Blockchain Technology and Decentralized Governance: Is the State Still Necessary?

By Marcella Atzori. 2017

606 citations recorded by the source corpus.

La versione italiana di questo documento e disponibile al seguente link: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2731132The core technology of Bitcoin, the blockchain, has recently emerged as a disruptive innovation with a wide range of applications, potentially able to redesign our interactions in business, politics and society at large. Although scholarly interest in this subject is growing, a comprehensive analysis of blockchain applications from a political perspective is severely lacking to date. This paper aims to fill this gap and it discusses the key points of blockchain-based decentralized governance, which challenges to varying degrees the traditional mechanisms of State authority, citizenship and democracy. In particular, the paper verifies to which extent blockchain and decentralized platforms can be considered as hyper-political tools, capable to manage social interactions on large scale and dismiss traditional central authorities. The analysis highlights risks related to a dominant position of private powers in distributed ecosystems, which may lead to a general disempowerment of citizens and to the emergence of a stateless global society. While technological utopians urge the demise of any centralized institution, this paper advocates the role of the State as a necessary central point of coordination in society, showing that decentralization through algorithm-based consensus is an organizational theory, not a stand-alone political theory.

Subfields: Information Systems, Management Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e5222da3fc0d80f14c40805edcf4c10628aa9de2

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Citations in the corpus

A Blockchain Research Framework (2017, background): “Furthermore, the potential empowerment of the individual at the expense of governmental power may even require a reevaluation of the principle of coercion as the basis for the rule of law and the eventual consequences for the balance between liberalism and democracy (Atzori 2015).”
Toward Blockchain-Based Accounting and Assurance (2017, background): “…such as banking, trading, insurance, data protection, voting, intellectual property, identity authentication, leasing, and government service 2 (Atzori 2015; Cointelegraph 2015; De Meijer 2016; Liebenau and Elaluf-Calderwood 2016; Peters and Panayi 2016; Swan 2015a; Trautman 2016; Wall Street…”
Blockchain in the built environment and construction industry: A systematic review, conceptual models and practical use cases (2019, background): “Traceability and Auditability Immutability adds transparency to agreements and transactions; allows for better visibility and real-time tracking of materials in projects and supply chain from provenance (Atzori, 2015).”
Blockchains and the economic institutions of capitalism (2018, neutral): “And it has the unanimous constitutional properties of a rule-of-law governed nation state, by complicit agreement of all ‘citizens’ who opt in to such a decentralised collaborative organisation, and the automatic execution of the rules of that DCO through smart contract enforcement (Atzori 2015).”
Blockchain (2020, background): “Barber et al. (2012) highlight several weaknesses of Bitcoin, such as theft or loss of Bitcoins (malware attacks, accidental loss), scalability issues (e.”
A Survey on the Metaverse: The State-of-the-Art, Technologies, Applications, and Challenges (2023, background): “In addition to the ﬁnancial industry, blockchain has also shown broad applications in many other ﬁelds [13], [14].”
Cryptocurrencies as a financial asset: A systematic analysis (2019, background): “Atzori [2015] advocates the role of the State as a necessary central point of coordination in society, showing that decentralisation through algorithm-based consensus is an organisational theory, but not a stand-alone political theory. The authors highlight key risks related to a dominant position o”
Taming the blockchain beast? Regulatory implications for the cryptocurrency Market (2020, neutral): “cryptocurrency ban (Costelloe, 2017), while others advocate for a more or less flexible regulatory framework (Grinberg, 2011; Bollen, 2013; Atzori, 2015).”
Bitcoin, Blockchain and Fintech: a systematic review and case studies in the supply chain (2019, neutral): “…to any of the three technologies as a ‘profound new technology’ (Wright and De Filippi 2015), a ‘disruptive and foundational technology’ (Pilkington 2016), a ‘disruptive innovation’ (Atzori 2015), a digital revolution (Crosby et al. 2016), or a ‘disruptive technological revolution’ (Trautman 2016).”