Blockchanging Politics: Opening a Trustworthy but Hazardous Reforming Era

Blockchanging Politics: Opening a Trustworthy but Hazardous Reforming Era

Dario de Oliveira Rodrigues, Pedro Santana Lopes
ISBN13: 9781799873631|ISBN10: 1799873633|EISBN13: 9781799873655
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-7363-1.ch004
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MLA

Rodrigues, Dario de Oliveira, and Pedro Santana Lopes. "Blockchanging Politics: Opening a Trustworthy but Hazardous Reforming Era." Political and Economic Implications of Blockchain Technology in Business and Healthcare, edited by Dário de Oliveira Rodrigues, IGI Global, 2021, pp. 118-159. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7363-1.ch004

APA

Rodrigues, D. D. & Lopes, P. S. (2021). Blockchanging Politics: Opening a Trustworthy but Hazardous Reforming Era. In D. Rodrigues (Ed.), Political and Economic Implications of Blockchain Technology in Business and Healthcare (pp. 118-159). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7363-1.ch004

Chicago

Rodrigues, Dario de Oliveira, and Pedro Santana Lopes. "Blockchanging Politics: Opening a Trustworthy but Hazardous Reforming Era." In Political and Economic Implications of Blockchain Technology in Business and Healthcare, edited by Dário de Oliveira Rodrigues, 118-159. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7363-1.ch004

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Abstract

There has been a fundamental change in the genesis of political-economic trust, with the arrival of a decentralized but structured way to reach consensuses and automatically implementing decisions through self-executable contracts. Blockchain technology (BT) is a distributed, consensus-based, and secure way for individuals to make enforceable censorship-resistant quantifiable agreements. Every vote is a transaction, and BT is paving the way for decentralizing politics, defending privacy, and streamlining voting procedures. It has the potential to provide much more granular governance that hopefully will preserve freedom and defend democracy. However, especially in an embarrassing post-COVID-19 world, BT's centralization can, instead, pave the way for citizens' control, turning cryptographic protocols into an authoritarian digital corset tightened by some to menace the privacy and freedom of many.

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