The Digital Republic

The sprawling power of tech giants is one of the biggest, most complex and urgent challenges facing modern democracy. It takes rare clarity, focus and intellectual discipline to address the issue as lucidly and practically as Jamie Susskind has done in The Digital Republic

Rafael Behr

What to do with Big Tech is one of the enduring questions of today. In The Digital Republic, Jamie Susskind argues that it is time to deal with ‘the unaccountable power of digital technology’ and offers a primer of how law and governance could be harnessed to reshape Big Tech

Financial Times

This is the book America needs now. Susskind thinks deeply, and writes with powerful clarity, about how technology is reshaping society and what we should do about it

Bruce Schneier, author of CLICK HERE TO KILL EVERYBODY

The Digital Republic highlights what is at stake amidst digital disruption: the very foundations of our open, rules-based democracies. By focusing back on core principles such as legitimacy, accountability and countervailing powers, Susskind finds inspiration to secure what should not be disrupted, and reimagines the role of laws in a digitized, global context

Marietje Schaake, international policy director at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center

The digital revolution threatens to overturn democracy. But we can still do something about it. This book is the blueprint, philosophical and practical, on how to remake our online society to make sure democracy prevails

Peter Pomerantsev, author of THIS IS NOT PROPAGANDA

An important, well-written and well-timed book. The extraordinary power held by a handful of vast digital companies affects everything from the dynamics of markets to the health of democracy. But political theorists have struggled to understand the technologies while the technologists have often been blind to the implications of their own actions. After a flood of books offering diagnosis and hand-wringing, we badly needed ideas about what to do: here Jamie Susskind does just that, linking vivid examples, thoughtful principles and, crucially, practical prescriptions to guide us in ensuring that powerful technologies really do serve us well

Sir Geoff Mulgan CBE, CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London

Susskind does a sophisticated job diagnosing the core problem of how many technologies affect our lives today: unaccountable power. And while there is no magical solution, he provides a compelling roadmap for taking that power back so we can reshape our digital world to better serve the public

Yael Eisenstat, Future of Democracy Fellow at the Berggruen Institute

In focussing on the potential solutions available to govern and regulate the digital realm, [Susskind's] book makes a truly novel contribution to the existing body of literature on the now well-documented harms and pitfalls of the existing data economy. This readable primer will appeal to policymakers, law students and lawyers, and technologists alike, and act as a roadmap for anyone wondering how law and governance can reshape Big Tech, harness platform power, end extractive data practices, and ground an ecosystem of new technologies that empowers, rather than exploits, people

Carly Kind, director of the Ada Lovelace Institute

More valuable and more attractive than a mere invitation to emulate the plans of foreign bureaucrats . . . This visionary yet practical book conveys its message with clarity and panache. Active and intellectually curious citizens everywhere should read it

The Literary Review