Political trust, entry barriers and privacy: Issues that blockchain can (not) solve?

This paper advances the citizens’ perspective on the use of emerging digital technologies in governance, based on a case study of a Dutch policy initiative. “The Red Button” (TRB) initiative was intended to provide a mechanism for citizens with multiple sources of debt to pause debt collection. The initiative was envisioned to rely on blockchain - the technological solution to the identified issues of citizens’ privacy concerns and control over data. This article assesses to what extent TRB initiative addresses these two citizens’ concerns identified by the development team, and identifies several additional citizens’ concerns, namely the issue of political trust, transparency and entry barriers. Insights from political psychology, political sociology and management science are combined to provide an interdisciplinary theoretical framework centred around trust. While the overall research aim is an exploratory analysis of the citizen’s perspective, the central research question concerns the determinants of citizens’ trust in the use of emerging digital technologies in governance. Two conclusions stand out: first, understanding technology is not a prerequisite for trusting it; and second, trust in technology (blockchain) does not automatically translate to trust in the actor using it (governmental institutions), implying that the “trustless” potential of blockchain to circumvent political (mis)trust is limited. Finally, based on the analysis of the citizens’ perspective, policy recommendations are given with regards to the use of emerging digital technologies in governance.