Europe in the age of geopolitical platformisation

Amazon, Alibaba, Google, Baidu — all of these digital players have become global giants thanks to the platform economy and its network effects. The more users they have, the more data and information they obtain, the more tailored services they can offer and more efficiencies they gain. This in turn brings more users, and the cycle is repeated. Bigger becomes better — size does matter.

You can shut down your Facebook account, but if all your friends are on it, you’ll miss out on what’s happening in their lives. You can stop using Google, but your search results are likely to be, let’s say, sub-par. These platforms hold power.

To some degree, the same holds true in politics. Power comes from numbers. In democracies, it’s about who can attract the most votes and form stable governing coalitions. In dictatorships and authoritarian countries, it’s about who can shape and dominate elite networks. It’s about who can be the magnet, connecting different actors and stakeholders into a platform. Even in chimpanzees, the alpha male wins his position not by mere violence, but by forming social connections and stable alliances.

The liberal world order combined with globalisation saw a lot of players arguably being part of the same platform — the UN, the WTO, the World Bank. Of course, there were still regional and…