Legitimacy and space in the use of technologies for environmental and social governance: The cases of human trafficking and COVID-19 contact tracing

This article develops the concept of legitimacy to analyze the capacity of technologies such as phone apps to mobilize collective commitments to shared environmental and social outcomes by constituting new governance spaces. This concept of governance spaces highlights the variable configurations of technologies and their interactions with humans, and helps avoid the tendency to see technologies as passive relays that transmit power originating elsewhere, or, in contrast, to overstate the almost magical autonomous capacities of technology. The concept of legitimacy is valuable for evaluating the degree to which technologies are effective and deserving of support. The article draws on Mark Suchman’s distinction between pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy, which correspond in turn to interests, ethical values, and facts. In contrast to more conventional state-centered conceptions of legitimacy, these aspects of legitimacy can be applied to governance spaces constituted by technologies. The article then examines and compares the cases of technologies for countering human trafficking and COVID-19 digital contact tracing apps. In both cases all three aspects of legitimacy are present, important, and interconnected. An examination of a recent report issued by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Tech Against Trafficking coalition on 305 anti-trafficking tools shows the role of ethics and facts in their legitimacy, but also the degree to which the tools are skewed towards interests other than those at risk of being trafficked. Acceptance and evaluations of digital contract tracing apps are similarly shaped by the interactions between interests, ethical values, and facts, including evidence about their effectiveness. The legitimacy of COVID-19 digital contact tracing apps involves a wider presence of a public interest in health while the risks associated with power inequalities are greater with anti-trafficking technologies, highlighting the importance of variability in the legitimacy of governance spaces constituted by technologies.