submissions: open Exetasis AI and Sovereignty project

.gitignore

@@ -60,6 +60,7 @@ spaces/
 
 # APA Summit 2027 phygital calls: the editors' PDFs, page copies and extracted text stay local
 submissions/phygital_*/cfp/source/
+submissions/exetasis_sovereignty/cfp/source/
 
 # Calls-for-papers raw pages for every submission arm (public repo; refetchable)
 submissions/*/cfp/source/

NOW.md

@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ computed Φ in about fifteen minutes. The talk's slides, script and open questio
 | 2026-10-05–07 | Lima workshop, in person, plus roundtable reviewing | [`submissions/lima_pdw/`](submissions/lima_pdw/) | OS/OT PDW Lima |
 | 2026-10-28–31 | Do Triads Reduce to Dyads? — talk and live session | [`submissions/triadic_reduction/`](submissions/triadic_reduction/) | ALGOCON, Port of Spain |
 | 2026-11-01 | Slacker chapter, final draft | [`submissions/slacker_thirds/chapter.md`](submissions/slacker_thirds/chapter.md) | Bloomsbury |
+| 2026-12-20 | AI and Sovereignty — 300–500-word abstract (project opened 2026-10-24) | [`submissions/exetasis_sovereignty/`](submissions/exetasis_sovereignty/) | *Exetasis* |
 | 2026-12-31 (target) | Algorithmacy theory article — the Lima paper rebuilt | [`submissions/algorithmacy_ot/`](submissions/algorithmacy_ot/) | *Organization Theory* |
 | 2027-01-31 | When is a combination a configuration? | [`submissions/proposals/`](submissions/proposals/) | *Organization Theory* |
 

submissions/CALENDAR.md

@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ place.** Update it when a date moves, and say what moved it.
 | 2026-11-15 | After Algorithmic Literacy (300–500-word abstract) | AMS 2027 (AlgorLit) ([`algorlit2027_literacy_to_algorithmacy/`](algorlit2027_literacy_to_algorithmacy/)); 15 Nov, 23:59 Madrid | no — project opened 2026-10-26, nothing submitted |
 | 2026-11-15 | The Internal Third Party (full paper) | *JITCAR* The Post AI Enterprise ([`jitcar_post_ai_enterprise/`](jitcar_post_ai_enterprise/)); 15 Nov | no — project opened 2026-10-26, nothing submitted |
 | 2026-12-15 | The Lived Arbiter (150–250-word abstract plus biography) | SPM2027 ([`spm2027_lived_arbiter/`](spm2027_lived_arbiter/)); 15 Dec | no — project opened 2026-10-26, nothing submitted |
+| 2026-12-20 | 300–500-word abstract + bio by email to editorial@exetasis.net ([`exetasis_sovereignty/`](exetasis_sovereignty/)) | *Exetasis*, AI and Sovereignty | no — project opened 2026-10-24, not committed |
 | 2026-12-31 | Submission-ready draft ([`algorithmacy_ot/`](algorithmacy_ot/)) | *Organization Theory*, regular theory article — algorithmacy | no — the author's own target, set 2026-10-07 |
 | 2026-12-31 | Accountability Needs Three Places (600–800-word abstract; rolling) | CEPE 2027 ([`cepe2027_third_party_accountability/`](cepe2027_third_party_accountability/)); 31 Dec (rolling) | no — project opened 2026-10-26, nothing submitted |
 | 2027-01-12 | the OT paper condensed for ST09_03 (full paper) | EURAM 2027 ([`euram2027_algorithmacy/`](euram2027_algorithmacy/)); 12 Jan, 14:00 Brussels | no — project opened 2026-10-26, nothing submitted |

submissions/README.md

@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ This week's work is listed first in [`../NOW.md`](../NOW.md).
 | [`phygital_smq_value_creation/`](phygital_smq_value_creation/) | *Services Marketing Quarterly* APA 2027 special issue: Phygital Value Creation. Project opened; abstract deadline passed | manuscript 2027-05-30 |
 | [`phygital_bh_transformation/`](phygital_bh_transformation/) | *Business Horizons* APA 2027 special issue: Phygital Business Transformation. Project opened; abstract and registration deadlines passed | not stated |
 | [`phi_program_review/`](phi_program_review/) | Synthesis review: five months of exact Φ on small coordination models, with the PyPhi pin and the upstream 2.0 control check | no deadline |
+| [`exetasis_sovereignty/`](exetasis_sovereignty/) | *Exetasis* (independent journal) CFP "AI and Sovereignty": 300–500-word abstract plus bio; develops open AGENDA items 2, 3 and 6 of `coordinative_sovereignty/`. Project opened 2026-10-24; deep research next, angle not ruled | abstract 2026-12-20 |
 
 ## Calls for papers opened 26 Oct 2026, by due date
 

submissions/exetasis_sovereignty/ABSTRACT.md

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+# Abstract: *Exetasis*, "AI and Sovereignty"
+
+[v5.2, 26 Oct 2026. Merged by Claude from Roger's v4 text (24 Oct, `archive/ABSTRACT_v4_2026-10-24.md`) and Antonio Scala's revised plan and abstract (25 Oct, `PLAN_SCALA_2026-10-25.md`). Roger's sentences and Antonio's sentences are kept where they worked; the joins and the definition in paragraph 4 are new and marked. Body: 493 words by `wc -w`, inside the 300–500 limit. Nothing here has been sent.]
+
+**Target:** *Exetasis*, special issue "AI and Sovereignty". Abstract 300–500 words plus a short bio and affiliation per author, to editorial@exetasis.net, subject line "CFP — AI and Sovereignty", deadline 20 December 2026. Full paper about 8,000 words if invited (the journal's style guide caps articles at 40,000 characters; see `README.md`).
+
+**Fit:** Antonio names PhilEvents tracks 3 and 4. On the journal's own page, which is the authority (`cfp/README.md`), those map to theme 6 (individual autonomy and the production of subjects), theme 8 (new forms of sovereignty, "new concepts for understanding power") and theme 2 (algorithmic mediation of public discourse; public and private power).
+
+**Title (DRAFTED):** After Literacy: Algorithmacy, Network Structure and the Conditions of Coordinative Sovereignty
+
+---
+
+## Abstract
+
+Democratic theory has long tied popular sovereignty to civic competence. In fifth-century Greece, where most free citizens "could apparently read the laws," democracy was "from the beginning associated with widespread literacy" (Goody & Watt, 1963, p. 332). Responses to algorithmic power repeat the premise, calling for technology literacy and civic education to restore epistemic agency (Son, 2022; Coeckelbergh, 2023). The history of literacy shows the premise to be incomplete. Public schooling expanded mainly under nondemocratic regimes that used it to teach obedience (Paglayan, 2022, p. 1242). Literate subjects in those regimes lacked institutional standing, not qualifications. Reading enabled sovereignty only where law, a free press and an enfranchised public could compel authority to account.
+
+Algorithmic coordination reproduces this gap in sharper form. It operates through "a triangular structure" with the platform operator at the apex (Stark & Vanden Broeck, 2024, p. 14). Its machine-learning opacity evades ordinary literacy (Burrell, 2016). Its authority issues no public decrees, so algorithmic governmentality "produces no subjectivation" (Rouvroy & Berns, 2013, pp. 173–174, our translation). Operating within it requires algorithmacy: the competence to infer intermediary evaluations, encode intent and adapt as predictive models evolve. Yet algorithm literacy is "but one facet of competences needed to improve working conditions" (Gagrčin et al., 2026, p. 442), and on its own it yields only positional advantage over peers. Exit is no remedy, since "a choice between awful regimes cannot confer authority on either" (Lazar, 2025, p. 163). Collective voice is what remains.
+
+Voice within a mediation requires the relations that carry collective action, and those relations have a structure the intermediary shapes. Mobilisation that requires social reinforcement crosses between communities only through wide bridges of multiple converging ties (Centola & Macy, 2007). A minimal threshold-contagion simulation illustrates the consequence: where bridges are thin, competence spread across the population leaves mobilisation confined largely to its community of origin, short of near-universal competence. Recommendation systems shape which ties form and where bridges lie, without political intent (Santos et al., 2021). The operator at the apex of the triad therefore governs both the evaluations the coordinated must read and the relations through which they could answer.
+
+We call the condition that remains coordinative sovereignty: voice within the coordinative environment that binds the coordinated, sustained through relations that no single intermediary controls. It is the condition for sovereignty as such. The debate on AI and sovereignty runs between state sovereignty over AI and individual autonomy against it, and both assume a bearer of sovereignty who exists before the mediation. Under algorithmic coordination no such bearer remains; competence, position and exit are what an individual holds, and none of them is sovereignty. A population is sovereign only where it has voice within the mediation, and it has voice only where the relations that carry collective action can form. AI-literacy policies, like literacy campaigns before them, are necessary. They cannot by themselves secure self-government, because the conditions under which relations form are themselves a question of sovereignty.
+
+**Keywords:** algorithmacy; literacy; coordinative sovereignty; algorithmic coordination; voice; complex contagion; network structure; triadic coordination
+
+---
+
+## Ruling, 26 Oct (Roger): incorporate Antonio where he pushes the thesis forward; ignore what misunderstands it
+
+The thesis, as the repo has built it: sovereignty is the standing to hold authority to account through the medium in which power is exercised; each medium requires a competence matched to it (literacy, now algorithmacy); under triadic, opaque, co-optive coordination no individual sovereignty remains; sovereignty exists only as voice within the coordinative environment, and coordinative sovereignty is that condition.
+
+### Antonio's contribution that advances the thesis (kept)
+| Contribution | Why it advances the thesis | Where it sits |
+|---|---|---|
+| The intermediary shapes the relations through which voice could form (Santos et al. on link recommendation; Centola & Macy on wide bridges) | Extends the apex's power from evaluations to the relational structure among the coordinated. Voice needs relations; the operator sets their shape. This is what the chapter lacked. | Paragraph 3; full paper §4–5 |
+| Bridge-width result: with thin bridges, competence spread across the population does not mobilise it (short of near-universal competence) | Gives the "competence ≠ sovereignty" claim a mechanism that is structural rather than historical only | Paragraph 3; appendix |
+| The debate's two poles, state sovereignty over AI and individual autonomy against it | Lets the abstract say what both poles assume (a bearer prior to the mediation) and why neither survives coordination | Paragraph 4; §1 |
+| "What we are not claiming" (§3 of his plan: no fragmentation thesis, no legitimacy from cohesion, the Meta null results, how-possibly status of the model) | Protects the claim from the obvious objections | §7 |
+| Section plan, word budget and sequence | Workable as is, with the changes below | `PLAN_SCALA_2026-10-25.md` |
+
+### Antonio's contribution that misunderstands the thesis (ignored)
+| His reading | What the thesis says instead | Effect |
+|---|---|---|
+| Coordinative sovereignty as "a population's capacity to form and sustain the relations…" | It is the condition for sovereignty, voice within the coordinative environment. Relations are what voice requires, and the capacity to form them is the condition's precondition. | Definition rewritten (paragraph 4); his §1 thesis and §6 definition need the same change |
+| The "missing middle" between state and individual sovereignty | There is no individual sovereignty left to sit beside. Both poles assume a bearer who precedes the mediation; neither survives it. | Paragraph 4 rewritten; §1 should open on this rather than on a third level |
+| Constituent power and the "collective subject" as the concept's lineage and object (Sieyès, Williams; "mediation as the production of collective subjects") | The question is standing within an existing mediation the coordinated cannot leave, in the lineage of standing and voice (the chapter's Pettit, Nedelsky, Markell, Hirschman). Constituent power asks how a people founds an order; this paper asks how the coordinated answer one. | Cut from the abstract and keywords; §5 and §6 of the plan need retitling |
+| Algorithmacy "defined relationally: competence in coordinating with others under algorithmic mediation" (his §3 skeleton) | Algorithmacy is individual: infer intermediary evaluations, encode intent, adapt as models evolve. Voice is collective; the competence is not. | Individual definition throughout; §3 skeleton to match his own §2 |
+| Competence modelled as signal weight ("better signalling/credibility") and the bridge-placement result ("competence compensates for thin bridges only at bridge positions") | This makes algorithmacy a peer-persuasion weight, which it is not; and the placement result is built in (see `model/README.md`). The thesis needs only the bridge-width result. | Placement result dropped from the abstract; model mapping to be revisited before the appendix |
+| "Gagrčin et al. (2026)" as the source for "positional advantage, not collective standing" | Their verified sentence is "but one facet of competences needed to improve working conditions" (p. 442). The positional-advantage claim is ours. | Quoted and inferred separately (paragraph 2) |
+
+### Kept from Roger's v4
+The literacy argument with its verified page-cited quotations, unchanged in wording; the three adjectives with their sources; the individual definition of algorithmacy; "Collective voice is what remains". Dropped for space: the Claude-drafted CFP opening and the Mill quotation (both return in the full paper), and the named co-optation mechanism (returns in §3).
+
+### Open against the CFP
+- The journal page asks abstracts to "clearly present the research question or problem addressed, the main argument, and … the relevant theoretical, conceptual, or methodological framework". Paragraph 1 is the problem, paragraphs 2–3 the argument, paragraph 4 the framework. The research question is implicit.
+
+## Biographical profiles and affiliations (one per author; the call requires both)
+Roger B. Hunt III is a PhD candidate in Business at Bentley University, Waltham, Massachusetts [CONFIRM]. His research operates at the intersection of organization theory, political philosophy, and platform economics, focusing on algorithmacy (the competence of navigating algorithmic intermediaries) and coordinative sovereignty. He holds an MA in Philosophy from Boston University [CONFIRM] and is the founder and convener of the Algorithmacy Conference (2026) [CONFIRM].
+Contact: rhunt@bentley.edu · ORCID: 0009-0000-7262-1779 [CONFIRM]
+
+Antonio Scala: [TO COME from Antonio: affiliation, a two-sentence bio, contact, ORCID. Nothing is to be drafted on his behalf.]
+
+"et al." in Antonio's author line: [CONFIRM who, if anyone, and get each bio.]
+
+---
+
+## References (APA 7; status per `literature/VERIFICATION.md`)
+- Burrell, J. (2016). How the machine "thinks": Understanding opacity in machine learning algorithms. *Big Data & Society*, *3*(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715622512 [Verified]
+- Centola, D., & Macy, M. (2007). Complex contagions and the weakness of long ties. *American Journal of Sociology*, *113*(3), 702–734. https://doi.org/10.1086/521848 [**Pending**: supplied by Antonio; Crossref, the publisher, Scholar Gateway and Consensus were all unreachable from the 26 Oct session. Verify by hand before sending, including that "wide bridges" is their term.]
+- Coeckelbergh, M. (2023). Democracy, epistemic agency, and AI: Political epistemology in times of artificial intelligence. *AI and Ethics*, *3*(4), 1341–1350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-022-00239-4 [Verified]
+- Gagrčin, E., Naab, T. K., & Grub, M. F. (2026). Algorithmic media use and algorithm literacy: An integrative literature review. *New Media & Society*, *28*(1), 423–447. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241291137 [Verified]
+- Goody, J., & Watt, I. (1963). The consequences of literacy. *Comparative Studies in Society and History*, *5*(3), 304–345. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500001730 [Verified]
+- Lazar, S. (2025). Governing the algorithmic city. *Philosophy & Public Affairs*, *53*(2), 102–168. https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12279 [Verified]
+- Paglayan, A. S. (2022). Education or indoctrination? The violent origins of public school systems in an era of state-building. *American Political Science Review*, *116*(4), 1242–1257. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000247 [Verified]
+- Rouvroy, A., & Berns, T. (2013). Gouvernementalité algorithmique et perspectives d'émancipation. *Réseaux*, *177*, 163–196. [Verified]
+- Santos, F. P., Lelkes, Y., & Levin, S. A. (2021). Link recommendation algorithms and dynamics of polarization in online social networks. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*, *118*(50), e2102141118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2102141118 [**Pending**: as for Centola & Macy. Confirm the abstract supports "shape which ties form".]
+- Son, W.-C. (2022). Democracy in the time of "hyperlead": Knowledge acquisition via algorithmic recommendation and its political implication in comparison with orality, literacy, and hyperlink. *Philosophy & Technology*, *35*(3), Article 80. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00573-9 [Verified]
+- Stark, D., & Vanden Broeck, P. (2024). Principles of algorithmic management. *Organization Theory*, *5*(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877241257213 [Verified]
+
+Whether to attach the list: the call does not ask for one. Attaching it costs nothing and shows the page-cited quotations are real. Recommendation: attach.
+
+## Citation check, v5
+Every quotation in the abstract is unchanged from v4's table (Goody & Watt p. 332; Paglayan p. 1242; Stark & Vanden Broeck p. 14; Rouvroy & Berns pp. 173–174; Gagrčin p. 442; Lazar p. 163), so the v4 Verified statuses carry over. The two new citations (Centola & Macy; Santos et al.) are paraphrased, carry no page numbers, and are Pending.
+
+## Before sending
+1. ~~Rule on the definition.~~ Ruled 26 Oct; send Antonio the two tables above so he can confirm or push back.
+2. Verify Centola & Macy and Santos et al. by hand; add the rows.
+3. Antonio's bio and affiliation; resolve "et al.".
+4. Roger's read-aloud of the two new paragraphs.
+5. Gmail draft, unsent, from Roger's account; Roger sends.