Framework for democratic governance of distributed architectures: DEcentralised Citizens Owned Data Ecosystem

Abstract

The DECODE (DEcentralized Citizen Owned Data Ecosystems) project turns around three key realities at the core of the current data economy: echnological infrastructures (software and hardware), data, and social actors. It proposes a model of data ecosystems where, in opposition to the current data economy, citizens (both individually and collectively) own, govern, and make the most of their data1. In this deliverable we carry on two main tasks. Firstly and more importantly, we outline a preliminary framework for the democratic governance of distributed ledger technologies (or blockchains) such as DECODE. Otherwise, we focus upon the connection between social actors and DECODE technology, attending primarily to software. We leave the systematic consideration of the democratic governance of data for a later work (D2.5). Secondly, we look at some of the impacts that DECODE technology (specifically, in connection with the Decidim digital platform for participatory democracy) may have upon democratic governance in the network society. In order to accomplish the first task, we explore the various definitions, models and realities of governance as present in various literatures. We do so from a historical, conceptual and methodological viewpoints. We believe it is necessary to properly understand the genealogy and potentialities of this concept (and its linkages with the notions of government and governmentality) in order to explore politics today. Although we distinguish different strands of literature and policy making based on the notion of governance, probably the most relevant one for our exploration is the one tied to New Public Management and neoliberal policies since the 1980s. We also point towards alternative visions, which have called for a democratic governance of society that questions the centrality of representative democracy, corporations and the bureaucratic State: a tradition going from the New Left´s Port Huron Statement to the alter-globalization movement of the 2000s, up to offshoots of the more recent Occupy and 15M movements.