School of Government and Society

The internet has enabled open access to information, created new opportunities for participation, empowerment and methods for the resolution of intractable policy problems (Fung and Wright 2003, Noveck 2009).  However, it is argued despite successful advances by commercial actors, the failure by the state sector to fully embrace the opportunity is opening up a destructive dislocation between citizen and State (Eggers 2007, Lathrop and Ruma 2011).  This paper critically explores this assertion drawing on and combining the literatures of web2.0, participative government and post-traditional (Farmer 2005) interpretations of government in identifying the phenomena of Gov2.0 as an emerging and contested topic.
The paper is informed by a Q methodology study of 51 English public managers and elected representatives working in a variety of authorities in positions including Chief Executive and Deputy Leaders, Cabinet Member and Managers as well as Ward representatives. The paper proposes and discusses 4 archetypical viewpoints on this topic. These 4 positions are: Open Government who focus their viewpoints on the importance of transparency and accountability; Cautious Collaborators and Inclusive Collaborators, two positions providing differing interpretations of the local state in working in collaboration with the public; and a final position of Choice for the Public that proposes a role for local government as an enabler of third-party services rather than a direct provider. The paper concludes with a discussion of Gov2.0 as a transformative challenge to the established model of local government and the relevance of these 4 viewpoints.

" Experience shows that Princes who have achieved great things have given their word lightly, have known how to trick men with their cunning, and, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles " Niccolò Machiavelli, 'il Principe' 1513

Between independence in 1948 and the coup d'état of 1962 there was a significant Muslim insurgency in Rakhine state, while most Muslims failed to achieve citizenship. During military rule force was used to contain the ethnopolitical genie in Rakhine in an ill-fitting bottle – at least partially – but in 2010 the bottle was uncorked once more in Rakhine state, and maybe Burma more widely, with the onset of elections. It was the issuing of voter registration cards to Muslims which may well have created expectations that Muslims would be given full citizenship in due course, a process that alarmed " Rakhine " people and emboldened Muslims. These heightened tensions were probably the real trigger for violence in 2012. And the issuing of these cards may have been part of a broader government strategy to ensure that " Rakhine " ethnic secessionists did not gain a majority in a state with important oil and gas resources. Whatever the causes, conflict in Rakhine in state has not been checked, and unless the ethnic foundations of Myanmar/Burma politics are diluted, Rakhine may yet become a harbinger of future racially motivated conflict across the country if the greater expectations of economic and political representation that all ethnicities will demand from the reform process are not met equitably. The key conflict implications of these rules of the game for Myanmar/Burmaare: • Ethnopolitics is concerned with a spatial hierarchy of controlled access, to limit the territorial expansion of rival peoples – especially to urban areas and areas which have access to resources; • Focuses political concerns on controlling demographic expansion; and • Thus controlled access, ruralisation, expulsions, denial of citizenship, expulsions and ultimately pogroms or even genocide become useful options for political action. This analysis suggests that the creation of a political platform around promoting the idea of a universal de-ethicized set of citizenship rights and freedoms is urgently required. Bringing together the myriad separate peace processes under this banner could be an excellent start-point, and one which the international community and programmes such as Pyoe Pin could help catalyze. A single overarching peace 'umbrella' under which the same rights and freedoms form the basis for each individual peace process could help both build longer term stability between ethnicities, and more importantly, create a broader Myanmar/Burma citizenship platform that can eventually take the place of the current patchwork of fragmented ethnic groups, and form the context in which parliamentary democracy might prove a more effective system for embracing political choice and competition. Yet even in the context of concerted government, opposition and international will to bring about change, escaping its ethnopolitical past will be a difficult task for Burma/Myanmar. Ultimately government policy will need to place new emphasis on providing access to the universal benefits of the state. A focus on universal citizen benefits such as social insurance provision – perhaps learning from models elsewhere in Southeast Asia – and equality before the law may be good places to begin.

<abstract_ The Pangea Software is a Decentralized Opt-In Jurisdiction where Citizens can conduct peer-to-peer arbitration and create Nations. Pangea uses the Panthalassa mesh, which is built using Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) and Interplanetary File System (IPFS) protocols. This enables Pangea to be highly resilient and secure, conferring resistance to emergent threats such as high-performance quantum cryptography. Pangea is blockchain agnostic, but uses the Ethereum blockchain for the time being. In the future, other chains such as Bitcoin, EOS and Tezos can be integrated with Pangea. The Pangea Arbitration Token (PAT) is an ERC20 compatible in-app token for the Pangea Jurisdiction. The PAT token is reward of reputation for Citizens, issued on Pangea when Citizens accumulate non-tradable reputation tokens through creating a contract, successfully completing a contract or resolving a dispute attached to a contract. PAT is an algorithmic reputation token; an arbitration currency based on performance, rather than purchasing power, popularity, or attention. The distribution mechanism for PAT tokens on Pangea is an autonomous agent, Lucy, which will initially launch on Ethereum as a smart contract. This mechanism is blockchain agnostic and can be ported to any viable smart contract platform. An oracle created by Bitnation will help to facilitate this (semi) autonomous distribution mechanism in a decentralized and secure fashion.

The Pangea Software is a Decentralized Opt-In Jurisdiction where Citizens can conduct peer-to-peer arbitration and create Nations. Pangea uses the Panthalassa mesh, which is inspired or draws on Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) and Interplanetary File System (IPFS) protocols. This enables Pangea to be highly resilient and secure, conferring resistance to emergent threats such as high-performance quantum cryptography. Pangea is blockchain agnostic but uses the Ethereum blockchain for the time being. In the future, other chains such as Bitcoin, EOS and Tezos can be integrated with Pangea.

The Pangea Arbitration Token (PAT) is an ERC20 compatible in-app token for the Pangea Jurisdiction. The PAT token is reward of reputation for Citizens, issued on Pangea when Citizens accumulate non-tradable reputation tokens through creating a contract, successfully completing a contract or resolving a dispute attached to a contract. PAT is an algorithmic reputation token; an arbitration currency based on performance, rather than purchasing power, popularity, or attention.

The distribution mechanism for PAT tokens on Pangea is an autonomous agent, Lucy, which will initially launch on Ethereum as a smart contract. This mechanism is blockchain agnostic and can be ported to any viable smart contract platform. An oracle created by Bitnation will help to facilitate this (semi) autonomous distribution mechanism in a decentralized and secure fashion.

Widespread access to the internet and smartphones have radically changed the ways we organise societies. Whether we like it or not, much of our social and work lives have moved from a space of places to a space of informational flows.It is not surprising that our territorial governance system is struggling to stay relevant. Nor that it proves difficult to use laws made for physical places to mediate the borderless informational space without accepting great losses of privacy and liberty. There is no doubt that new voluntary jurisdictions for this space will need to be created and nation states adapt to our new reality of informational spaces of flows.

2012 Rakhine State Conflict Analysis 3 Between independence in 1948 and the coup d'état of 1962 there was a significant Muslim insurgency in Rakhine state, while most Muslims failed to achieve citizenship. During military rule force was used to contain the ethnopolitical genie in Rakhine in an ill-fitting bottle – at least partially – but in 2010 the bottle was uncorked once more in Rakhine state, and maybe Burma more widely, with the onset of elections. It was the issuing of voter registration cards to Muslims which may well have created expectations that Muslims would be given full citizenship in due course, a process that alarmed " Rakhine " people and emboldened Muslims. These heightened tensions were probably the real trigger for violence in 2012. And the issuing of these cards may have been part of a broader government strategy to ensure that " Rakhine " ethnic secessionists did not gain a majority in a state with important oil and gas resources. Whatever the causes, conflict in Rakhine in state has not been checked, and unless the ethnic foundations of Myanmar/Burma politics are diluted, Rakhine may yet become a harbinger of future racially motivated conflict across the country if the greater expectations of economic and political representation that all ethnicities will demand from the reform process are not metequitably. The key conflict implications of these rules of the game for Myanmar/Burmaare: • Ethnopolitics is concerned with a spatial hierarchy of controlled access, to limit the territorial expansion of rival peoples – especially to urban areas and areaswhich have access to resources; • Focusses political concerns on controlling demographic expansion; and • Thus controlled access, ruralisation, expulsions, denial of citizenship, expulsions and ultimately pogroms or even genocide become useful options for politicalaction. This analysis suggests that the creation of a political platform around promoting the idea of a universal de-ethicized set of citizenship rights and freedoms is urgently required. Bringing together the myriad separate peace processes under this banner could be an excellent start-point, and one which the international community and programmes such as Pyoe Pin could help catalyze. A single overarching peace 'umbrella' under which the same rights and freedoms form the basis for each individual peace process could help both build longer term stability between ethnicities, and more importantly, create a broader Myanmar/Burma citizenship platform that can eventually take the place of the current patchwork of fragmented ethnic groups, and form the context in which parliamentary democracy might prove a more effective system for embracing political choice and competition. Yet even in the context of concerted government, opposition and international will to bring about change, escaping its ethnopolitical past will be a difficult task for Burma/Myanmar. Ultimately government policy will need to place new emphasis on providing access to the universal benefits of the state. A focus on universal citizen benefits such as social insurance provision – perhaps learning from models elsewhere in Southeast Asia – and equality before the law may be good places to begin. Finally, the political, economic and social dimensions of ethnic segregation in Myanmar/Burma and Rakhine state pose specific challenges to the DFID and British Council's Pyoe Pin's approach. Inparticular: 1. On the face of it, the formation of community-based 'user groups' – a central tenet of the programme – has the potential to shift attention from a mobilisedethnic

Government accountability is one of the key issues often raised in debates about governance in young democracies such as South Africa (RSA). Comparing two provincial governments in RSA as case studies, this thesis explores accountability between provincial government and its various stakeholders. There is a wide literature on government accountability however this literature is limited on RSA public sector accountability, either from the perspective of what it means or how it is attained. In recent years provincial government stakeholders have complained about weaknesses and lack of government accountability and efficient performance. The effectiveness of recent mechanisms such as Batho Pele (BP), as a way to consult citizens and therefore to enhance provincial government accountability and performance, has also been questioned by stakeholders and government. In this thesis, the PATIGAHAR accountability analytical framework is developed from the basic building blocks of the principa...