Conditional Citizens: Rethinking Children and Young People’s Participation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Catherine Hartung: “This book challenges readers to recognise the conditions that underpin popular approaches to children and young people’s participation, as well as the key processes and institutions that have enabled its rise as a global force of social change in new times. The book draws on the vast international literature, as well as interviews with key practitioners, policy-makers, activists, delegates and academics from Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, the United States and Italy to examine the emergence of the young citizen as a key global priority in the work of the UN, NGOs, government and academia. In so doing, the book engages contemporary and interdisciplinary debates around citizenship, rights, childhood and youth to examine the complex conditions through which children and young people are governed and invited to govern themselves.

The book argues that much of what is considered ‘children and young people’s participation’ today is part of a wider neoliberal project that emphasises an ideal young citizen who is responsible and rational while simultaneously downplaying the role of systemic inequality and potentially reinforcing rather than overcoming children and young people’s subjugation. Yet the book also moves beyond mere critique and offers suggestive ways to broaden our understanding of children and young people’s participation by drawing on 15 international examples of empirical research from around the world, including the Philippines, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, North America, Finland, South Africa, Australia and Latin America. These examples provoke practitioners, policy-makers and academics to think differently about children and young people and the possibilities for their participatory citizenship beyond that which serves the political agendas of dominant interest groups…(More)”.

Can Democracy Survive the Internet?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nathaniel Persily in the Journal of Democracy: “…The actual story of the 2016 digital campaign is, of course, quite different, and we are only beginning to come to grips with what it might mean for campaigns going forward. Whereas the stories of the last two campaigns focused on the use of new tools, most of the 2016 story revolves around the online explosion of campaign-relevant communication from all corners of cyberspace. Fake news, social-media bots (automated accounts that can exist on all types of platforms), and propaganda from inside and outside the United States—alongside revolutionary uses of new media by the winning campaign—combined to upset established paradigms of how to run for president.

Indeed, the 2016 campaign broke down all the established distinctions that observers had used to describe campaigns: between insiders and outsiders, earned media and advertising, media and nonmedia, legacy media and new media, news and entertainment, and even foreign and domestic sources of campaign communication. How does one characterize a campaign, for example, in which the chief strategist is also the chairman of a media website (Breitbart) that is the campaign’s chief promoter and whose articles the candidate retweets to tens of millions of his followers, with those tweets then picked up and rebroadcast on cable-television news channels, including one (RT, formerly known as Russia Today) that is funded by a foreign government?

The 2016 election represents the latest chapter in the disintegration of the legacy institutions that had set bounds for U.S. politics in the postwar era. It is tempting (and in many ways correct) to view the Donald Trump campaign as unprecedented in its breaking of established norms of politics. Yet this type of campaign could only be successful because established institutions—especially the mainstream media and politicalparty organizations—had already lost most of their power, both in the United States and around the world….(More)”

Too Much of a Good Thing? Frequent Flyers and the Implications for the Coproduction of Public Service Delivery

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Benjamin Y. Clark and Jeffrey L. Brudney: “The attention on coproduction and specifically technology-enabled coproduction has grown substantially. This attention had provided findings that highlight the benefits for citizens and governments. Previous research on technologically-enabled coproduction (Internet, smartphones, and centralized non-emergency municipal call centers), show that these technologies have brought coproduction within reach of citizens (Meijer 2011; Kim and Lee 2012; Norris and Reddick 2013; Clark, Brudney, and Jang 2013; Linders 2012; Clark et al. 2016; Clark and Shurik 2016) and have the potential to improve perceptions of government performance (Clark and Shurik 2016). The advent of technologically-enabled coproduction has also made it possible for some residents to participate at levels not previously possible. These high volume coproducers, now known as “frequent flyers,” have the potential to become pseudo-bureaucrats. This chapter seeks to understand if we need to be concerned about this development. Additionally, we seek to understand what individual & neighborhood characteristics affect the intensity of coproduction of public services and if there are diffusion effects of frequent flyers.

To address these questions, we use surveys of San Francisco, California, residents conducted in 2011, 2013, and 2015. Our results suggest that the frequent flyers are largely representative of their communities. Our study finds some evidence that racial and ethnic minorities might be more likely to be a part of this group than the white majority. And perhaps most interestingly we find that neighbors appear to be learning from one another — the more frequent flyers that live in a neighborhood, the more likely it is that you are going to be a frequent flyer….(More)”

What Is an Event?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Robin Wagner-Pacifici: “We live in a world of breaking news, where at almost any moment our everyday routine can be interrupted by a faraway event. Events are central to the way that individuals and societies experience life. Even life’s inevitable moments—birth, death, love, and war—are almost always a surprise. Inspired by the cataclysmic events of September 11, Robin Wagner-Pacifici presents here a tour de force, an analysis of how events erupt and take off from the ground of ongoing, everyday life, and how they then move across time and landscape.

What Is an Event? ranges across several disciplines, systematically analyzing the ways that events emerge, take shape, gain momentum, flow, and even get bogged down. As an exploration of how events are constructed out of ruptures, it provides a mechanism for understanding eventful forms and flows, from the micro-level of individual life events to the macro-level of historical revolutions, contemporary terrorist attacks, and financial crises. Wagner-Pacifici takes a close look at a number of cases, both real and imagined, through the reports, personal narratives, paintings, iconic images, political posters, sculptures, and novels they generate and through which they live on. What is ultimately at stake for individuals and societies in events, Wagner-Pacifici argues, are identities, loyalties, social relationships, and our very experiences of time and space. What Is an Event? provides a way for us all—as social and political beings living through events, and as analysts reflecting upon them—to better understand what is at stake in the formations and flows of the events that mark and shape our lives….(More)”

Can The Internet Strengthen Democracy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Stephen Coleman: “From its inception as a public communication network, the Internet was regarded by many people as a potential means of escaping from the stranglehold of top-down, stage-managed politics. If hundreds of millions of people could be the producers as well as receivers of political messages, could that invigorate democracy? If political elites fail to respond to such energy, where will it leave them?

In this short book, internationally renowned scholar of political communication, Stephen Coleman, argues that the best way to strengthen democracy is to re-invent it for the twenty-first century. Governments and global institutions have failed to seize the opportunity to democratise their ways of operating, but online citizens are ahead of them, developing practices that could revolutionise the exercise of political power…(More)”

Smart Government: A New Adjective to Government Transformation or a Trick?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Leonidas G. Anthopoulos in Understanding Smart Cities: A Tool for Smart Government or an Industrial Trick: “Smart city and smart government appear to share a common scientific interest, since they structure corresponding research and practice terms like the “Web Applications and Smart Cities (AW4City)”, “The Smart Cities and Smart Government Research-Practice (SCSGRP) Consortium” and the “Beyond Bureaucracy”, while calls for mutual scientific tracks, workshops and articles can be located in several conference posts. This chapter analyzes the context of smart government. It performs a literature review on the term, where several conceptualization models are compared and explained. It is cleared that smart government is different to smart city government and to smart city. On the contrary, smart city can be seen as an area of practice for smart government, while smart governance is one of the smart city’s dimensions.

Moreover, the role of government is documented to be changed due to urbanization and technology. Urbanization results to communities, which are larger to nations and the role of local government is more complex compared to the usual national one. Moreover, technology provides governments with tools that has never got before, like the Internet-of-Things (IoT), which changes information collection and process flow, while it enables a direct and continuous connection with the community. Both these two phenomena highlight the government challenges of the forthcoming decades, which governments try to deal with data, process re-engineering, co-decision and service co-production….(More)”

Selected Readings on Blockchain Technology and Its Potential for Transforming Governance

Curated on Posted on by Prianka Srinivasan

By Prianka Srinivasan, Robert Montano, Andrew Young, and Stefaan G. Verhulst

The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of blockchain and governance was originally published in 2017.

Introduction

In 2008, an unknown source calling itself Satoshi Nakamoto released a paper named Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System which introduced blockchain technology. Blockchain is a novel system that uses a distributed ledger to record transactions and ensure compliance. Blockchain technology relies on an ability to act as a vast, transparent, and secure public database.

It has since gained recognition as a tool to transform governance by creating a decentralized system to

  • manage and protect identity,
  • trace and track; and
  • incentivize smarter social and business contracts.

These applications cast blockchain as a tool to confront certain public problems in the digital age.

The readings below represent selected readings on the applications for governance. They have been categorized by theme – Governance Applications, Identity Protection and Management, Tracing and Tracking, and Smart Contracts.

Selected Reading List

Governance Applications

  • Atzori, Marcella – The Center for Blockchain Technologies (2015) Blockchain Technology and Decentralized Governance: Is the State Still Necessary? –  Aims to investigate the political applications of blockchain, particularly in encouraging government decentralization by considering to what extent blockchain can be viewed as “hyper-political tools.” The paper suggests that the domination of private bodies in blockchain systems highlights the continued need for the State to remain as a central point of coordination.
  • Boucher, Philip. – European Parliamentary Research Service (2017) How blockchain technology could change our lives – This report commissioned by the European Parliamentary Research Service provides a deep introduction to blockchain theory and its applications to society and political systems, providing 2 page briefings on currencies, digital content, patents, e-voting, smart contracts, supply chains, and blockchain states.
  • Boucher, Philip. – Euroscientist (2017) Are Blockchain Applications Guided by Social Values? – This report by a policy analyst at the European Parliament’s Scientific foresight unit, evaluates the social and moral contours of blockchain technology, arguing that “all technologies have value and politics,” and blockchain is no exception. Calls for greater scrutiny on the possibility for blockchain to act as a truly distributed and transparent system without a “middleman.”
  • Cheng, Steve;  Daub, Matthew; Domeyer, Axel; and Lundqvist, Martin –McKinsey & Company (2017)  Using Blockchain to Improve Data Management in the Public Sector–This essay considers the potential uses of blockchain technology for the public sector to improve the security of sensitive information collected by governments and as a way to simplify communication with specialists.
  • De Filippi, Primavera; and Wright, Aaron –Paris University & Cordoza School of Law (2015)  Decentralized Blockchain Technology and the Rise of Lex Cryptographia – Looks at how to regulate blockchain technology, particularly given its implications on governance and society. Argues that a new legal framework needs to emerge to take into account the applications of self-executing blockchain technology.
  • Liebenau, Jonathan and Elaluf-Calderwood, Silvia Monica. – London School of Economics & Florida International University (2016) Blockchain Innovation Beyond Bitcoin and Banking. – A paper that explores the potential of blockchain technology in financial services and in broader digital applications, considers regulatory possibility and frameworks, and highlights the innovative potential of blockchain.
  • Prpić, John – Lulea University of Technology (2017) Unpacking Blockchains – This short paper provides a brief introduction to the use of Blockchain outside monetary purposes, breaking down its function as a digital ledger and transaction platform.
  • Stark, Josh – Ledger Labs (2016) Making Sense of Blockchain Governance Applications –This CoinDesk article discusses, in simple terms, how blockchain technology can be used to accomplish what is called “the three basic functions of governance.”
  • UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser (2016)  Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Blockchain – A report from the UK Government that investigates the use of blockchain’s “distributed leger” as a database for governments and other institutions to adopt.

Identity Protection and Management

  • Baars, D.S. – University of Twente (2016) Towards Self-Sovereign Identity Using Blockchain Technology. – A study exploring self-sovereign identity – i.e. the ability of users to control their own digital identity – that led to the creation of a new architecture designed for users to manage their digital ID. Called the Decentralized Identity Management System, it is built on blockchain technology and is based on the concept of claim-based identity.
  • Burger, Eric and Sullivan, Clare Linda. – Georgetown University (2016) E-Residency and Blockchain. – A case study focused on an Estonian commercial initiative that allows for citizens of any nation to become an “Estonian E-Resident.” This paper explores the legal, policy, and technical implications of the program and considers its impact on the way identity information is controlled and authenticated.
  • Nathan, Oz; Pentland, Alex ‘Sandy’; and Zyskind, Guy – Security and Privacy Workshops (2015) Decentralizing Privacy: Using Blockchain to Protect Personal Data – Describes the potential of blockchain technology to create a decentralized personal data management system, making third-party personal data collection redundant.
  • De Filippi, Primavera – Paris University (2016) The Interplay Between Decentralization and Privacy: The Case of Blockchain Technologies – A journal entry that weighs the radical transparency of blockchain technology against privacy concerns for its users, finding that the apparent dichotomy is not as at conflict with itself as it may first appear.

Tracing and Tracking

  • Barnes, Andrew; Brake, Christopher; and Perry, Thomas – Plymouth University (2016) Digital Voting with the use of Blockchain Technology – A report investigating the potential of blockchain technology to overcome issues surrounding digital voting, from voter fraud, data security and defense against cyber attacks. Proposes a blockchain voting system that can safely and robustly manage these challenges for digital voting.
  • The Economist (2015), “Blockchains The Great Chain of Being Sure About Things.” – An exploratory article that explores the potential usefulness of a blockchain-based land registry in places like Honduras and Greece, transaction registries for trading stock, and the creation of smart contracts.
  • Lin, Wendy; McDonnell, Colin; and Yuan, Ben – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2015)  Blockchains and electronic health records. – Suggests the “durable transaction ledger” fundamental to blockchain has wide applicability in electronic medical record management. Also, evaluates some of the practical shortcomings in implementing the system across the US health industry.

Smart Contracts

  • Iansiti, Marco; and Lakhani, Karim R. – Harvard Business Review (2017) The Truth about Blockchain – A Harvard Business Review article exploring how blockchain technology can create secure and transparent digital contracts, and what effect this may have on the economy and businesses.
  • Levy, Karen E.C. – Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (2017) Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law. – Article exploring the concept of blockchain-based “smart contracts” – contracts that securely automate and execute obligations without a centralized authority – and discusses the tension between law, social norms, and contracts with an eye toward social equality and fairness.

Annotated Selected Reading List

Cheng, Steve, Matthias Daub, Axel Domeyer, and Martin Lundqvist. “Using blockchain to improve data management in the public sector.” McKinsey & Company. Web. 03 Apr. 2017. http://bit.ly/2nWgomw

  • An essay arguing that blockchain is useful outside of financial institutions for government agencies, particularly those that store sensitive information such as birth and death dates or information about marital status, business licensing, property transfers, and criminal activity.
  • Blockchain technology would maintain the security of such sensitive information while also making it easier for agencies to use and access critical public-sector information.
  • Despite its potential, a significant drawback for use by government agencies is the speed with which blockchain has developed – there are no accepted standards for blockchain technologies or the networks that operate them; and because many providers are start-ups, agencies might struggle to find partners that will have lasting power. Additionally, government agencies will have to remain vigilant to ensure the security of data.
  • Although best practices will take some time to develop, this piece argues that the time is now for experimentation – and that governments would be wise to include blockchain in their strategies to learn what methods work best and uncover how to best unlock the potential of blockchain.

“The Great Chain of Being Sure About Things.” The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 31 Oct. 2015. Web. 03 Apr. 2017. http://econ.st/1M3kLnr

  • This is an exploratory article written in The Economist that examines the various potential uses of blockchain technology beyond its initial focus on bitcoin:
    • It highlights the potential of blockchain-based land registries as a way to curb human rights abuses and insecurity in much of the world (it specifically cites examples in Greece and Honduras);
    • It also highlights the relative security of blockchain while noting its openness;
    • It is useful as a primer for how blockchain functions as tool for a non-specialist;
    • Discusses “smart contracts” (about which we have linked more research above);
    • Analyzes potential risks;
    • And considers the potential future unlocked by blockchain
  • This article is particularly useful as a primer into the various capabilities and potential of blockchain for interested researchers who may not have a detailed knowledge of the technology or for those seeking for an introduction.

Iansiti, Marco and Lakhani, Karim R. “The Truth About Blockchain.” Harvard Business Review. N.p., 17 Feb. 2017. Web. 06 Apr. 2017. http://bit.ly/2hqo3FU

  • This entry into the Harvard Business Review discusses blockchain’s ability to solve the gap between emerging technological progress and the outdated ways in which bureaucracies handle and record contracts and transactions.
  • Blockchain, the authors argue, allows us to imagine a world in which “contracts are embedded in digital code and stored in transparent, shared databases, where they are protected from deletion, tampering, and revision”, allowing for the removal of intermediaries and facilitating direct interactions between individuals and institutions.
  • The authors compare the emergence of blockchain to other technologies that have had transformative power, such as TCP/IP, and consider the speed with which they have proliferated and become mainstream.
    • They argue that like TCP/IP, blockchain is likely decades away from maximizing its potential and offer frameworks for the adoption of the technology involving both single-use, localization, substitution, and transformation.
    • Using these frameworks and comparisons, the authors present an investment strategy for those interested in blockchain.

IBM Global Business Services Public Sector Team. “Blockchain: The Chain of Trust and its Potential to Transform Healthcare – Our Point of View.” IBM. 2016. http://bit.ly/2oBJDLw

  • This enthusiastic business report from IBM suggests that blockchain technology can be adopted by the healthcare industry to “solve” challenges healthcare professionals face. This is primarily achieved by blockchain’s ability to streamline transactions by establishing trust, accountability, and transparency.
  • Structured around so-called “pain-points” in the healthcare industry, and how blockchain can confront them, the paper looks at 3 concepts and their application in the healthcare industry:
    • Bit-string cryptography: Improves privacy and security concerns in healthcare, by supporting data encryption and enforces complex data permission systems. This allows healthcare professionals to share data without risking the privacy of patients. It also streamlines data management systems, saving money and improving efficiency.
    • Transaction Validity: This feature promotes the use of electronic prescriptions by allowing transactional trust and authenticated data exchange. Abuse is reduced, and abusers are more easily identified.
    • Smart contracts: This streamlines the procurement and contracting qualms in healthcare by reducing intermediaries. Creates a more efficient and transparent healthcare system.
  • The paper goes on to signal the limitations of blockchain in certain use cases (particularly in low-value, high-volume transactions) but highlights 3 use cases where blockchain can help address a business problem in the healthcare industry.
  • Important to keep in mind that, since this paper is geared toward business applications of blockchain through the lens of IBM’s investments, the problems are drafted as business/transactional problems, where blockchain primarily improves efficiency than supporting patient outcomes.

Nathan, Oz; Pentland, Alex ‘Sandy’; and Zyskind, Guy “Decentralizing Privacy: Using Blockchain to Protect Personal Data” Security and Privacy Workshops (SPW). 2015. http://bit.ly/2nPo4r6

  • This technical paper suggests that anonymization and centralized systems can never provide complete security for personal data, and only blockchain technology, by creating a decentralized data management system, can overcome these privacy issues.
  • The authors identify 3 common privacy concerns that blockchain technology can address:
    • Data ownership: users want to own and control their personal data, and data management systems must acknowledge this.
    • Data transparency and auditability: users want to know what data is been collected and for what purpose.
    • Fine-grained access control: users want to be able to easily update and adapt their permission settings to control how and when third-party organizations access their data.
  • The authors propose their own system designed for mobile phones which integrates blockchain technology to store data in a reliable way. The entire system uses blockchain to store data, verify users through a digital signature when they want to access data, and creates a user interface that individuals  can access to view their personal data.
  • Though much of the body of this paper includes technical details on the setup of this blockchain data management system, it provides a strong case for how blockchain technology can be practically implemented to assuage privacy concerns among the public. The authors highlight that by using blockchain “laws and regulations could be programmed into the blockchain itself, so that they are enforced automatically.” They ultimately conclude that using blockchain in such a data protection system such as the one they propose is easier, safer, and more accountable.

Wright, Aaron, and Primavera De Filippi. “Decentralized blockchain technology and the rise of lex cryptographia.” 2015. Available at SSRN . http://bit.ly/2oujvoG

  • This paper proposes that the emergence of blockchain technology, and its various applications (decentralized currencies, self-executing contracts, smart property etc.), will necessitate the creation of a new subset of laws, termed by the authors as “Lex Cryptographia.”
  • Considering the ability for blockchain to “cut out the middleman” there exist concrete challenges to law enforcement faced by the coming digital revolution brought by the technology. These encompass the very benefits of blockchain; for instance, the authors posit that the decentralized, autonomous nature of blockchain systems can act much like “a biological virus or an uncontrollable force of nature” if the system was ill-intentioned. Though this same system can regulate the problems of corruption and hierarchy associated with traditional, centralized systems, their autonomy poses an obvious obstacle for law-enforcement.
  • The paper goes on to details all the possible benefits and societal impacts of various applications of blockchain, finally suggesting there exists a need to “rethink” traditional models of regulating society and individuals. They predict a rise in Lex Cryptographia “characterized by a set of rules administered through self-executing smart contracts and decentralized (and potentially autonomous) organizations.” Much of these regulations depend upon the need to supervise restrictions placed upon blockchain technology that may chill its application, for instance corporations who may choose to purposefully avoid including any blockchain-based applications in their search engines so as to stymie the adoption of this technology.

How Can Digital Technologies Improve Public Services and Governance?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Nagy K. Hanna: “This book considers the opportunities and challenges of harnessing digital technologies for improved public services and governance. It focuses on the challenges of applying digital technologies in developing countries, where dramatic results can be realized. It addresses questions like these: How can digital technologies help enhance transparency, accountability, and participation to improve service design and delivery? Where are the opportunities to enhance key areas of governance and public service delivery? What are the promising practices to strengthen supply and mobilize demand for good governance and service delivery? What are the emerging lessons from recent experience? The author explains with real cases how ICT can be deployed to improve public sector efficiency and accountability for resource management; improve access and quality of public services for citizens; enhance transparency and reduce costs of government-business transactions, support entrepreneurship, attract private investment, and reduce the burden of regulation; and enhance the effectiveness of political oversight and policy institutions. This book details the importance of understanding the social, political, and institutional contexts and the policies that might scale up ICT for governance and public service improvement….(More)”

Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

(Open Access) Book by Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock: “…Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don’t learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability.

This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back – particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past….(More)”.

Networked Governance: New Research Perspectives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Betina Hollstein, Wenzel Matiaske and Kai-Uwe Schnapp: “This edited volume seeks to explore established as well as emergent forms of governance by combining social network analysis and governance research. In doing so, contributions take into account the increasingly complex forms which governance faces, consisting of different  types of actors (e.g. individuals, states, economic entities, NGOs, IGOs), instruments (e.g. law, suggestions, flexible norms) and arenas from the local up to the global level, and which more and more questions theoretical models that have focused primarily on markets and hierarchies. The topics addressed in this volume are processes of coordination, arriving at and implementing decisions taking place in network(ed) (social) structures; such as governance of work relations, of financial markets, of innovation and politics. These processes are investigated and discussed from sociologists’, political scientists’ and economists’ viewpoints….(More)”.