The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government

2004 ◽  
Vol 94 (4) ◽  
pp. 1034-1054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Maskin ◽  
Jean Tirole

We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i.e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountability allows the public to screen and discipline their officials; on the other, it may induce those officials to pander to public opinion and put too little weight on minority welfare. We study when decision-making powers should be allocated to the public directly (direct democracy), to accountable officials (called “politicians”), or to nonaccountable officials (called “judges”).

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BOHMAN

AbstractWhile there is much discussion of the need for democracy in transnational institutions, there is less discussion of the conditions for their democratisation. To address this deficit, a general account of democratisation is necessary. I propose that democratisation is dependent on the joint realisation of two conditions: communicative freedom and communicative power. Democratisation thus requires, first, publics and associations in which communicative freedom is realised on the one hand; and, second, institutions that link such freedom to the exercise of communicative power to decision making on the other. In order for these conditions to be met, civil society must be expanded into the public sphere. The transformation of communicative freedom into communicative power can be promoted only by institutions that recognise the decisional status of publics, which in turn depend on civil society to generate the deliberative benefits of the plurality of perspectives. Communicative power is not merely spontaneously generated through publics, but also through publics expressly formed through democratic institutional design.


1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-87
Author(s):  
S. S. Brand

Private and public decision-making The interaction between the private and public sectors is important in South Africa. Much criticism is expressed by the one sector against the other. This can be partly attributed to an incomplete understanding of the processes of decision-making in the two sectors, and of the differences between them. A comparison is drawn between the most important elements of the decision-making processes in the two sectors. Public decision-making deals mostly with matters concerning the community and the economy as a whole, whereas private decision-making is concerned mostly with parts of the whole. The aims at which decision-making in the two sectors are directed, differ accordingly, as do the perceptions of the respective decision-makers of the environment in which they make decisions. As a consequence, the criteria for the success of a decision also differ substantially between the two sectors. The implications of these differences between private and public decision-making for the approach to inflation and the financing of housing, are dealt with as examples. Finally, differences between the ways in which decisions are implemented in the two sectors, also appear to be an important cause of much of the criticism from the private sector about decision-making in the public sector.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e58909
Author(s):  
Flávia Foresto Porto da Costa

Criadas em 1994 como uma confederação de exércitos privados colombianos, as Autodefesas Unidas da Colômbia (AUC) marcaram uma expansão do paramilitarismo e um recrudescimento do conflito armado naquele país, tendo sido atuantes até seu processo de desmobilização, em 2002. Buscando compreender as origens, a organização e os discursos desse fenômeno paramilitar, o presente trabalho realiza uma pesquisa bibliográfica e documental que inclui, entre outros, os documentos originais das AUC e entrevistas com suas principais lideranças. Verifica-se que as AUC constituíram, por um lado, uma continuidade em relação ao paramilitarismo das doutrinas contrainsurgentes da Guerra Fria e aos grupos de civis armados financiados por narcotraficantes e proprietários de terra do final dos anos 70, e, por outro, um ponto de inflexão da estratégia paramilitar na Colômbia, quando esses exércitos buscam se projetar como atores políticos e independentes diante da opinião pública, buscando imitar pelo avesso a retórica e as estruturas guerrilheiras.Palavras-Chave: Paramilitarismo; Contrainsurgência; Colômbia.ABSTRACTCreated in 1994 as a confederation of Colombian private armies, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) marked an expansion of paramilitary and a renewed armed conflict in that country, having been active until its demobilization process in 2002. Seeking to understand the origins, the organization and the speeches of this paramilitary phenomenon, the present work conducts a bibliographic and documentary research that includes, among others, the original documents of the AUC and interviews with its main leaders. It appears that the AUC constituted, on the one hand, a continuity in relation to the paramilitarism of counterinsurgent Cold War doctrines and groups of armed civilians financed by drug traffickers and landowners in the late 1970s, and, on the other hand, a point inflection of the paramilitary strategy in Colombia, when these armies seek to project themselves as political and independent actors before the public opinion, trying to imitate the rhetoric and guerrilla structures inside out.Keywords: Paramilitarism; Counterinsurgency; Colombia. Recebido em: 04/04/2021 | Aceito em: 09/06/2021. 


Author(s):  
Daron R. Shaw ◽  
Brian E. Roberts ◽  
Mijeong Baek

Chapter 2 establishes a baseline by reviewing public opinion concerning money and politics, pre– and post–Citizens United, focusing on what Americans know about money in politics and campaign spending. On the one hand, given that citizens are typically not well informed about politics, it should come as no surprise that they do not know all that much about candidate spending or campaign finance. On the other hand, the public is not completely off base with respect to its sense of money in politics, and this basic intuition is perhaps even sharper in the post–Citizens United era. The data suggest that while Americans know a little bit about campaign finance, there is no systematic correlation between the regulatory environment of the state and how much people in that state know about campaign finance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serhun Al ◽  
Daniel Karell

Is Turkish nationality one singular identity that does not permit ethnic modifiers? Or can it be understood as pluralistic, with identities nested — “hyphenated” — with Turkishness? Then, are Turkish and Kurdish identities necessarily mutually exclusive? Such questions over the boundaries of Turkishness have long been framed in the civic versus ethnic dichotomy — an approach that does not ask whether Turkish nationhood is monolithic or pluralistic. In response, this article aims to advance the public and scholarly debates over nationhood in Turkey by turning to the question of ways in which Turkishness can be hyphenated with other identity categories in Turkey, most particularly Kurdishness. First, we reframe the debate over identity by using the combinatorial approach to ethnicity to outline how Turkishness and Kurdishness can be overlapping and nested, or a hyphenated identity. Second, we draw on public opinion data to show that such a hyphenated identity is both theoretically possible and potentially salient in Turkey today. Together, these steps deconstruct the primordialist understandings of Turkishness and Kurdishness, on the one hand, and the taken-for-granted civic claims of Turkishness, on the other.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
Laura Vilone ◽  

The notion of “good governance” implies the special place given to the State. Such a model is defined by the effectiveness of certain guarantees such as the independence of the judiciary, the correct and fair management of expenditure but also administrative transparency. Indeed, the latter depends on the sincerity of those involved in public action, on the one hand, and the constant dialogue between the public authorities and the public, on the other hand. The purpose of this intervention is to demonstrate that the realisation of the model of “good governance” is based, above all, on the existence of an administration that fully understands the requirements of administrative transparency. The two pillars of “good governance” would thus be the foundations of the principle of transparency: communication with citizens and their participation in the process of the decision-making process.


Revue Romane ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-348
Author(s):  
Stefano Jossa

The discussion on Italian identity has recently been brought to the attention of the public opinion in Italy as an outcome of the so-called “fine della prima Repubblica” (“end of the first Republic”). Literary identity has soon become a core issue, in order to promote a reflection on the idea of Italy independently of its political unity. This essay aims to reconstruct the various positions pro and contra the hypothesis of a literary identity, which can be seen, on the one hand, as an outcome of Risorgimento and Fascist propaganda, but also, on the other hand, as a means to overcome political divides and develop a shared rather than ethnical community.


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 254-263
Author(s):  
Nino Popkhadze

Higher education institutions face the Janus dilemma, on the one hand, universities are asked to be more open, transparent, and easily accessible, so they can be better scrutinized by the public. On the other, they need to limit transparency and guard privacy.   The article explores how AI slowly but heavily penetrates the domain of the higher education institutions; it provides various applications of AI in the domain of higher education. This paper argues that AI, big data, and learning analytics can become a powerful tool for advancing higher education institutions further, but at the same time, AI can have a detrimental effect without a vigilant eye. The paper does not aim to minimize the value and virtue of AI, rather problematize the implications and promote conscious decision-making. The article aims to stimulate the discussion among the relevant stakeholders.


Ethnography ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146613812110160
Author(s):  
Susanne Hofmann

This article scrutinizes the anti-trafficking efforts that the PT Government in Brazil undertook to implement the National Anti-Trafficking Policy in collaboration with different civil society organizations. Focusing on crime prevention measures, the article analyses the perceptions and understandings of trafficking, and the values and norms implicit in those, as well as the relationships developed between pubic officials and members of the civil society in this context. Examining everyday policy work, the article illustrates that policy implementation cannot be considered a mere technical-rational endeavor, in which replaceable officials deliver consistent and replicable outcomes based on unambiguous rules, assigned roles, and specified tasks and procedures. On the one hand, personality, personal motives and interests played a significant role in forging policy implementation focus and approach. On the other hand, the public officials struggled with the activists’ attempts to shift policy concerns and implementation into a direction that diverged from their own politics.


2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 101-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Ćurko

In Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the representation of the Irish nation is closely interwoven with that of Irish women. Two groups can be distinguished among the women and girl characters: the women who are a symbol of authority and those who embody desire. Stephen’s mother and Dante Riordan, a family relative and re ligious fanatic who closely surveyed and inf luenced his early childhood, symbolize those Irish who firmly supported the dogma that the Irish nation’s identity was not to be sepa rated from the nation’s necessity in being a Roman Catholic one, subdued to the domina tion of both Rome and London. Stephen, after having accepted this view as a child, refuses this standpoint as rigid and narrowminded; in one word, as a dangerous stereotype with disastrous consequences for the future of Ireland as he becomes an adolescent.As for the other group, the girl named (Stephen’s) desire, the one central and recur rent image which appears in its description is that of the “batlike soul”. The metaphor is deeply significant for the theme of this essay, as the girl characters are portrayed as unaware of themselves and only coming to consciousness, just as the Ireland of the epoch was seen and portrayed by young Stephen. The women, object of desire, are also seen as adulterous: but to betray, Stephen soon gets to understand, is the only way to be faithful – to himself and to his vision of what Ireland is yet to become.Thus the representation of the Irish nation is not only in connection with that of Irish women, but also in relation with a process of creation of Stephen’s own identity, as he slowly liberates himself from the public opinion and becomes a free minded and inde pendent adult, aware of the impact and importance his future artist vocation will have for him, as well as for his whole country.


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