Blockchain Papers

Januarius Asongu

The Ambazonian conflict in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions has unfolded within an era defined by mobile connectivity, social media, and digitally mediated political contention. This article examines the role of mobile technology in shaping the conflict’s trajectory from early mobilization to prolonged armed stalemate. It argues that mobile technology functioned as both an enabling and destabilizing force: facilitating mass mobilization, diaspora coordination, documentation of abuses, and digital finance, while simultaneously accelerating fragmentation, disinformation, cybersecurity exposure, and state surveillance. Drawing on comparative cases including the Arab Spring, ISIS, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Myanmar, the article situates Ambazonia within broader patterns of digital contention and digital authoritarian response. The analysis further demonstrates how ungoverned digital visibility and decentralized online fundraising undermined strategic coherence and legitimacy. The article concludes that while mobile technology can amplify resistance, it cannot substitute for political legitimacy, institutional coherence, or negotiated settlement. Durable peace requires a transition from networked resistance to normatively grounded frameworks such as the Alliance for Peace and Justice (APJ) Peace Plan.

The Historian

“The Ledger of Power: Who Benefits, Who Pays” Author: Historian Abstract This work examines political power not through ideology, legality, or declared moral principles, but through a diagnostic lens focused on benefit, cost, and silence. Across democratic, authoritarian, and hybrid systems, it traces how legitimacy is constructed and maintained by the selective distribution of advantage and the deferral or concealment of harm. Rather than asking whether regimes are virtuous, this analysis asks who benefits, who pays, and which costs remain unaccounted for. Drawing on historical patterns and contemporary structures, the text argues that power defines what is considered “right” through enforceability and delivery, while moral language follows as justification rather than guidance. Elections, law, growth, and stability are treated as mechanisms that regulate elite competition, manage consent, and stabilize hierarchical benefit flows. When these mechanisms succeed, legitimacy appears moral; when they fail, narratives collapse and deferred costs surface. The book emphasizes that compliance is often transactional rather than ideological, rooted in material security, predictability, and exhaustion rather than belief. It further shows how stagnation, inequality, and narrative contradiction erode legitimacy, producing cynicism, withdrawal, or instability. Rather than prescribing ideal systems, the work offers an analytical framework for understanding any regime’s trajectory by examining its internal accounting of benefits and burdens. The central claim is simple: power is temporary, legitimacy is conditional, and consequences endure. Understanding political systems requires not moral affirmation or rejection, but clear-eyed accounting of how advantage and harm are distributed over time.

tony hu

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) were supposed to prevent oligarchy. On the evidence, they haven't. Voting power is concentrated, delegation keeps producing superrepresentatives, and proposal turnout hovers below ten percent (Han et al. 2024; Fabrega et al. 2025). The empirical literature has measured this pattern many times over, but it has not had a theoretical frame equal to what it measures. This paper offers one. Drawing on Milovan Djilas's The New Class (1957) and Robert Michels's Political Parties (1911), I argue that DAO governance reproduces-not metaphorically, but structurally-the features of the communist nomenklatura: a self-perpetuating stratum that rules through control of the administrative apparatus rather than through ownership, that selects its members by cooptation rather than election, and that accrues privileges attached to position. I operationalize this through the Nomenklatura Index (ONI), a seven-dimension composite derived directly from Djilas's categories and piloted on three DAOs-Compound, MakerDAO/Sky, and Gitcoin-chosen to span the range of oligarchic formation I expected to see. The pilot does what it is supposed to do: ONI discriminates across the three cases in the predicted order and with meaningful spread. I close with design and regulatory implications. The governance-design ones (rotation mandates, supermajorities on self-dealing, deliberation minima) target the Djilasian mechanisms directly rather than working around them; the regulatory ones supply courts and agencies with a diagnostic vocabulary for the liability questions opened by CFTC v. Ooki DAO and unlikely to close anytime soon.

Laurent Fourchard

Portia Roelofs, Good Governance in Nigeria. Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 356 pp. £ 26.69 paperback. Peer Schouten, Roadblock Politics. The Origins of Violence in Central Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 256 pp. £ 95.78 hardcover. The state in Africa has been the object of ongoing analysis and debate. Those who qualify it as ‘failed’, ‘weak’, ‘fragile’ or ‘neo-patrimonial’ rely on a strict Weberian definition which views the state as the monopolist of legitimate physical violence, an autonomous bureaucratic apparatus, the embodiment of popular sovereignty, and a spatially and territorially coherent entity. These features represent an essentially Western ideal type. As an alternative, scholars have explored its long historical formation (Bayart, 1989; Cooper, 2002; Hibou and Tozy, 2020), the interpenetration of the bureaucratic realm and the social world (Mitchell, 1991), and the everyday making of the state through processes of negotiation, contestation and bricolage (Hagmann and Péclard, 2010). Other scholars have examined the fabric of informal political order, emphasizing, sometimes uncritically, ‘the strength of weak states’ (Meagher, 2012). This essay reviews the two books listed above by Portia Roelofs and Peer Schouten, which are part of the ongoing discussion on state-making theory. Both authors reflect on this theory from a local perspective, employing popular understandings of accountability, legitimacy and forms of sovereignty. Roelofs book on Nigeria and Schouten's on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are excellent cases through which to examine these issues and to rethink some of the significant challenges Africa faces. These include an outward-looking political economy based on mineral wealth in parts of the territory (for example, oil in Nigeria and coltan, copper and gold in Eastern Congo); decades of armed conflicts, indicating the difficulty of the central state in controlling its national territory; widespread forms of patronage understood as the distribution by politicians of private goods to citizens; and the imposition of structural adjustment programmes by the International Monetary Fund which drastically reduced the state bureaucracy and its capacity to govern societies. At first glance, the title of Portia Roelofs book Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-first Century (hereafter Good Governance in Nigeria) might be viewed as provocative. It is surprising to see good governance associated with this country, given that Nigerian politics is often characterized in academic literature by neo-patrimonialism, patronage and corruption. Instead of endorsing the view of Nigerian governance as marked by self-destructive greed and a culture of corruption, Roelofs explores lesser-known forms of popular accountability and transparency by examining how the Nigerian political class governs the population and how Nigerians want to be governed. She focuses on Ekiti, Lagos and Oyo, three southwestern states where governors from the dominant party in the southwest, the All Progressives Congress (APC), adopted new public policies in the 2000s. They did so not because they were influenced by donor agencies (for example, in 2004, development aid represented only 0.6 per cent of government spending) but rather because they reactivated a long tradition of progressive governance ingrained in the history of the southwestern region. While radically different in the argumentation, Peer Schouten's book Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa (hereafter Roadblock Politics) also starts with empirical observations. Schouten mapped more than 800 roadblocks in eastern DRC, where minerals are strongly associated with armed conflict. With this new cartographic evidence in hand, the author challenges a well-established analytical framework — the DRC conflict is not so much about control over natural resources but about control over spaces of circulation or roads. For Schouten, roadblocks form an entry point into ‘forms of political order that somehow remain invisible in conventional state theory’ (p. xiv). His comparative analysis with the Central African Republic (CAR) helps us to rethink how informal political orders have been constructed along roads in economically poor, resource-rich countries in Central Africa. For the author, roadblocks are not symptomatic of the region's predicament as Hobbesian anarchy; rather, they display a structure of consistent rules and logics of control. These rules pertain to who can set up a roadblock, where, and how movement beyond the roadblock is organized. In exploring these different forms of territorial governance, both books reviewed here prove useful in rethinking state theory and the making of contemporary political arenas. They are based on several years of fieldwork conducted by the authors as part of their PhD dissertation research. What politicians, traders, market women, policemen, military men and rebels think about governance, sovereignty and accountability enables the authors to decipher conventional wisdom on good governance, the resource curse thesis and the neo-patrimonial state. In the sections that follow, I individually discuss the two books which address different research questions on governance, transparency and political order. Following this, I examine the various local conceptions of authority and political legitimacy, which are rooted in a long historical trajectory and challenge common assumptions about state theory. As in so many developing countries, the World Bank and international donors sought to export a ready-made model to Nigeria to transform the state from within. A classical international good governance agenda insists on the need for an insulated system of techno-managerial governance that will protect the market from politics, and in which elected officials and civil servants in government are committed to delivering public goods and to being held accountable for adhering to rules and meeting key indicators. While this narrative is well known, it is surprising to see its adoption by some states in Nigeria in the early 2000s. A long period of military rule, coupled with the implementation in 1985 of structural adjustment programmes, led to the evisceration of many federal and state institutions, a sharp increase in corruption levels, a general decline of public infrastructure, the marginalization of civil society institutions and an upsurge in the number of violent groups claiming more financial resources from the federal state (Osaghae, 1998; Suberu, 2001). Nonetheless, in the early 2000s, the Lagos State government implemented new public policies consistent with the governance agenda of the World Bank, which entailed upgrading public services, reasserting an autonomous civil service, embracing public–private partnerships in various sectors (security, waste and transportation) and increasing the state budget through taxation. Roelofs convincingly suggests that Lagos became a model replicated in neighbouring states; it was implemented in Oyo State during the mandate of Governor Abiola Ajimobi (2011‒19) and in Ekiti State under Governor Kayode Fayemi (2010‒14) (p. 59). Both governors were able to modernize their states by embracing public‒private partnerships and constructing new roads and market infrastructures. Despite this, Fayemi was not re-elected in 2014, and the APC lost Oyo State to the opposition in 2019. This leads Roelofs to ask, ‘What kind of accountability and what kind of transparency do people expect from their leaders?’ (p. 56). Her book is partly inspired by the suggestion in the early 2000s of Thandika Mkandawire that ‘anti-democratic effects of technocracy can be counterbalanced by an aspect of governance that has been downplayed by Western approaches to democracy: the social dimension’ (p. 24). The core argument Roelofs advances is that power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable. In other words, social demands (either personal, family or group-based interests) have the potential for constraining power which, admittedly, is an argument poorly mobilized by academics working on Nigeria. In the process of doing so, Roelofs reconceptualizes accountability as accessibility. Accessibility is understood as the maintenance of spaces for direct communication between political leaders and their constituents. However, politicians often ignore these demands in favour of dominant technocratic approaches to accountability. On a more theoretical level, the author criticizes the claim that politics should be divorced from the world of social relations. Many academics who promote rational choice theory, as well as economic experts at the World Bank, fail to recognize the central role that social relations between politicians and the broader population play in shaping effective mechanisms of transparency and accountability. Similarly, the dominant interpretation of transparency is largely based on the quantity and coverage of budget information. For Roelofs, this is insufficient. Transparency demands that the social networks, relations and obligations within which leaders are embedded should be made visible. While emphasis is placed on the importance of communication channels, Roelofs is not naïve about the material dimension of politics and does not overlook established practices of exchange of private goods between politicians and voters. She also recognizes that such patronage politics provides only a partial explanation: the relationship between voters and politicians is also shaped by citizens’ social demands and their broader expectations about how politicians should behave. Empirically, the argumentation is convincing for the states of Oyo and Ekiti. The APC governors were lacking human faces and neglecting the masses despite the implementation of progressive policies. Although Ajimobi improved or built new infrastructures, he was seen as arrogant and disrespectful and was replaced by a governor who was perceived as being closer to the people. Lagos State remains a question mark in Roelofs book. It is presented as a model for the southwestern states based on the success achieved during the rule of Governors Tinubu (1999‒2007) and Fashola (2007‒15). This reflects an academic optimism about the policies of Lagos that does not consider the strength of APC bureaucratic machines and societal groups (for example, market women's associations, unions, professional guilds, street leaders) loyal to APC governors and working for their re-election (Fourchard, 2021; Lawanson et al., 2025; Salvaire, 2019). In other words, it remains to be demonstrated that since 1999 APC governors of Lagos State have been re-elected due to their accessibility, accountability and ability to listen to the population at large. At the core of Peer Schouten's book, Roadblock Politics, lies another conventional wisdom. The resource curse thesis is a popular narrative with respect to Central Africa. Richard Auty (1993) is credited with coining the concept,1 but Paul Collier amplified it in the late 1990s. Collier explained that the upsurge of conflicts in Africa was linked to globalization while civil wars were motivated by the same basic ‘greed’ as that of rational entrepreneurs (Collier, 2004; Collier and Hoeffler, 2004). The risk of civil war was especially high if countries with weak institutions depended on primary commodity exports, as in the DRC and CAR (p. 237). Interestingly, Schouten notes that Collier was highly influential in promoting this thesis among an unlikely alliance of activists, governments and industrial stakeholders in the region (pp. 237‒38). Schouten's quantitative and qualitative analysis of roadblocks rightly indicates not only that this oversimplifies the situation on the ground, but also that it conceals other analytical possibilities. He demonstrates and argues that the emergence of mobile economies across long distances gave rise to roadblocking as a political technique for negotiating and governing the control of long-distance exchanges from pre-colonial times to the present. Roadblock Politics is a very well-informed history and geography of roadblocks in central Africa. The work is impressive in its articulation of a quantitative analysis of 1,000 roadblocks concentrated in Eastern Congo and CAR with ethnographic insights from specific places. Schouten advances three principal arguments. First, roadblocks are a meaningful form of state making because they have been a dominant form of power both in the 19th century and in the past 25 years, a point to which I will return in the last section of this essay. Second, different means of different forms of rule and which the author to as an of where the of the of is to and the circulation of goods and Roadblock are highly On national and which of roadblocks are largely by state roads and through the with weak economic are and at per cent by armed groups such as the and other or reflect the of power in that they for They are both a groups different of and a must part of their up the roadblocks do not Following such as or the as they are able to through roadblocks through of and who the on the while a from the under which this work is Schouten's to the theoretical that are First, it challenges the dominant role minerals play in of conflict in Central Africa and an interpretation of the Although roadblocks are a central part of the conflict between groups for control of different they are not linked to the of mineral All goods are not only Second, it what Schouten to as the political of governance which is meaningful only if it is in to a territory and a population within it (p. a with other forms of territorial governance might have been useful to the to which roadblock politics as local political order is that the author roadblocks as a political through which Central African the by the of In for their they from and at roadblock politics reflects local conceptions of public authority in Central Africa. Despite being very both examine African conceptions of state making and political They the making of authority by exploring and often political This is especially in an academic where African history has so often been to Schouten, is a long historical tradition of to the of power in the of Roadblock Politics the history of a on on the roads from the to the and along the Congo to the became widespread in the 19th century as the circulation of goods as and It was a very for able to and control over a party to it was As with was the for these as or For Schouten, a form of He us that this is rooted in Central African the of along key is in and what as first of people to wealth by along (p. were a of state making than autonomous to the emergence of political power (p. Roadblock politics in the century is presented as a of two how the period period from the of the 19th century the of the in might have contemporary and politics is a form of history that to as Peer Schouten's book is well to an between the two the is more historical especially of the and The of roads into during the period is presented as a African are at the same seen as the of the on the suggests that the was along and in in mineral but weak especially in and was This form of government is by the author as on a (p. Schouten suggests in the same that on was a and more form of rule than the of direct across He also that the population was and in in the a as the (p. The last point to is that the analysis of and to be the of the order. All the presented by Schouten favour a thesis from the pre-colonial to the period in to state However, I have some about this The thesis has the of some on rule which are well established by These include the capacity of the to in very the in of central African to along the and in of work and and the ability of to and by especially World In other words, Schouten suggests that the population the imposition of (for example, and and the central state other political possibilities. This thesis does not to how view their of movement of the In the book, a at about In the I from to were this is (p. In a roads are The government (p. These that a system of roads did of the century and that the It a of national state legitimacy, and if this were the roadblocks politics be an radically different to the both in and in the of and In other words, historical between the 19th and are not especially how roadblock politics might from In Good Governance in Roelofs is in to state than in the to rule and the in which political legitimacy is over Instead of that a of good governance was on Nigeria by the Roelofs the tradition of or or In the of a political class led by a and of the Western this have a to rule in so as they display a based on Western with the of in the 19th For historical in the region in the 19th and and replaced war as a of political leaders must than they For and governors in leaders need an of government if they are to their to new The a social and political a social that is through the of It the of social and for constraining the power of Roelofs suggests that Tinubu was elected as governor of Lagos State in he was very much influenced by and a public in the of Nigeria for and the return of in The strength of the on the capacity to of historical and Roelofs is very to local conceptions of APC politicians a to and to be for their good governance, but they politicians from private of and She suggests that is a The book the between political of the politicians who do not often This of development and local authority has as by the for and so ingrained in the southwestern part of Nigeria. ask, to what local politicians have been in the past APC politicians have the in Nigeria since but popular has in a of economic power and of in and What remains of this to It that has as the three political in the very patronage politics to play a significant role in by the widespread of politicians their that the core of and This the question of how political legitimacy has been built over in the two to state on the hand, and popular of accountability, on the other hand, to be central in the of local political the two books are convincing in their argumentation, might be other to For Schouten, roadblock politics reflects the radically and of local public This point the in which informal institutions public authority by a of (for example, associations, associations, women's and In the past years, an of work in and political has the role of state and institutions in shaping local authority in (Fourchard, the African has of institutions working at the of the state and These institutions the state as and while to or their public authority have and conflicts, power local power within a the of political Schouten's central arguments. or informal institutions that transform into This is the for groups that have some legitimacy because they are seen as more than the and a for which people are to and Schouten that roadblock groups have some legitimacy, especially with respect to and they for the of local What might be is the to which these armed groups at a of from the or the local they might be a of the but is a significant between the two in that roadblocks to be a form of between central state services, and what are the or the seen as legitimate or in and on this another from the roadblocks to the in which they are to how to between groups which legitimate or local For Roelofs, local political legitimacy is in the popular of accountability and accessibility. In coupled with a neo-patrimonial of the the social with officials as effective governance in Africa. by patronage or politics, Western political have social relations in their discussion of African politics and socially embedded forms of of the of Good Governance in Nigeria is that it beyond these patronage to other forms of popular accountability in Nigeria and in the For example, politicians are to be embedded in and the of communication through to by of is This is in the literature on politics but largely in the literature on in a broader with literature beyond the African is but political research on Africa with neo-patrimonial literature or rational choice theory political and political research that and the of political legitimacy beyond However, a more central question how politicians are in Africa and how their will and political demands in public The two books reviewed here with historical and conceptions of authority and accountability in Africa that have been This of history into the social remains to a more of the fabric of public authority in the African and is a for more qualitative work that challenges and assumptions about countries in and the African in The two books a central to the conventional wisdom on state authority in Africa and A strength of these two scholars is their capacity to fieldwork over to rethink many central issues in state-making theory. in the of a roadblock, a or in how local politicians to their is an excellent point for on very state theory. The World technocratic of good governance, the resource curse thesis and neo-patrimonial and rational choice theory remain dominant in international development agencies and among academics and need to be by such research. In this the to territorial governance forms part of a broader by a number of scholars to the state in a more and (Hagmann and Péclard, 2021; The quantitative analysis of roadblocks helps beyond a of the roadblocks are a form of political order and to be a political or the of mineral exploring the role of Western such as and is an to the of in such a political is a political and at the for International His research include the and the political of public He and in Africa and Nigeria

Ignacio Labaqui

It has been 8 months since the inauguration of the Javier Milei administration. His rise to power marks an unprecedented event in Argentine politics. Until 2021, when he stepped into politics and ran for a deputy seat in the city of Buenos Aires, Milei, who besides his role as an economic advisor at Corporación América—a large business conglomerate—had been a frequent guest on television shows, levying strong criticism toward both Kirchnerism and Mauricio Macri's economic policies, advocating for a sharp reduction in the state apparatus and sweeping market reform aggressiveness displayed toward his critics and rivals. In 2021, he founded La Libertad Avanza, a small party that competed in that year's mid-term election, obtaining 17% of the vote in the city of Buenos Aires and gaining two Chamber of Deputies seats. While not uncommon in other countries, Javier Milei is the first case in Argentina of a presidential candidacy crafted on a television set and social media. His constant presence on shows made him popular across the country against the backdrop of the severe economic decay and deterioration of social indicators that Argentina has experienced over the past 14 years. To many observers, his unexpected victory in the November 19 presidential runoff was a major blow to Argentine politics and the country's establishment. His first-place showing in the August 13 presidential primaries had already dealt a shock to Argentina's political elites. There was some expectation before the August open, simultaneous, and compulsory primaries (PASO in Spanish) that Milei could end up being the candidate with the most votes at the individual level, but it was believed that the aggregate vote of the main opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio and of the ruling Frente de Todos, both of which had competitive primaries, would surpass La Libertad Avanza's candidate. The election of outsiders has been a common phenomenon in Latin America since the beginning of the third wave of democratization, but until last year's election, Argentina had not experienced it. The resilience of Peronism and the strength of its partisan apparatus apparently posed a strong barrier for an outsider lacking a strong partisan structure. Furthermore, Argentina's electoral system stood as an obstacle to the rise of outsiders. The PASO, which have effectively turned the presidential election into a three-round system, and the use of paper ballots, which requires a large apparatus to monitor the electoral process, allegedly provided Argentine politics with a bullet-proof jacket that safeguarded its polity from outsiders. Yet, against all odds, Javier Milei surprisingly ended up as the candidate with the most votes in the August PASO, at 31%, dealing the first blow to Argentina's partisan establishment; he obtained 29% support in the October first round, placing him in second place behind Sergio Massa, whom he defeated in the November 19 runoff by a much larger margin than expected (Labaqui, 2023a). Elected with an 11-point advantage in the presidential second round, Milei's party only held 10% and 15% of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies seats, effectively becoming Argentina's weakest head of state in legislative terms since the democratic restoration in 1983. As is well known, Milei's initial economic package resulted in an acceleration of Argentina's already high inflation rate, presumably leading to a further deterioration of poverty rates and deepening the pre-existing decline in economic activity. Yet, after 6 months in office, Milei's approval ratings remained surprisingly high, according to various public opinion polls raising questions about social tolerance to fiscal austerity and economic adjustment. In this sense, Milei's rise in Argentine politics poses a fascinating set of questions that are relevant both from an empirical and theoretical standpoint. As stated, the rise of populist outsiders (and as I shall describe later, this label fits Milei's leadership strategy and style perfectly) has not been unusual in Latin America but is rather uncommon in Argentina.1 By this token, it is worth questioning what lies behind his stunning ascent to power. The emergence of populist leaders has typically been associated with the deinstitutionalization of party systems (Levitsky & Loxton, 2013; Mainwaring, 2018; Mainwaring & Scully, 1995). The press usually compares Milei's triumph to Donald Trump's 2016 victory in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro's in Brazil. There is more recent literature on the surge of a new illiberal and populist right both globally and in the region (Luna & Rovira-Kaltwasser, 2021; Monestier & Vommaro, 2021). Theoretical discussions about populism are also relevant to understanding Milei. The blend of populism and economic liberalism is hardly a new phenomenon in the region (Weyland, 1996). Milei's legislative weakness also brings back discussions about the elective affinities between neoliberalism and populism raised by Weyland (1996) and Roberts (1995) 30 years ago during the heyday of market reforms in Latin America. At the same time, Milei's quest for radical economic liberalization brings to the forefront debates regarding the political economy of stabilization plans and structural reforms and discussions about the functioning of minority governments under presidential regimes. Milei's presidency has also raised discussions about the consequences his arrival to power could have for Argentina's democracy. Levitsky and Loxton (2013) have argued that the election of a populist leader, especially in the case of outsiders, has usually resulted in the emergence of competitive authoritarian regimes. During the campaign for the 2023 runoff election, several organizations and intellectuals warned about the peril that Milei represented for the fate of Argentina's democracy (Clarín, 2023a). In this essay, I will address some of these questions. First, I will argue that Javier Milei's victory fits well with the existing knowledge about the circumstances that result in the election of populist leaders. Then, I will center on Milei's particular blend of populism, which, as noted, has not been an uncommon phenomenon in the region. In the fourth section, I assess the prospects for governability of Milei's administration. In the final section, I assess the first semester of Milei's tenure as president and discuss whether he poses a threat to Argentina's democracy. The August 13 primaries were a shock for Argentina's political establishment. After votes were counted, Milei surprisingly not only had the most votes as an individual candidate but also his newly formed political party La Libertad Avanza was in first place, outnumbering the until-then predominant political coalitions—the ruling Peronist Unión Por la Patria and the center-right non-Peronist opposition Juntos por el Cambio. Although Argentina's party system had exhibited clear trends of deinstitutionalization since the mid-1990s (Gervasoni, 2018), it had not suffered a collapse of its party system like Venezuela and Bolivia in 1998 and 2005, respectively, or more recently in México with López Obrador's (AMLO) election in 2018, and in El Salvador in 2019. Even during the 2001–2002 economic crisis, despite the profound disenchantment with the partisan establishment, the party system did not break down completely but underwent a partial restructuring (Malamud & De Luca, 2015). The collapse of the convertibility regime certainly took a toll on the degree of institutionalization, but there was a more profound effect on the radical party than on Peronism (Escolar et al., 2002; Torre, 2003). The creation of Cambiemos in 2015—an alliance between Macri's Propuesta Republicana (PRO), the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR). and the Coalición Cívica—resulted in the first victory at the national level of a non-Peronist coalition since the demise of the Alianza—the coalition of the radical party and the center-left Frepaso—in 2001. Both the victory of Cambiemos (later rebranded as Juntos por el Cambio) in 2015 and the Peronist comeback (under the Frente de Todos label, which brought together different Peronist factions that had quit the party during the Kirchner era) in 2019 suggested that Argentine politics were evolving toward a two-coalition system. Paradoxically, the degree of institutionalization in partisan representation exhibited a sharp contrast with the disappointing performance of Argentina's ruling coalitions. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated Argentina's economic problems. The Fernández administration's (2019–2023) decision to tie its fate to rigid enforcement of social distancing measures, coupled with the further economic deterioration brought about by the pandemic, provided the political space for the type of discourse Milei had been putting forth since his emergence in the public sphere, initially as an economic analyst who frequently participated on television shows. Bearing in mind Argentina's declining economic performance in the decade following the commodities boom of the 2000s, the question is not so much how Milei managed to defeat Argentina's partisan establishment but why it took so long to happen. A victory of Sergio Massa, who had been responsible for the Fernandez administration's economic policy since August 2022, would have been abnormal for a variety of reasons. From 2018 to 2023, the only ruling party that managed to win a presidential election in a democratic setting in Latin America was the Colorado Party in Paraguay. The poor economic performance of the Fernández administration, which saw a further acceleration of inflation particularly during Massa's tenure in the Ministry of Economy, made Argentina an unlikely candidate to break the regional anti-incumbent wave. See Table 1. Certainly, Massa was close to striking a first-round victory thanks to Argentina's presidential election rules that require 40% support and a 10-point advantage to avoid a second round. Since Massa had failed to avoid a runoff election, the likelihood of his victory was certainly low. In the first place, Massa failed to achieve a decisive lead in the first round. Reversal of the first-round result has occurred in 35% of elections decided through a second round in Latin America since the beginning of the third wave of democratization. Still, the phenomenon has become more frequent in recent years—12 of the 22 cases of runoff reversal have occurred within the last decade. See Table 2. Second, the poor economic performance of the Fernández administration and particularly of Massa as minister of economy made his triumph a highly unlikely event. Except for the case of Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil in 1994, no presidential candidate from a ruling party or coalition has won an election in Latin America since the beginning of the third wave of democratization when there has been an annual inflation rate above 40% (Labaqui, 2023a). See Table 3. Mainwaring (2018) has argued that poor government performance makes political parties vulnerable to profound electoral losses, effectively undermining the stability of the party system. The case of Argentina's 2023 election fits well with Mainwaring's argument. Not only did Peronism have its worst electoral showing in a presidential election since its emergence in Argentine politics in the 1940s, but also what until then had been the main opposition coalition, Juntos por el Cambio, underwent a dramatic electoral decline that left it out of the November 19 s round. Three consecutive administrations disappointed citizens’ expectations, handing power to their successor in worse conditions than those they had received, creating the space for the surge of a populist outsider. Milei's emergence in Argentina's political landscape fits well with the literature on weak party-system institutionalization and with the more recent discussions on the emergence of a new type of political right in Latin America. Monestier and Vommaro (2021) have pointed out the recent cases of right-wing movements that won elections without previously building a political vehicle. According to them, this new right is based on personalistic leaders embracing a reactionary cultural and political anti-elitist discourse. This new far-right comes in hand with a new wave of populism, an old theme in Latin American politics. Milei would not see himself as a populist leader. In fact, he has frequently blamed populism as one of the causes behind Argentina's stagnation and decay (YouTube, 2022). Yet, his political strategy and style as well as his discourse are typical examples of populist leadership. Populism is a disputed concept. There are disagreements among scholars about its defining elements. The fact that populism is not only an analytical category but also a term frequently used in political discourse, usually with a negative connotation, adds to the controversy. Milei's adherence to economic liberalism and fiscal orthodoxy would not be an example of populism if we use Dornbusch and Edwards’ (1991) definition, which confines the term to a type of economic policy, but the economic definition of populism is problematic for a variety of reasons. For one, many populist leaders have not hesitated on certain occasions to adopt fiscal austerity policies at odds with the economic definition of populism. Despite their differences, I it more to use and Weyland populism as a strategy through which a personalistic or government power based on support from large of According to is a of building political power based on the of through the use of and Milei is a highly personalistic with a with his The fact that he obtained support in his had had a performance in held on a different than the August primaries and the October first round the personalistic and of his leadership. Milei's are also his definition of Argentina's partisan establishment as a is a case of the of discourse that and right-wing populist leaders have both Peronism and Juntos por el Cambio under the same label, was a in Milei's campaign which not from Bolsonaro's on partisan establishment, against the of the Party and Party or against the and Latin America has different of populism. During the and populist much to the of many observers, Until populism had been associated with economic and fiscal based on the of the in and under and Weyland (1996) that populism and were not at all and in fact, had elective For different populist leaders and of reforms have legislative and see as to the of economic The typical of populist leaders is hardly with a strong the and personalistic of democracy by has usually resulted in a of with the legislative they not have a which of There is of that populism and and not his and Milei has not from levying against the legislative he has so not with the After to approval for the of his administration's first legislative the in the Chamber of Deputies in Milei the Argentine a of (Clarín, Milei's initial policy are in with of the elective affinities between populism and after being Milei a highly and and a of policy and a of the he to an a of legislative in the and a of in policy social and This also a of to be and an electoral reform that Argentina's compulsory primaries system and for among other The election of a populist outsider has been the for an crisis, as by Levitsky and Loxton not like and Furthermore, they rise to with an which with an to the existing or Milei has the political the strength to as they did during their first term in Milei's La Libertad Avanza, 10% and 15% of in the Senate and Chamber of His legislative weakness an about the prospects of governability for a head of state that a strong legislative before his election, I Milei's in terms of governability (Labaqui, governments in presidential between the strategy by which of to presidential and the to the president to coalition which of the of legislative support by other parties with representation into the in the and the a to an that is and and The Argentine the president with to the and and Still, both require some of and be used for political and and be by The use of is by of the and by Fernández de Kirchner the when a Senate seat and was the head of are in of the of both of is to a which effectively that a government one the of a Milei, with the support of the Propuesta Republicana (PRO), not in the Senate or the Chamber of could the for the legislative of more for both approval to the and a for in The of legislative in requires a are to a legislative The to by and a be for a minority administration. Milei's one of his who would be as minister of that if did not Milei would to to legislative As this is by both the in the case of administrations lacking at a in one by the Argentine also have the of for a several occasions before and after office, Milei suggested that he to this if to his legislative (Clarín, El this has According to Argentina's is not compulsory for popular The this the that be to a those that require legislative as and that be to of as the in Argentina's regime between the government and the From a more recent from under or during the administration shows that be a especially in the case of of state that a in Milei's initial to a of from failed in when the Chamber of Deputies certain from the in leading the government to the A much and of the was in down during the legislative in both the Chamber of Deputies and the At the of this had this of the The approval a more from the Milei administration and a about how minority administrations with to their policy The and of the and the fiscal package by the government in the of coalition over a according to typically in the head of state from to the with public opinion comes to an the highly vulnerable to in the of legislative It is to be whether Milei will of the recent and to a more of legislative support or for the October mid-term elections of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Senate will be and his of legislative While the first more Milei more to the second which fits with his political strategy of the This second is not as Milei has the support of than of the in both of which that if opposition parties they could a presidential or or in the an an unlikely at this The first semester of the Milei administration poses questions about the of the administration's economic policy, and social tolerance to adjustment. Furthermore, Milei's leadership his political discourse and and his with far-right from other in the the about whether Argentina's democracy is at of the most of this first semester lies in the fact that despite the economic from the administration's initial economic to Argentina's Milei a level of popular tolerance to economic has been than The acceleration in inflation from the initial and the in the decline in that the Milei administration has since the in 2023, in a rate, the since This in has hand in hand with an According to the is expected to decline by in Aires There are no poverty but according to the the the poverty had from in 2023 to in Yet, despite the economic Milei's approval ratings are high, into the economic based on the government by shows that at the of this in the government remained close to The of the political establishment, particularly of and about the economy to behind the tolerance of economic Milei's political which since one that economic would be to avoid a further of the economic has to the than social Despite the administration's and frequent of governability has been of an than what have been in At the of Milei his first victory in the legislative with the approval of the of the and the fiscal and the prospects of social stood as for Milei. Even if these 6 months were of of social have already two against the policy social movements have held several against the Milei have been by organizations to Peronism and have not Milei's As for despite his legislative Milei from two of Massa's tenure in the Ministry of The of the by Massa and by in 2023 resulted in a of for some of which have a on Argentina's At the same time, to the before the November runoff Milei with administration. In the of a the government with a of the administration's first was to to governments To a certain the of administrations has Milei's weak legislative him to with It is to assess whether Milei will in the economy and economic and the have Milei's economic policy, particularly his on Argentina's fiscal Still, the has the to vulnerable and to the social and political behind the administration's economic policy (Clarín, from the stabilization and structural reform plans of the and not be In Milei's political the by popular head of state and a of from the of adjustment. expected this to of poor policy that the head of state from to when his approval ratings Second, from the and some administrations are more to and stabilization outsiders have to in fiscal and state as they their political of economic and a highly of state with is but not for the of stabilization and reform The literature on economic reforms out legislative as of the for A final lies in the prospects for Argentina's democracy. Milei's victory raised a on this As populism has been the between a democracy and the emergence of competitive (Levitsky & Loxton, Milei's leadership style and are certainly not His adherence to liberalism is to the of and after becoming Argentina's Milei has tolerance of criticism and has to opposition leaders and in and are not Still, there are certain that a for Argentina's democracy. other Latin American were the have become a in political or have political the Argentine is a weak political one with in in political Second, Milei not the and certainly not the of which is the when it comes to the of government from a legislative or of state rather than weak have typically been a major threat to democracy in Latin America In the governability rather than democracy is much more to be at in but the is certainly not a Milei's arrival to power is the of severe in Argentina's party system, which has certainly become The election of a populist is hardly a for party-system In this Milei's election was certainly an to Argentine political who are in a state of Milei in Argentina's economic a of the party system his would not the old system and could in fact Argentina's of further democratic is a of Latin American and in the of and at the also in the in at the

Sisay Regassa Senbeta, Yakob Bekele Hundie

Abstract Fiscal federalism in Ethiopia has been implemented within a unique political context. The adoption of a multiethnic federal system has reshaped the fiscal and economic landscape of the country since 1991. Following the political restructuring towards federalization, the culture of centralization of fiscal powers and responsibilities, which had been witnessed for more than half a century, has significantly been altered. Yet, Ethiopia is a highly centralized federation, both in design and practice. The division of powers favors the Federal government in legislation and policymaking. The provision of most public services is, however, significantly decentralized. The lucrative sources of revenue are assigned to be either exclusive federal powers or concurrent. As a result, Ethiopia’s fiscal federalism has been characterized by a high degree of fiscal imbalances, the Federal General-Purpose Grant (FGPG), an equalization transfer, being the dominant mechanism to bridge the imbalances. Revenue sharing and specific purpose transfers constitute only a very small proportion of Subnational finance. States’ borrowing rights are limited to internal sources and are subject to stringent preconditions set by the federal government.

Lin William Cong, Ke Tang, Yanxin Wang, Zhao Xi

Web3 and DeFi are widely advocated as innovations for greater financial inclusion and democratization. We assemble the most comprehensive dataset to date on the largest Web3 ecosystem and use large-scale computing to investigate the claim. We discuss Ethereum's network structure, time trends, and distributions of transactions, mining, and ownership. Mining income and Ether ownership are concentrated in a few nodes, even after excluding exchange and mining pool wallets, with inequalities more exacerbated than observed in the real economy. Network activities are dominated by large transactions, shifting from peer-to-peer to user-DApps/DeFi interactions, and from Ether-based to ERC-20-token-based. High percentage transaction fees, congestion-induced gas-price fluctuation, suboptimal reserve setting, and large return volatility of tokens disproportionally harm small, unsophisticated, and new nodes, with high failure rates hurting all users. Finally, we present causal evidence that base-fee burning mechanisms (e.g., EIP-1559) and airdrop programs (e.g., OmiseGo Airdrop) promote inclusion and equality through monetary redistribution.

David Siegel

During the 1990s, a conventional wisdom emerged, based on literature going back decades, that political decentralization might be among the most effective forces for democratization. If ordinary people could participate in autonomous local governments, democracy would be built from the ground up, ultimately shaping the entire political system. Once decentralization reforms were implemented across the world, however, the results were disappointing. Authoritarianism not only thrived at the local level, it could also undermine democratization at the national level. Thus, local-national transference still held, but sometimes as a poison. In this context, the case of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is an anomaly. Here, the relative success of political decentralization—rather than its failure—nevertheless failed to spur democratization at the national level. I argue that this is because decentralization allowed national authorities to appease international donors while they consolidated their own power. Moreover, while decentralization empowered local communities, it did so in ways that personalized local authority and pitted local and national authorities against one another, resulting in intense localism and antagonistic center-local relations that undermined any democratic transference. The case study findings are based on ten months of field research, which includes interviews with local and national officials, ordinary villagers, and representatives of NGOs and international organizations.

Gulnar Mammadova

The empirical evidence and the academic literature point to the opposed directions on the capability of the territorial arrangements to extenuate conflict in ethnically divided and civil war-worn countries. Little is known about the diverse capacities of the territorial power sharing arrangements in diminishing violence in the post-conflict societies. Therefore, this thesis aims to contribute to the field through studying the conditions under which territorial power sharing arrangements reduce violence in the post-conflict settings. I argue that a resumption of violence is less likely following territorial power sharing arrangements in cases where a relatively high level of economic decentralization is provided for a subnational entity, as it allows the rebel groups to sustain their support base among key constituencies. To test the theoretical argument, a structured, focused comparison of territorial power sharing arrangements in Aceh province of Indonesia and Mindanao province of the Philippines is conducted. The empirical findings give support to the hypothesis in the expected direction. Aceh, where the resumption of violence did not occur, also was enjoying a relatively higher level of economic decentralization. While in ARMM, where the violence resumed after five years following the peace agreement, economic decentralization was relatively low. Nevertheless, the extended analysis reveals additional factors. Transformation of the rebel organization into the political parties and inclusive peace agreements potentially may have impact on the territorial power sharing arrangements’ capability to contain violence in the post conflict environments.

Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson, Jason Potts

Are there differences between the sale of an unopened Super Mario Bros. computer game and of the digital collage of 5,000 images? Viewed from the perspective of the doctrine of exhaustion, we can easily conclude that the two transfers have significant differences. The auction of the tangible data carrier of the Super Mario’s 1986 edition (for $660,000) 1 fits well into the doctrine. The auction of the NFT (non-fungible token) representing Beeple’s “Everdays: the First 5000 Days” (for an equivalent of an astounding $69.3 million) 2 seems to be hype with a snowball effect rather than a modern encapsulation of digital exhaustion. Some commentators, 3 including the present author in collaboration with Alexandra Giannapoulou, João Pedro Quintais, and Balázs Bodó, 4 have thoroughly introduced the incompatibility of the NFT mania with the existing copyright status quo, and so – in connection with the present book’s topic – the sale of tokenized information, which is capable of representing information related to digital artworks, is practically excluded from the scope of the exhaustion of the right of distribution. At the same time, NFTs de facto offer a “code-based digital ecosystem that has practical consequences for the copyright-relevant fields of creativeness.” 5 The sale and resale of NFTs is possible; an exchange of information and title to “own” and “trade” information related to copyrightable subject matter is technologically guaranteed. In line with that, a quasi-exhaustion regime has also emerged. As such, the NFT mania can practically evidence the need for and modern technology’s capability of offering digital marketplaces for artworks as well.

Gustav Ranis, Ranis, Gustav

Vertical decentralization, either at the deconcentration, delegation or, more rarely, the devolution level, has been instituted in most countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. It usually has the effect of increasing the quantity as well as the quality, in terms of health and education, of public goods. More neglected in the literature is the issue of horizontal decentralization, shifting the decision-making power from the central ministry of finance to the ministries of education and health, as well as strengthening the legislative and judicial branches of government. We examine the relationship between horizontal decentralization with its important ethnic dimension and vertical decentralization. Local governments are accountable to the center under vertical and to democratic forces and civil society under horizontal decentralization. Smaller local units are more likely to be more homogeneous ethnically, leading to a larger quantity and higher quality of public goods.

Kent Eaton

In recent years, decentralization and regional autonomy measures have figured prominently in negotiations designed to end some of the world's most important conflicts, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Reforms that shift powers to subnational units deserve the attention of those who are trying to promote security via institutional design, but the risks associated with these territorial reforms are considerable. When political and economic resources are transferred to subnational governments in the attempt to create meaningful access to the political system for former combatants, the great risk is that these same resources can be used to finance a continuation of the armed struggle instead. In response to the popularity of territorial reforms in many post-conflict settings, this paper sounds a cautionary note by evaluating the negative impact of decentralization on security in Colombia, site of Latin America's longest and deadliest armed conflict. After analyzing the design decisions of reformers who hoped that decentralization would help end the conflict, I argue that decentralization in fact financed the expansion of armed clientelism by illegal groups on both the left and right. Thanks to the weakness of the police in much of the national territory, guerrillas and paramilitaries have been able to use decentralized resources to destabilize the state, limiting even further its monopoly over the use of force and creating what are in effect parallel states on the left and right.