Central bank independence (CBI) has been one of the most significant regulatory state developments of the last three decades. Following the 2008 financial crisis, many central bank mandates were extended to include a responsibility for financial stability. Some commentators claim this jeopardizes CBI by drawing central banks into contested political issues that can impact financial stability, in what we term an independence in decline thesis. Through a detailed study of the Bank of England's financial stability communications employing the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) codebook, we subject this independence in decline thesis to scrutiny. We show that since the extension of the Bank's mandate in 2011, Bank officials have discussed a wider range of more contentious policy issues. However, these communications appear to date to have largely reinforced the Bank's reputation for technical competence and political neutrality. In this sense, central bank “communicative agency” can be deployed to protect CBI performatively, while CBI can in turn be studied and understood as an ongoing communicative performance act. We find that repoliticization is a more contingent process than much central banking literature has allowed for, while financial stability communications are a potentially powerful regulatory instrument deserving of more scholarly attention.
{"title":"Performing central bank independence: The Bank of England's communicative financial stability strategy","authors":"Andrew Baker, Andrew Hindmoor, Sean McDaniel","doi":"10.1111/rego.12564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12564","url":null,"abstract":"Central bank independence (CBI) has been one of the most significant regulatory state developments of the last three decades. Following the 2008 financial crisis, many central bank mandates were extended to include a responsibility for financial stability. Some commentators claim this jeopardizes CBI by drawing central banks into contested political issues that can impact financial stability, in what we term an independence in decline thesis. Through a detailed study of the Bank of England's financial stability communications employing the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) codebook, we subject this independence in decline thesis to scrutiny. We show that since the extension of the Bank's mandate in 2011, Bank officials have discussed a wider range of more contentious policy issues. However, these communications appear to date to have largely reinforced the Bank's reputation for technical competence and political neutrality. In this sense, central bank “communicative agency” can be deployed to protect CBI performatively, while CBI can in turn be studied and understood as an ongoing communicative performance act. We find that repoliticization is a more contingent process than much central banking literature has allowed for, while financial stability communications are a potentially powerful regulatory instrument deserving of more scholarly attention.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"113 46","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138455893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
To the detriment of liberal democracy, governments have struggled to prevent the exploitation of personal data for voter manipulation in the digital era. Laws pertaining to political microtargeting are often piecemeal and tend to derive from a combination of laws on electoral advertising and privacy. Evidence indicates that this approach is insufficient to curtail microtargeting. However, little is known about the regulation of microtargeting outside of the European and US contexts within which the bulk of anti-microtargeting research has been undertaken. Accordingly, this paper aims to shed light on the preparedness of the law in Australia and New Zealand to mitigate the potential harms of political microtargeting. A comparative analysis of legislation pertaining to microtargeting is therefore undertaken using a blended approach of comparative law and content analysis. This paper: (1) identifies current legislation relevant to microtargeting in Australia and New Zealand; (2) assesses patterns of similarity and difference between each country's laws in relation to microtargeting; and (3) evaluates the preparedness of current legislation to curtail microtargeting in an evolving social media landscape. It finds that in both countries, legislation is sufficiently robust to mitigate microtargeting in some limited circumstances, but a cohesive regulatory approach is needed to constrain the most insidious microtargeting operations.
{"title":"Mitigating microtargeting: Political microtargeting law in Australia and New Zealand","authors":"Melissa-Ellen Dowling","doi":"10.1111/rego.12566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12566","url":null,"abstract":"To the detriment of liberal democracy, governments have struggled to prevent the exploitation of personal data for voter manipulation in the digital era. Laws pertaining to political microtargeting are often piecemeal and tend to derive from a combination of laws on electoral advertising and privacy. Evidence indicates that this approach is insufficient to curtail microtargeting. However, little is known about the regulation of microtargeting outside of the European and US contexts within which the bulk of anti-microtargeting research has been undertaken. Accordingly, this paper aims to shed light on the preparedness of the law in Australia and New Zealand to mitigate the potential harms of political microtargeting. A comparative analysis of legislation pertaining to microtargeting is therefore undertaken using a blended approach of comparative law and content analysis. This paper: (1) identifies current legislation relevant to microtargeting in Australia and New Zealand; (2) assesses patterns of similarity and difference between each country's laws in relation to microtargeting; and (3) evaluates the preparedness of current legislation to curtail microtargeting in an evolving social media landscape. It finds that in both countries, legislation is sufficiently robust to mitigate microtargeting in some limited circumstances, but a cohesive regulatory approach is needed to constrain the most insidious microtargeting operations.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"113 47","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138455892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Why does the International Monetary Fund (IMF) exit its lending relationships before member states have resolved their financial crises? It is particularly surprising given that the IMF often resumes its lending shortly after its withdrawal. We argue that IMF withdrawals are conditioned by global contagion risk. The tension between the IMF's mandate of global financial stability and its limited financial resources compels the IMF's early exit from its lending relationships. During periods of high global contagion, the IMF prioritizes its mandate by continuing its lending despite noncompliance. However, when the IMF perceives minimal contagion risk, it focuses on moral hazard, and willingly cuts its lending ties to preserve its reputation and resources for future crises. Employing a comparative analysis of IMF decision‐making in two of its largest borrowers, Argentina and Greece, we find supportive evidence for our claims.
{"title":"Global contagion risk and <scp>IMF</scp> credit cycles: Emergency exits and revolving doors","authors":"Stephen B. Kaplan, Sujeong Shim","doi":"10.1111/rego.12562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12562","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Why does the International Monetary Fund (IMF) exit its lending relationships before member states have resolved their financial crises? It is particularly surprising given that the IMF often resumes its lending shortly after its withdrawal. We argue that IMF withdrawals are conditioned by global contagion risk. The tension between the IMF's mandate of global financial stability and its limited financial resources compels the IMF's early exit from its lending relationships. During periods of high global contagion, the IMF prioritizes its mandate by continuing its lending despite noncompliance. However, when the IMF perceives minimal contagion risk, it focuses on moral hazard, and willingly cuts its lending ties to preserve its reputation and resources for future crises. Employing a comparative analysis of IMF decision‐making in two of its largest borrowers, Argentina and Greece, we find supportive evidence for our claims.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"39 35","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134953920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Distributive politics—or pork barreling—is prevalent across many political systems. It aims to influence the vote by directing discretionary spending to constituencies and/or groups of voters that are important for their re-election. We term this the objective dimension to pork barreling. However, we argue that for pork barreling to deliver rewards, voters must also be aware that they are gaining a special benefit from government—the subjective dimension. Using a unique Australian dataset that matches spending on electoral areas with a large scale national survey that asked voters if their area had received special benefits, we clarify the mechanisms behind pork barreling. Our results show that about one in five voters believed that their electorate had received additional benefits. Objectively, spending was disproportionately directed to government-held seats. Despite this largesse, we find that pork barreling had little or no effect on the vote in the 2022 Australian election.
{"title":"Distributive politics and electoral advantage in the 2022 Australian election","authors":"Ian McAllister, Nicholas Biddle","doi":"10.1111/rego.12561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12561","url":null,"abstract":"Distributive politics—or pork barreling—is prevalent across many political systems. It aims to influence the vote by directing discretionary spending to constituencies and/or groups of voters that are important for their re-election. We term this the objective dimension to pork barreling. However, we argue that for pork barreling to deliver rewards, voters must also be <i>aware</i> that they are gaining a special benefit from government—the subjective dimension. Using a unique Australian dataset that matches spending on electoral areas with a large scale national survey that asked voters if their area had received special benefits, we clarify the mechanisms behind pork barreling. Our results show that about one in five voters believed that their electorate had received additional benefits. Objectively, spending was disproportionately directed to government-held seats. Despite this largesse, we find that pork barreling had little or no effect on the vote in the 2022 Australian election.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"11 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71417904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Regulators who aim to reduce administrative burdens often promote trust-based policy instruments, such as legal affidavits or honesty pledges, as substitutes to traditional bureaucratic procedures. However, little is known on how the general public view such instruments, and whether people would actually comply with them, and under what circumstances. Using a series of experimental vignettes, we examine public preferences toward these instruments under different conditions and contexts. We find that overall, people exhibit an aversion to using affidavits, even when they are inexpensive and can save a considerable amount of time compared to the traditional bureaucratic procedure. In contrast, honesty pledges are largely preferred over both the standard procedure and signing an affidavit. We discuss factors influencing the public choice of trust-based instruments and offer recommendations to help policymakers promote public compliance using behaviorally informed policy instruments.
{"title":"Affidavit aversion: Public preferences for trust-based policy instruments","authors":"Rinat Hilo-Merkovich, Eyal Peer, Yuval Feldman","doi":"10.1111/rego.12560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12560","url":null,"abstract":"Regulators who aim to reduce administrative burdens often promote trust-based policy instruments, such as legal affidavits or honesty pledges, as substitutes to traditional bureaucratic procedures. However, little is known on how the general public view such instruments, and whether people would actually comply with them, and under what circumstances. Using a series of experimental vignettes, we examine public preferences toward these instruments under different conditions and contexts. We find that overall, people exhibit an aversion to using affidavits, even when they are inexpensive and can save a considerable amount of time compared to the traditional bureaucratic procedure. In contrast, honesty pledges are largely preferred over both the standard procedure and signing an affidavit. We discuss factors influencing the public choice of trust-based instruments and offer recommendations to help policymakers promote public compliance using behaviorally informed policy instruments.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"4 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71417573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article provides a resource-based perspective on the polymorphic regulatory welfare state. It shows regulatory and fiscal tools applied in the UK social security sector place demands on claimants' resources (i.e., possessions, labor and data) and simultaneously alter behavior in relation to these resources. The analysis exposes an operation that generates new and increasing resource pressures for claimants, providing a deeper conceptualization of a regulatory welfare state. It offers a new perspective on why regulatory and fiscal arrangements perpetuate existing inequalities and suggests an increase in welfare problems as the regulatory welfare state intensifies resource pressures.
{"title":"A resource-based perspective on the regulatory welfare state: Social security in the United Kingdom","authors":"David P. Horton, Gary Lynch-Wood","doi":"10.1111/rego.12559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12559","url":null,"abstract":"The article provides a resource-based perspective on the polymorphic regulatory welfare state. It shows regulatory and fiscal tools applied in the UK social security sector place demands on claimants' resources (i.e., possessions, labor and data) and simultaneously alter behavior in relation to these resources. The analysis exposes an operation that generates new and increasing resource pressures for claimants, providing a deeper conceptualization of a regulatory welfare state. It offers a new perspective on why regulatory and fiscal arrangements perpetuate existing inequalities and suggests an increase in welfare problems as the regulatory welfare state intensifies resource pressures.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"11 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71417905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Modern welfare states struggle with fragmented policies and siloed governments, as well as with the need to deal with wicked problems. We argue that addressing such problems from the perspective of central government can be facilitated by notions of joined‐up government that, combined with vertical aspects of modern governance, provide a basis for analysis. To embark upon such challenges, we examine policy integration and policy coordination within the complex area of Swedish migration policies in light of the European migrant crisis. Through a content analysis of an extensive qualitative material (interviews and documents), we show that policy integration is weakly associated with joint objectives and decision‐making. As a contribution to prior knowledge in the field, we emphasize the unintuitive finding that counteracting siloism and fragmentation in Swedish migration policy is not achieved through coherent governance ranging across tiers, functions, and sectors but mainly at subnational levels through policy coordination relying on a bottom‐up approach.
{"title":"The governance of policy integration and policy coordination through joined‐up government: How subnational levels counteract siloism and fragmentation within Swedish migration policy","authors":"Gustav Lidén, Jon Nyhlén","doi":"10.1111/rego.12558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12558","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Modern welfare states struggle with fragmented policies and siloed governments, as well as with the need to deal with wicked problems. We argue that addressing such problems from the perspective of central government can be facilitated by notions of joined‐up government that, combined with vertical aspects of modern governance, provide a basis for analysis. To embark upon such challenges, we examine policy integration and policy coordination within the complex area of Swedish migration policies in light of the European migrant crisis. Through a content analysis of an extensive qualitative material (interviews and documents), we show that policy integration is weakly associated with joint objectives and decision‐making. As a contribution to prior knowledge in the field, we emphasize the unintuitive finding that counteracting siloism and fragmentation in Swedish migration policy is not achieved through coherent governance ranging across tiers, functions, and sectors but mainly at subnational levels through policy coordination relying on a bottom‐up approach.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"173 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136185164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eva Ruffing, Martin Weinrich, Berthold Rittberger, Arndt Wonka
Throughout the past decades, the EU's agency landscape has continuously expanded in size and scope. In this article, we address the lack of longitudinal data on EU agencies' formal independence. We introduce a newly revised index to measure the formal independence of EU agencies from other EU institutions over time. Applying a rules-as-data approach we coded 206 regulations and amendments to develop a new dataset covering the formal independence of all 39 EU agencies from 1975 to 2022. This longitudinal overview provides first insights about the development of formal independence at the case and population levels. At the case level we identify frequent, albeit gradual reforms of EU agencies' independence. At the population level, we observe remarkable stability in overall independence, but find stark variation across different independence dimensions. Overall, EU-level principals have shifted over time from controlling individual decisions to controlling the agencies' general decision-making apparatus.
{"title":"The European administrative space over time mapping the formal independence of EU agencies","authors":"Eva Ruffing, Martin Weinrich, Berthold Rittberger, Arndt Wonka","doi":"10.1111/rego.12556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12556","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout the past decades, the EU's agency landscape has continuously expanded in size and scope. In this article, we address the lack of longitudinal data on EU agencies' formal independence. We introduce a newly revised index to measure the formal independence of EU agencies from other EU institutions over time. Applying a rules-as-data approach we coded 206 regulations and amendments to develop a new dataset covering the formal independence of all 39 EU agencies from 1975 to 2022. This longitudinal overview provides first insights about the development of formal independence at the case and population levels. At the case level we identify frequent, albeit gradual reforms of EU agencies' independence. At the population level, we observe remarkable stability in overall independence, but find stark variation across different independence dimensions. Overall, EU-level principals have shifted over time from controlling individual decisions to controlling the agencies' general decision-making apparatus.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"9 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Clara Egger, Tommaso Caselli, Georgios Tziafas, Eugénie de Saint Phalle, Wietse de Vries
This paper contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on the merits and limitations of computational legal text analysis by reflecting on the results of a research project documenting exceptional COVID-19 management measures in Europe. The variety of exceptional measures adopted in countries characterized by different legal systems and natural languages, as well as the rapid evolution of such measures, pose considerable challenges to manual textual analysis methods traditionally used in the social sciences. To address these challenges, we develop a supervised classifier to support the manual coding of exceptional policies by a multinational team of human coders. After presenting the results of various natural language processing (NLP) experiments, we show that human-in-the-loop approaches to computational text analysis outperform unsupervised approaches in accurately extracting policy events from legal texts. We draw lessons from our experience to ensure the successful integration of NLP methods into social science research agendas.
{"title":"Extracting and classifying exceptional COVID-19 measures from multilingual legal texts: The merits and limitations of automated approaches","authors":"Clara Egger, Tommaso Caselli, Georgios Tziafas, Eugénie de Saint Phalle, Wietse de Vries","doi":"10.1111/rego.12557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12557","url":null,"abstract":"This paper contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on the merits and limitations of computational legal text analysis by reflecting on the results of a research project documenting exceptional COVID-19 management measures in Europe. The variety of exceptional measures adopted in countries characterized by different legal systems and natural languages, as well as the rapid evolution of such measures, pose considerable challenges to manual textual analysis methods traditionally used in the social sciences. To address these challenges, we develop a supervised classifier to support the manual coding of exceptional policies by a multinational team of human coders. After presenting the results of various natural language processing (NLP) experiments, we show that human-in-the-loop approaches to computational text analysis outperform unsupervised approaches in accurately extracting policy events from legal texts. We draw lessons from our experience to ensure the successful integration of NLP methods into social science research agendas.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"9 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Blockchain is employed as a technology holding a solutionist promise, while at the same time, it is hard for the promissory blockchain applications to become realized. Not only is the blockchain protocol itself not foolproof, but when we move from “blockchain in general” to “blockchain in particular,” we see that new governance structures and ways of collaborating need to be developed to make blockchain applications work /become real . The qualities ascribed to (blockchain) technology in abstracto are not to be taken for granted in blockchain applications in concreto . The problem of trust, therefore, does not become redundant simply through the employment of “trustless” blockchain technology. Rather, on different levels, new trust relations have to be constituted. In this article, we argue that blockchain is a productive force, even if it does not solve the problem of trust, and sometimes regardless of blockchain technology not implemented after all. The values that underpin this seemingly “trustless technology” such as control , efficiency , and privacy and the story that is told about these values co‐shape the actions of stakeholders and, to a certain extent, pre‐sort the path of application development. We will illustrate this by presenting a case study on the Red Button ( De Rode Knop ), a Dutch pilot to develop a blockchain‐based solution that enables people who are in debt to communicate to their creditors that they are, together with the municipality, working on improving their situation, thereby requesting a temporary suspension from debt collection.
区块链是一种具有解决方案承诺的技术,但同时,区块链的应用前景难以实现。不仅区块链协议本身不是万无一失的,而且当我们从“区块链一般”转向“区块链特别”时,我们看到需要开发新的治理结构和协作方式,以使区块链应用程序工作/成为现实。在区块链的具体应用中,在抽象上归因于(区块链)技术的特性不应被视为理所当然。因此,信任问题不会仅仅通过使用“无信任”区块链技术而变得多余。相反,必须在不同层次上建立新的信任关系。在本文中,我们认为区块链是一种生产力,即使它没有解决信任问题,而且有时不管区块链技术到底没有实现。支撑这种看似“无需信任的技术”的价值观,如控制、效率和隐私,以及关于这些价值观的故事,共同塑造了利益相关者的行为,并在一定程度上预先排序了应用程序开发的路径。我们将通过一个关于Red Button (De Rode Knop)的案例研究来说明这一点。Red Button是荷兰的一个试点项目,旨在开发一种基于区块链的解决方案,使欠债的人能够与债权人沟通,表明他们正在与市政当局一起努力改善他们的状况,从而请求暂时停止讨债。
{"title":"Realizing a blockchain solution without blockchain? Blockchain, solutionism, and trust","authors":"Gert Meyers, Esther Keymolen","doi":"10.1111/rego.12553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12553","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Blockchain is employed as a technology holding a solutionist promise, while at the same time, it is hard for the promissory blockchain applications to become realized. Not only is the blockchain protocol itself not foolproof, but when we move from “blockchain in general” to “blockchain in particular,” we see that new governance structures and ways of collaborating need to be developed to make blockchain applications work /become real . The qualities ascribed to (blockchain) technology in abstracto are not to be taken for granted in blockchain applications in concreto . The problem of trust, therefore, does not become redundant simply through the employment of “trustless” blockchain technology. Rather, on different levels, new trust relations have to be constituted. In this article, we argue that blockchain is a productive force, even if it does not solve the problem of trust, and sometimes regardless of blockchain technology not implemented after all. The values that underpin this seemingly “trustless technology” such as control , efficiency , and privacy and the story that is told about these values co‐shape the actions of stakeholders and, to a certain extent, pre‐sort the path of application development. We will illustrate this by presenting a case study on the Red Button ( De Rode Knop ), a Dutch pilot to develop a blockchain‐based solution that enables people who are in debt to communicate to their creditors that they are, together with the municipality, working on improving their situation, thereby requesting a temporary suspension from debt collection.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135352747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}