Prefigurative Post-Politics as Strategy:  The Case of Government-Led Blockchain Projects

Husain, Syed Omer; Roep, D.; Franklin, Alex

doi:10.31585/jbba-3-1-(2)2020

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 33 publications

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“…Yet this not only requires extensive technical training for experienced regulators, it also requires future issues are accurately predicted, and (perhaps most problematically) those citizens and corporations developing the systems welcome participants and their privacy-related recommendations into development projects. The challenge is how to foster trust in development communities to effectively communicate regulatory goals in a way that makes developers ‘want’ to include them, avoiding the danger of society perceiving regulatory imposition as an algorithmically enforced ‘post-political’ condition: government policy woven into the technological infrastructure (Husain et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Those who control the code control the rules: How different perspectives of privacy are being written into the code of blockchain systems

Renwick

Gleasure

2020

Journal of Information Technology

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Blockchain systems afford new privacy capabilities. This threatens to create conflict, as different social groups involved in blockchain development often disagree on which capabilities specific systems should enact. This article adopts a boundary object perspective to make sense of disagreements between collaborating social worlds. We perform a case study of privacy attitudes among collaborating actors in Monero, a cryptocurrency community that emphasises privacy and decentralisation alongside a set of values sometimes described as anti-establishment, crypto-anarchist, and/or cypherpunk. The case study performs a series of interviews with users, developers, cryptographic researchers, corporate architects, and government regulators. Three novel and important findings emerge. The first is that none of the social worlds express a desire to monitor routine transactions, despite the obvious business and tax-collection value of such data. The second is that regulators are happy to postpone active involvement, based on the flawed assumption they can impose privacy-related regulation later, once risks have become clear. Such regulation may not be possible as protocols and rulesets currently being coded into the system may be impossible to amend in the future (unless they can obtain either developer or network consensus). The third is that regulators assume methods for overseeing extraordinary transaction are necessary to avoid widespread, near-effortless money laundering. Yet, each of the other social worlds is operating under the assumption that this trade-off has already been accepted. These findings demonstrate subtle power transitions and changes in privacy attitudes that have implications for research on blockchain, management, and boundary objects in general.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Those who control the code control the rules: How different perspectives of privacy are being written into the code of blockchain systems

Renwick

Gleasure

2020

Journal of Information Technology

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Interrogating the promises and perils of climate cryptogovernance: Blockchain discourses in international climate politics

Hull

Gupta

Kloppenburg

2021

Earth System Governance

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Blockchain and digital governance: Decentralization of decision making policy

Kassen

2023

Review of Policy Research

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Blockchain is gaining popularity as a potential solution for the decentralized management of public information. A number of interesting solutions have been proposed by independent developers around the world to promote blockchain as a promising platform to potentially accelerate democratic processes and achieve certain public values in reforming digital governance. This could be reflected in facilitating direct citizen participation in digital politics, promoting greater civic cooperation and engagement in political discussions, boosting the role of civic commentary and even collaborative decision‐making in e‐government. In this regard, the article critically elaborates on the potential of this technology to promote political dimensions of public sector reforms in a post‐positivist manner, resorting to the analysis of concrete e‐participation cases in a number of public areas where the potential has already been realized and the opinions of professional software developers who are currently engaged in building various blockchain‐driven data management solutions in the e‐government area. This paper identifies, debates, and draws on what benefits and risks public policy can yield from the implementation of blockchain governance.

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Prefigurative Post-Politics as Strategy: The Case of Government-Led Blockchain Projects

Cited by 4 publications

References 33 publications

Those who control the code control the rules: How different perspectives of privacy are being written into the code of blockchain systems

Those who control the code control the rules: How different perspectives of privacy are being written into the code of blockchain systems

Interrogating the promises and perils of climate cryptogovernance: Blockchain discourses in international climate politics

Blockchain and digital governance: Decentralization of decision making policy

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