The article focuses on the long-term trends in the development of a regulatory mechanism of social relations, determined by the introduction of digital technologies for processing reputational data ...on the behavior and characteristics of individuals and organizations into the public administration. The first part of the research examines the regime of the rule of law established in the age of modernity, highlights its vulnerabilities and the difficulty of maintaining it in the face of specific modern challenges forcing the world elites to fundamentally reform social institutions and subsystems (economy, energy, healthcare, etc.). The second part is devoted to the characterization of existing data-driven regulation technologies, considering their transformative impact on the rule of law regime. The third part presents predictive characteristics of the emerging system of social regulation; special attention is paid to the role of ethical norms in constructing a new system of social regulation over and instead of the institutions of the rule of law. It is emphasized that modern mechanisms of regulation and control, based on intelligent data analysis and often involving some form of assessment of the behavior of subjects, are super-structured over existing systems of positive law, but can easily be used to expand the control of authorities in public relations that go beyond the scope of legal regulation. Such mechanisms may include increased requirements for access to social goods and require compliance not only with legal, but also with moral and ethical norms, professional standards, and arbitrarily interpreted customs. The author concludes that the regulatory datafication results in the actual replacement of the mechanism of legal regulation by extended compliance systems, often based on opaque norms of unclear origin. The institutions of the rule of law and the regime of the supremacy of law, presupposing the certainty of norm-setting and democratic control over lawmaking, are being replaced by loyalty programs fostering only obedience.
China’s Social Credit System (SCS) has been widely considered a centralized surveillance project, whereas recent research found multiple scoring systems co-existing in various fields at multiple ...administrative levels and in diverse forms. Despite the broadened view toward the complexity of SCS, these research projects continue to focus on SCS mainly as political and digital control mechanisms. Instead, this paper is interested in the social and cultural meanings of SCS constructed in the media, both at the national and local levels. Based on the analyses of news reports since the year 2003, when the term SCS was officially coined, this paper examines the historical narratives about SCS, including its rationales, stakeholders, and intended goals/tasks. It argues that the SCS construction has been a societal project anchored in a distinct moral orientation of financial credit. While credit systems are often used to classify consumers and financial subjects in Western contexts, the case of Chinese SCS shows that the moral dimension of financial credit scoring has enabled its spread into other non-financial domains. Also, the institutionalization of such moral standards is considered an effective approach to addressing various socio-economic and ethical issues that have long baffled economic development and social justice in China’s reform era.
Social credit is a type of micro-credit aiming at fighting poverty and social inequality. Although interest in this type of credit has increased significantly over time, namely after Muhammad Yunus ...was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, there are few studies that address the assessment of social credit applications. This is an issue to be taken seriously primarily because the objectives of social credit differ from those of other types of credit, meaning that social credit applications should not be evaluated using the same credit-scoring systems. Assuming the baseline principles of the multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach, this study combines cognitive mapping and measuring attractiveness by a categorical-based evaluation technique (MACBETH) to develop an evaluation system for social credit applications. The results show that the social-technical approach followed in this study provides value for the evaluation processes of this type of credit application as a result of the privileged contact established with a panel of credit analysts. The advantages, limitations and managerial implications of our study are also discussed.
This article examines the technologies of power and subjectification in China's social credit system through a theoretically informed analysis of policy and legal documents as well as the narratives ...of social credit practitioners, including local officials and representatives of business partners. The ongoing project is a heterogeneous ensemble of discourses, regulations, policies, and any number of programs aiming to govern social and economic activities through problematizing, assessing, and utilizing the "trustworthiness" of individuals, enterprises, organizations, and government agencies. Drawing on governmentality studies, the article explicates the operation of governmental and disciplinary-pastoral modalities of power in the project, which are interrelated in their logics and overlap in the tactics employed. Whereas the strategy of governmental/biopolitical power is centered on achieving effective economic governance and improving regulatory compliance through technological fixes, disciplinary-pastoral power aspires to shape individual behavior and the collective mores of a locality according to a mixture of market-oriented and socialist-traditional values. Social credit is envisioned to produce and channel homo economicus and homo moralis. However, the relationships between liberal and socialist subjectivities and between rationalization and moralization are by no means coherent. The assemblage of social credit government is characterized by contradictions and contestations.
This study explores the role of social credit system construction, an informal institution, in improving corporate environmental performance. To identify the causal connections between social credit ...and corporate environmental performance, the progressive difference-in-differences (DID) method is adopted by introducing the social credit system construction pilots aiming to improve the social credit environment of China as a quasi-natural experiment. Empirical results imply that social credit system constructions exert a significant improvement effect on corporate environmental performance. In addition, corporate innovation, financial constraints alleviation, and the strengthening of environmental cases enforcement are three effective action mechanisms by which social credit system constructions helping improve corporate environmental performance. Moreover, this promotion effect presents heterogeneity characteristics due to enterprises ownership and the environmental pollution degree of the city where the enterprise is located. This study provides an informal institutional perspective for the green development of enterprises.
The red, yellow, and green three-colored health code apps (HCAs) have been credited as an effective tool for the COVID-19 response in China, with a golden color added indicating vaccination status in ...spring 2021. Although the success of HCA as a public health intervention might have legitimized government or corporate surveillance, the scope and contour of post-pandemic HCA use remain unclear. Both officials and tech firms have been promoting broader post-pandemic HCA use for purposes beyond pandemic control. This research draws on theories on privacy, trust, and media engagement to investigate factors affecting Chinese public opinion on HCA's post-pandemic use. Original survey data were collected in 2021 from adult HCA users in two major Chinese cities: Wuhan where COVID-19 cases were first identified and Hangzhou where the first HCA was deployed. Results point to a majority for moderate post-pandemic HCA use, while almost four out of ten users support expansive HCA use and the voice for restricted or terminated use is tiny. Greater acceptance of HCA data use by various institutional stakeholders, greater institutional trust, greater engagement with COVID-19 related social media content increased the support for expansive use.
Building on insights from research on surveillance and valuation in the context of digitization, this article analyses the growing use of algorithmically driven metrics that help quantify human ...conduct and discusses some of its implications. As such, metrics operate both as technologies of surveillance and providers of an imaginary of social values which is put into play in the governance of people, organizations and societies. To illustrate, the article peeks into the Chinese Social Credit System and similar projects elsewhere. It demonstrates how the digitization of governance is entangled with broader issues of surveillance and valuation, and it suggests the usefulness of synthesizing key insights from bodies of literatures that are not commonly brought together.
