Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores governance implications for the actors and processes involved in ordering, managing, and organising an increasingly digital global political economy arising from growing applications of this set of emergent technologies to Bitcoin and beyond. It brings together scholars of anthropology, economics, and sociology as well as science and technology studies (STS) in conversation with global political economy (GPE) scholars. The book draws on earlier insights from International Relations (IR) and GPE studies of technology. It builds on blockchain studies yielding insights into longstanding GPE debates on the specific actors and processes that are disempowered through forms of governance with technologies. The book draws out specific implications of governance with technology for organ-ising, ordering, and managing a global political economy in which increasingly rapid and complex interrelationships are occurring between actors beyond and within nation-states.