LETTER FROM THE EDITORS.

• Position: Editorial

In our last issue of the Journal of International Affairs we looked at the state of democracy around the world. Part of the impetus for choosing that theme was our observation of the weakening global institutions and norms that support and uphold democratic governance. For this issue, we have decided to take that observation in a different direction, and examine not a specific form of governance, but the phenomenon of its absence. This issue looks at Ungoverned Spaces, both physical and theoretical. From monetary policy to migration, the world appears to be witnessing a shift from established institutional oversight to radical disruption and contested authority. It is this trend that our issue explores.

Within this issue we examine vacuums of governance across many fields, and explore the question of whether legal and policy interventions are needed to regulate newly emerging ungoverned spaces. This takes us first to a critique of the concept itself by Jennifer Murtazashvili, associate professor at the Graduate School of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, who cautions against ascribing significant analytical value to the idea of 'Ungoverned Spaces' when applied to conflict zones. She suggests that spaces apparently ridden by anarchy may give rise to forms of self-governance, which can be both productive and unproductive. We continue with the theme of anarchy and informal governance in our next piece, taking a closer look at informal institutions in Tajikistan and Afghanistan with a piece by Suzanne Levi-Sanchez from the Naval War College. Informed by six years of research on both sides of the border, she analyzes the role of informal organizations and how they mediate between civil society, the state, and familial networks.

Moving to an exponentially expanding and increasingly ungoverned space, the Internet, we have a thought-provoking piece by Bharath Ganesh, from the Oxford Internet Institute, who explains the ungovernability of digital hate culture. Recent attempts to curtail hate speech on popular social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter have exhibited varying degrees of success in addressing challenging concepts such as swarm structure, inconsistent web governance regimes, and 'coded' language. Our section on technology...