemented in a state in southern India, has been conceived exactly for this purpose.

Methodology

Our case study is part of a broader research project, namely a Ph.D. in Information Systems, which focuses on a modular set of computerized applications at the Gov-ernment of Kerala, known as the Targeted Efficient Transparent Rationing and Allocation Public Distribution System (TETRAPDS). The software at the centre of this paper, namely the Ration Card Management System (RCMS), constitutes just one of the several modules of the TETRAPDS fabric. The study of the actor network centred on RCMS has involved three months in the field. While based in Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala, we engaged in diverse forms of investigation of the actor network, more specifically:

 Interaction with software developers has consisted of three demonstration sessions on the diverse components of TETRAPDS-RCMS, each of which lasted between 30 and 90 minutes, followed by questions from the researcher. Demonstration sessions have been complemented by in-depth interviews with software designers and decision-makers.  Government officials have been approached at two levels: firstly, at the level of the Department of Food and Civil Supplies, where the central applications of TETRAPDS-RCMS are located and managed; secondly, at the level of Taluk Supply Offices (TSOs), which constitute the interface between the Department of Food and Civil Supplies and citizens. Out of seventy Taluk Supply Offices in Kerala, seven have been the object of participant observation, which was complemented by in-depth interviews at both levels.  Citizensthe final users of the programmewere studied in two aspects of their relation with TETRAPDS-RCMS: firstly, in the telecentres where application for a ration card is performed; and secondly, in the ration shops where PDS goods are supplied. Participant observation has been carried out in both settings, encompassing 3 cities and 5 rural villages. This has been also complemented by in-depth interviews, which were, except in a few cases, mediated by a translator.

Furthermore, primary research has been complemented by encyclopedic insights on anti-poverty programmes, especially as far as the peculiarities implicit in the Indian context are concerned, and on the usage of digital technologies in these toolkits for poverty reduction. The purpose of this research design was to gain a full understanding the network of actors around TETRAPDS-RCMS. Adoption of this perspective results in the researcher's capability of overcoming dichotomy in the juxtaposition of the technical domain and the social domain [START_REF] Avgerou | The Significance of Context in Information Systems and Organizational Change[END_REF]. Instead, the focus is on mechanisms that link technicality to socially-oriented outcomes, in this case conceptualized in terms of change of the relations between the state and citizens.

Case Study: the Ration Card Management System (RCMS)

Our case study can be viewed as a typical one, as its content is paradigmatic in two different respects: in terms of the problem, which qualifies a typical situation of nonresponsiveness of the state to its citizens; and in terms of the solution, in which ICTs are used to tackle the problem of unresponsiveness. The context for the case is provided by the state of Kerala, where access to subsidized PDS goods is conditional to ownership of a document known as ration card. Unresponsiveness of the state is mir-rored by its inaction, in front of a huge amount of unattended ration card applications: the solution devised by the government relies on RCMS, an information system that has computerized the procedure for obtaining a ration card. Digitalization aimed at achieving prompt and timely delivery of this crucial document.

The PDS is the biggest anti-poverty programme ever implemented in India, in terms of both coverage and public expenditure. The purpose of this programme is that of maximizing food security for poor people, by subsidizing the price of primary necessity items, mainly rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene. Originally, the PDS was universal, which means that the subsidy was intended to reach all citizens without discrimination: so designed, the programme accounted for an unsustainable level of expenditure for the central government [START_REF] Umali-Deininger | Towards Greater Food Security for India's Poor: Balancing Government Intervention and Private Competition[END_REF]. As a result, in 1997 the programme has been re-designed as the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in which the central government, on the basis of a standard income-based poverty line, determines the number of Below Poverty Line (BPL) people in each state, and allocates PDS goods among the states on the basis of relative poverty incidence.

Before the changes occurred in 1997, Kerala boasted one of the best state-level PDS systems in India as a whole. Yet, with the introduction of targeting policies, the PDS in Kerala has been put under severe strain: indeed, given that only 25% of the Kerala population has been termed BPL by the Government of India, allocation of food grains to the state has been reduced to only 10% of the previous supply. In this complicated situation, the Government has decided to revitalize the PDS through computerization: hence, it has relied on the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for development of a suite of software for PDS implementation, known as TETRAPDS. The system at the centre of our study, RCMS, is the part of TETRAPDS that digitalizes the procedure for ration card applications. The ration card is the document on which access to PDS goods crucially depends. Indeed, purchase of subsidized commodities happens exclusively upon presentation of the ration card to the authorized ration dealer (ARD), in the dedicated fair-price shops.

This document is household-based, and displays, on its first page, the poverty status of the family, from which the entitlement to PDS goods depends: as a result of targeting policies, poorer families are entitled to a higher amount of PDS goods per month, at a lower price resulting from greater subsidy. The rationale behind this document is twofold: firstly, by assigning a unique identification to each household, ration cards should enforce targeting policies and minimize leakage of the programme to non-poor families, a problem for which the universal system was severely criticized. Second, as a stamp is put by the ARD on the card at the moment of purchase of PDS commodities, this document should guarantee that households refrain from getting subsidized goods beyond their ration.

As a result of its strong tradition in terms of public action, and of the deep level of decentralization that has followed Panchayati Raj reforms, Kerala is by far one of the best-administered states in the Indian federation as a whole. In such a well-managed state, the governmental procedure for obtaining a ration card should flow smoothly. Instead, perhaps paradoxically in the "good government" landscape that characterizes Kerala, the procedure is ridden with serious problems. A key symptom of which is the disastrous result, registered in August 2010, constituted by 600,000 unprocessed ra-tion card applications. This means that as a result of government inaction, 600,000 families were unable to benefit from an anti-poverty net of crucial importance.

The government of Kerala, whose reliance on e-governance is very high, has decided to resort to the computerized RCMS to solve the problem. The purpose of this system is that of computerizing the entire procedure for ration card release, from application to final delivery of the document required. This system is based on the digitalization of data for all the PDS recipients in Kerala (i.e., 6.4 million households). The functioning of RCMS is organized as follows. Firstly, citizens present their application for a ration card. Applications, which were previously processed at the TSOs, are now submitted on the Internet through telecentres operated across the entire state. Secondly, applications and of the documents supporting them are verified by bureaucrats at the office of the Rationing Inspector. In the case of a positive outcome, the new document is produced electronically and delivered by the local TSO.

So devised, the system should ensure delivery (or a clear motivation, in case of document denial) along three dimensions: actual performance, as applications made on the Internet should not be lost or deleted; time, as a specific time frame is ensured by the technology; and cost, as malpractice and corruption are to be avoided by computerized enforcement of the queue discipline. Hence, RCMS aims to ensure that a request of the citizen is matched by a prompt and timely response by the government, with respect to a documentthe ration cardwhich is of paramount importance in the life of Keralite citizens. Is the programme actually able to do so?

Discussion

The encounter between state and citizens, related to delivery of a ration card, is articulated in two phases. The first phase concerns application for a new document by citizens through telecentres. The second phase focuses on application processing by government bureaucrats, which should precede the actual delivery of the document. The functioning of this twofold procedure will be examined here, with particular regard to the role of technology in the pursuit of each of the two phases.

Application Performance

Upon access to the website of the Kerala Department of Food and Civil Supplies (http://civilsupplieskerala.gov.in), at the moment of writing, users are faced with a captivating, bright-red message: "Online ration card applications can be submitted by citizens through Akshaya centres". Akshaya centres are the telecentresgovernmentsponsored spaces, where computers and the Internet are made available to the publiclocated across Kerala.

Trust-building around Akshaya, one of the key objectives of this telecentre project, has been proactively sustained by two combined factors. Firstly, Keralites rely heavily on government institutions [START_REF] Madon | Governance Lessons from the Experience of Telecentres in Kerala[END_REF], which have been transferred to the Akshaya project as a governmental brand, but the actual management of e-kiosks is left with private entrepreneurs. Second, there is strong leverage in the Akshaya project for the construc-tion of human relations between e-kiosk entrepreneurs and citizens. These entrepreneurs were selected among socially influential people in their communities, and as revealed by a previous round of fieldwork in Kerala [START_REF] Masiero | Financial vs. Social Sustainability of Telecentres: Mutual Exclusion or Mutual Reinforcement?[END_REF], they were constructed as the "human link" between people and the novelty of ICTs. The combination of these two elements --the governmental versus the personal one --accounts for major reliance of citizens on the Akshaya brand, and makes telecentres a highly used environmentin which the Internet-based devices for ration card applications have been installed.

The RCMS toolkit for online applications, after a pilot-project launch in Kannur district (northern Kerala) in late 2009, was rolled out to the entire state of Kerala in September 2010. Online applications for ration cards are submitted as follows: citizens approach the local Akshaya centre, fill in the application form available on the website of the Department of Food and Civil Supplies, provide the documents required (which are scanned by the telecentre staff, or in a private shop before application), pay a fee of Rs.15 ($0.34), and get an acknowledgement receipt that displays the date when the new ration card will be available for collection from the closest TSO. It should be noted here that the ration card is a composite document, which needs to be updated in correspondence to several changes in household composition, including the creation of a new family unit or addition of new names. Therefore, occasions in which a new ration card is requested by citizens are numerous.

In this discourse, it is important to point out the strength of political appeal exercised by the Akshaya brand on the Keralite population. In the perception of people, Akshaya constitutes the dominant technology for interfacing with the government, and its good reputation and experience made it a synonym for computer accessibility and reliance. Uncertainty that normally surrounds a new Internet-based application tends to be drastically minimized when the application is subsumed under the Akshaya brand. As a result, the bright-red message on the website of the Department of Food and Civil Supplies does not surprise us, because bringing something under the umbrella of Akshaya is almost a guarantee for success. As a result, this part of the ration card procedure seems to work well and its user-friendliness is positively appraised.

Application Processing

Before the launch of RCMS, Keralite citizens requesting new ration cards or modifications to existing cards needed to go physically to a TSO. There they would spend long hours in a queue, after which they would be provided with an acknowledgement receipt reporting the expected day of availability of the requested document. Processing time reported on the receipt would be calculated by work-pressed Taluk officers who were informed in terms of the time required by the Government for giving clearance. Now, time frames are provided automatically by the system set up by RCMS. Online application has translated this part of the process into a system-level bureaucracy [START_REF] Bovens | From Street-Level to System-Level Bureaucracies: How Information and Communication Technology is Transforming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control[END_REF], where the discretion previously exerted by street-level officials has been removed. Yet, after submission of applications, what role is left for technology in document processing and delivery?

Application processing at the Government of Kerala works as follows. Online applications are submitted along with the required documents to the office of the Rationing Inspector, located at the Department of Food and Civil Supplies. Bureaucrats at the office of the Rationing Inspector perform field-level verification and prepare a report that is then sent to the TSO for reference. The report specifies whether application was accepted, in which case a new ration card is to be printed; or whether it was rejected, in which case the reasons for rejection are clearly stated. This process should occur within 7-15 working days. As a result, on the date established for collection, citizens should go physically to the TSO and receive either the new card or a clear explanation for the rejection of their application.

Before the rollout of RCMS, 600,000 ration card applications on average were pending at any one time. Where was the problem then? Our research revealed that the bottleneck existed at the heart of application processing: verification of applications by bureaucrats at the office of the Rationing Inspector. In the dominant perception of citizens, this phase is encapsulated in an aura of confusion and discretion. Citizens, when asked about the mechanics and objects of verification, displayed high uncertainty in terms of the parameters being verified and their meaning. Even more strikingly, interviews conducted at the office of the Rationing Inspector itself shed little light on these dynamics. Bureaucrats interviewed uniformly spoke about "regularity of documentation," but attempts to gain more precise insights --which documents, how is "regularity" measured, what is actually verified --were unsuccessful. As a result, there is significant uncertainty surrounding state-level verification of ration card applications, which is affected by systematic and severe delays.

Here is where the problem emerges. The phase of processing that is structurally causing delays in ration card releases is one in which computerization has not at all being achieved. Digitalization, as devised by RCMS, is limited to what happens before this stage --submission of applications from Akshaya telecentres to the office of the Rationing Inspector --and after it --printing of the new ration card by the TSO. Still, the principal node of the problem (i.e., processing itself) remains paper-based and surrounded by uncertain criteria, which is why the process turns out, ultimately, to perpetuate existing failure. Indeed, even after full implementation of RCMS, citizens report with frustration major delays in ration card delivery.

It is to be noted that had we used a different etiological lens on the same casetracing the reason of an outcome to the conscious agency of those involvedour interpretation of data would help illuminate the human factors of the failure in RCMS and their meaning. However, this goes beyond the scope of this paper, whose purpose is limited to proposing a rational explanation for failure in e-government, and using it for grounding a suggestion in terms on how to act to prevent this type of failure. Still, etiological analysis would constitute an important complementary lens for reinterpreting our data. Indeed, reading them in terms of "who gains" and "who loses" from the anatomy of failure observedconcerning essentially the mid-part of the RCMS processwould help us having a clear picture of what is really at stake in the minute texture of the ICT dynamics behind RCMS. A viable route for further research would, therefore, include the usage of this type of analysis, which would also help us devise informed case-specific policy recommendations.

Getting It Right: Targeting versus Political Appeal

As it emerges from our discussion, digitalization of ration card releases revolves primarily around application performance, whereas the crucial node constituted by application processing is left entirely untouched by computerization. This key phase, with which the technology of RCMS does not deal, has two characteristics. Firstly, it is the one structural node in the process, as it is crucial for the requests of citizens to be properly met. Secondly, it lacks political attractiveness, as application processing happens entirely "behind the scenes." It is, indeed, performed exclusively by government bureaucrats and it leaves no room for citizen sighting or participation.

Conversely, computerization induced by RCMS has been targeted in order to match a politically appealing node, namely that of applications submitted directly by citizens through Akshaya centres. The political payoff has a twofold origin. First, citizens directly participate in the system, which allows them to take an active role as they interface with the government. Second, the consolidated trust of Keralite citizens in Akshaya, collectively conceived as the primary digital interface with the government, tends to be transferred to the application, which is what usually happens when a new digital tool is subsumed under the well-established, trusted Akshaya brand.

As a result, the maximization of responsiveness of the state to citizens, as originally aimed, remains by and large unfulfilled by this application. Responsiveness, in the process of ration card releases, is predicated on a structural node that due to its lack of political attractiveness has been dismissed by the new technology, while digitalization has been tailored specifically for pursuing political support. To use the formulation of Bovens and Zouridis [START_REF] Bovens | From Street-Level to System-Level Bureaucracies: How Information and Communication Technology is Transforming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control[END_REF], application processing remains firmly in the hands of streetlevel bureaucrats, and automation does not affect this part of the process. With an information system organized like this, the government does not "get it right." As a result, state responsiveness continues to be low because the prevalence of political considerations leaves the causal roots of the problem un-touched.

Our suggestion is that for information systems to optimize state-citizen relations, ICTs need to "get it right" by targeting exactly those problems from which the problem of unresponsiveness emerges. Failure arises, instead, from the governmental misdirection of ICTs towards generation of political support, which while gaining shortterm approval from citizens leave unattended the issues that lie at the core of unresponsiveness. The case of RCMS makes a paradigmatic illustration of this argument.

Conclusion

Our proposition, as illustrated throughout the case study, is that to effect responsiveness of the government in state-citizen relations, ICTs need to target the structural problems from which unresponsiveness is generated, rather than use e-government as a toolkit for political propaganda. Indeed, while the latter usage is devised to generate returns on the short run, it is highly unlikely that a strategy that ignores the structural nodes of the problem might pay off on the longer run, even as the permanence of existing problems generates widespread frustration in the citizenry.

In theoretical terms, this observation should be set against the background of ICT4D, a field that while highly preoccupied with unsuccessful project outcomes generally fails to lay out the causal foundations on which failure is predicated. In our work, a cause for failure is identified in the mismatch between targeting of ICT-based intervention towards structural problems and its political appeal. Reflection, as we suggest it for those engaging in analysis of ICT4D projects, should be on (1) the existence or not of a clear identification of the problems to be targeted and (2) adequacy of information system design for finding a solution to these problems. This implication, we maintain, is instrumental in shedding some light on the largely obscure field of causes of failure in ICT4D.

In practical terms, implications of our argument are translated into operational suggestions, for those that engage in ICT-based policymaking and information system design. The core recommendation, if long-term improvements in state-citizen relations are to be effected through ICTs, is that of prioritizing structural problems, rather than using e-government as a tool for obtaining and preserving political support. Indeed, the short-term payoff earned by propaganda is not likely to generate long-term returns, as demonstrated by dissatisfaction of the Keralite citizens with RCMS. Identifying the structural nodes of the existing problems and addressing them by the design of specific ICT-based toolkits constitutes the one way for linking ICTs to "good government" in terms of state responsiveness.