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1 1This paragraph provides a basic summary of the argument made by Robert Brenner. For more information, see R. Brenner (2006). The Economics of Global Turbulence. London: Verso.

Christian Pentzold

The regulation of peer production projects is usually achieved by the users themselves. Ideally, this self‐organization and self‐management depend on shared social norms and rules. Some of these institutional arrangements characterize the larger population of peer production projects, whilst others are the attribute of particular projects. The chapter provides an overview and comparison of peer production’s institutions, traces their origins, and describes their implications for cooperation and governance.

Peer production is often advertised as a truly alternative form of providing information goods and services, one that is less constraining than hierarchical firms or contractual markets. Hence, voluntary participation and freely available outcomes are taken to epitomize a novel form of libertarian cooperation unfettered by rules and restrictions. This kind of ideal setting of “organizing without organizations,” as Clay Shirky (2008) described it, should be characterized by egalitarianism, communal evaluation, and flat, fluid, or even absent hierarchies so as to maximize individual freedom and autonomy (Bruns, 2008; Stevenson, this volume). Peer production does, therefore, not only rest on the freedom of membership and commons goods but is believed to also be freedom‐producing (Tkacz, 2015; see also Borschke, this volume; Dulong de Rosnay, this volume). It thus produces free information and services, but also ought to enhance the practice and experience of generosity, altruism, and comradery (Benkler & Nissenbaum, this volume; Firer‐Blaess & Fuchs, 2014).

Ideas of independence, voluntarism, and equality, deliberation and self‐amending procedures are deeply ingrained in the rhetoric and culture of peer production (Fish et al., 2011; Jemielniak, 2016; see also Bauwens & Kostakis, this volume; Dafermos, this volume). When considering the actual interactions in projects, these claims seem vastly exaggerated: Free and open source software initiatives like Debian have, for instance, devised extensive ranks and procedural schemes to steer contributors. In Wikipedia, editors complain about cliques and the power plays of an oligarchy of users and they struggle with bureaucracy and formalized rules.

Addressing this discrepancy, it would be too easy to just dismiss the discourse around the virtues of peer production as an ill‐founded pipedream that never was in touch with its reality. Instead of decrying the apparent gap between the rationale of peer production as an alternative mode of cooperation and its imperfect practical accomplishment, it is more productive to study the processes through which organizational forms and institutions come into being. That way, the consolidation of norms, codes of conduct, and contributor positions does not arise as an inadvertent setback but can be approached as an inevitable and even requisite development. On these terms, Kreiss, Finn, and Turner (2011) refer to Max Weber’s classical sociological thought in order to dismiss the idea that peer production must stand against bureaucracy. Indeed, bureaucracy can protect against arbitrary rule. Loose hierarchies or the absence of rules are, therefore, not per se more egalitarian or democratic because “regulations hold the whims of individual members in check,” Kreiss et al. (2011, p. 251) argue. The authority of rules and formalized workflows do not automatically preclude peer production or stifle creativity but are necessary to make it happen. Anarchy has, it seems, never been an option, even though the ordering of peer production projects must not necessarily take the shape of a formalized bureaucracy (O’Neil, 2014). In fact, a key characteristic of peer production institutions is that they are openly debated by participants on mailing lists in Debian or on wiki pages as in Wikipedia.