Karavas, Vaios --- "Governance of Virtual Worlds and the Quest for a Digital Constitution" [2010] ELECD 141; in Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira (eds), "Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity

Editor(s): Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446830

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Governance of Virtual Worlds and the Quest for a Digital Constitution

Author(s): Karavas, Vaios

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

6. Governance of virtual worlds and the
quest for a digital constitution
Vaios Karavas*

1. DEALING WITH UNCERTAINTY: THE POTENTIAL OF
CREATIVE EXPERIMENTALISM
The title of the present text is, indeed, characterised by its high indeterminacy as
it contains terms of an as yet unfixed and fluid semantic content. First the term
`governance': although there is much talk today about the so-called shift from
`government to governance',1 it is nevertheless far from clear what the term
`governance' actually means.2 The same holds true for the notion of: `virtual
worlds'.3 We know little about these new digital phenomena and the processes
that take place in them. Are they mere commercial games, new separate worlds,
`virtual communities',4 `magic circles'5 or even `distinct jurisdictions',6 as some
lawyers argue? How could one then possibly meet the challenges of developing

* For their helpful comments, I would like to thank all the participants at the
workshop `Governance of Online Worlds and Cultural Diversity', University of
Lucerne, 12 September 2008.
1 See James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.), Governance without
Government: Order and Change in World Government, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
2 For a clarification of the term `governance' from the viewpoint of various
disciplines, see recently the contributions in Gunnar Falke Schuppert and Michael Zürn
(eds.), Governance in einer sich wandelnden Welt, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2008.
3 The term `virtual worlds' stands here for the so-called online digital games.
For an ...