Commons-based peer production – the distributed creation of freely accessible information resources through the mass aggregation of many contributions – represents a modality of collective intelligence that integrates the use of digital communication networks and information technologies [Benkler 2006; Benkler et al. 2013]. Peer production projects like Wikipedia and Linux have inspired numerou...

We develop a model of oligarchy subject to elite competition. Even when all members of the elite share an economic interest in labor repression, competition for control of the state can drive a wedge between the incentives of old and new elites. Thus ‘the iron law of oligarchy’–that all elite members share an overriding interest in repressive institutions–can be bent in various ways. New elites...