{"title":"Blockchain for decentralised rural development and governance","authors":"Ian Merrell","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2022.100086","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Rural areas are steadily being marginalised in a global economy where ‘core/periphery’ models of development are dominant. To overcome this, rural areas have experimented with decentralised governance. However, this process is fraught with political, fiscal, and institutional difficulties. These often revolve around transparency and accountability issues and low participation rates. Blockchain technology could act as a social innovation to overcome issues in decentralised governance, and rural areas could even prove to be a fertile environment for future innovation. In this conceptual paper, the potential of blockchain technology is theoretically positioned in regional development discourses. After exploring how blockchain could be applied to rural governance and the barriers it needs to overcome to reach mass adoption, a new distributed model of governance is suggested.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"3 3","pages":"Article 100086"},"PeriodicalIF":6.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720922000276/pdfft?md5=a6488c516b8d2790b99641f3998fc99f&pid=1-s2.0-S2096720922000276-main.pdf","citationCount":"11","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","FirstCategoryId":"1093","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720922000276","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 11
Abstract
Rural areas are steadily being marginalised in a global economy where ‘core/periphery’ models of development are dominant. To overcome this, rural areas have experimented with decentralised governance. However, this process is fraught with political, fiscal, and institutional difficulties. These often revolve around transparency and accountability issues and low participation rates. Blockchain technology could act as a social innovation to overcome issues in decentralised governance, and rural areas could even prove to be a fertile environment for future innovation. In this conceptual paper, the potential of blockchain technology is theoretically positioned in regional development discourses. After exploring how blockchain could be applied to rural governance and the barriers it needs to overcome to reach mass adoption, a new distributed model of governance is suggested.
期刊介绍:
Blockchain: Research and Applications is an international, peer reviewed journal for researchers, engineers, and practitioners to present the latest advances and innovations in blockchain research. The journal publishes theoretical and applied papers in established and emerging areas of blockchain research to shape the future of blockchain technology.