CORRUPTION IN ADVERSARIAL SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF DEMOCRACY

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (02) ◽  
pp. 221-241
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Weinstock
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Central Task ◽  
Perverse Incentives ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Positive Traits ◽  
In Virtue Of

Abstract:In this essay I argue that adversarial institutional systems, such as multi-party democracy, present a distinctive risk of institutional corruption, one that is particularly difficult to counteract. Institutional corruption often results not from individual malfeasance, but from perverse incentives that make it the case that agents within an institutional framework have rival institutional interests that risk pitting individual advantage against the functioning of the institution in question. Sometimes, these perverse incentives are only contingently related to the central animating logic of an institution. In these cases, immunizing institutions from the risk of corruption is not a theoretically difficult exercise. In other cases, institutions generate perverse or rival incentives in virtue of some central feature of the institution’s design, one that is also responsible for some of the institution’s more positive traits. In multi-party democratic systems, partisanship risks giving rise to too close an identification of the partisan’s interest with that of the party, to the detriment of the democratic system as a whole. But partisanship is also necessary to the functioning of such a system. Creating bulwarks that allow the positive aspects of partisanship to manifest themselves, while offsetting the aspects of partisanship through which individual advantage of democratic agents is linked too closely to party success, is a central task for the theory and practice of the institutional design of democracy.

The Temporal Constitution of Democracies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Schäfer ◽  
Wolfgang Merkel
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Future Expectations ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
States Of Emergency ◽  
Time Requirements ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Different Levels

The specific institutionalization of time is a major defining element of democracies and a vulnerable condition of their stability and legitimacy. The first part of the chapter covers the regular temporal routines of democratic systems. In the synchronic dimension, it considers the time requirements of democratic practices and examines the timed relationship between different levels and actors of the democratic system. In the diachronic dimension, the chapter asks for the time horizons that temporal constitutions of democracies create for political actors—related to future expectations and to past experiences. The second part of the chapter turns to time challenges democracies face today. First, it addresses the issue of social acceleration that goes along with potential vulnerabilities and adaptabilities of democratic systems. Second, the chapter discusses problems created by situations of crisis in states of emergency and in democratic transitions. Based on that, the chapter draws some conclusions for future research.

Conclusion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antina von Schnitzler
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Central Task ◽  
Liberation Struggle

This chapter concludes that the book has explored the political terrain in postapartheid South Africa, where infrastructure and administration had for decades been central political arenas in which much of the urban struggle unfolded. In particular, it has examined how producing liberal democracy, including the constitutive splits between the public and the private and the political and the administrative, became a central task of the postapartheid state, one that has always been prone to failure and contestation from multiple directions. The book has outlined the contours of this techno-political terrain beginning in the late-apartheid period when infrastructure and action on the administrative terrain became a central feature of the antiapartheid struggle. In conclusion, it considers how, in the postapartheid period, many of the questions that animated the liberation struggle are often continually being negotiated and re-articulated in a variety of spaces.

scholarly journals Representing the People: British Democracy in an Age of Political Ignorance

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Parvin
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Widespread View ◽  
Political Decisions

The article evaluates the arguments presented in Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy, Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance and Achen and Bartels’ Democracy for Realists and their implications for democratic theory and practice. The article uses their work to shine a light on ongoing and contradictory trajectories of democratic reform in Britain at the local and national levels, and to argue against the widespread view that British democracy should be reformed in ways that give citizens more control over political decisions. These books point to ways in which democracy might be salvaged, rather than replaced, and in which British democracy in particular might be reformed in order to better meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, by focusing less on participation and more on representation. This requires a two-pronged strategy. First, that we reform liberal democratic institutions in ways which better harness the power of non-majoritarian institutions, strengthen formal epistocratic checks and balances, and embrace the move towards greater political elitism in order to appropriately constrain the popular will and to ensure rigorous scrutiny within a traditionally configured representative democratic system. Second, that we explore ways of incorporating citizens’ voices at different points in the democratic system in order to circumvent some of the problems these authors describe and to ensure that the strengthening of representative institutions does not unfairly marginalise citizens. Achen CH and Bartels LM (2016) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brennan J (2016) Against Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Somin I (2016) Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, 2nd edn. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Thesis and antithesis: To check or not to check the Judiciary

2018 ◽  
pp. 157-198
Author(s):  
Cristina E. Parau
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Network Community ◽  
Constitutional Meaning

This chapter analyses Network Community discourses in order to better expose the causal role of its hegemonic norms. Key assumptions held by the Community about the qualities of their agenda are brought to light. Classical Anglo-Saxon conceptions of the separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial independence, and the rule of law, the utility of which has stood the test of time, are compared to the theory and practice of the Network Community’s Judiciary institutional design Template. The Network conceives of the separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial independence, and the rule of law as emanating from the autonomy and supremacy of a Judiciary so empowered as invariably to subordinate all other contestants in case of conflict with itself over constitutional meaning. The chapter ends with a systematic catalogue and critical examination of those few acts of state which the Network Community conceive as legitimate checks and balances on their Judiciary design.

scholarly journals Who Caucuses? An Experimental Approach to Institutional Design and Electoral Participation

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher F. Karpowitz ◽  
Jeremy C. Pope
Keyword(s):  
Observational Data ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Experimental Finding ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Electoral Participation ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Mass Participation ◽  
Institutional Choices

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the question of mass participation in primaries and caucuses became unusually salient, with a close Democratic race calling special attention to these often overlooked procedural elements of America's democratic system. This study adds a new element to scholarship on institutional design and citizen participation by way of a survey-based experiment conducted in the midst of the 2008 campaign. The results show that institutional choices are not neutral. Nominating candidates through caucuses rather than primaries not only reduces the number of participants, but also significantly affects the ideological composition of the electorate. Caucuses produce a more ideologically consistent electorate than do primaries, because policy centrists appear to avoid caucuses. This experimental finding is strongly buttressed by the observational data on Obama and Clinton voters.

Responsibility for climate justice: Political not moral

2020 ◽  
pp. 147488512095514
Author(s):  
Michael Christopher Sardo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Adaptation Capacity ◽  
Climate Vulnerability ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
In Virtue Of

How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in virtue of their individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation.

Developing collaboration between research-oriented and practice-oriented experts in public administration: How does expert participation make a difference in public policy making and governance practice?

2020 ◽  
pp. 095207672095846
Author(s):  
Lihua Yang
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
External Support ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
High Participation ◽  
Knowledge Asymmetry

The contradiction between experts’ research (or theory) and practitioners’ practice has plagued public administration for over a century. However, this study emphasizes that experts themselves are not exactly the same. To address the contradiction between research and practice and to improve the role of experts, we need not only to improve the collaboration between experts and practitioners but also to strengthen the collaboration between research-oriented and practice-oriented experts. Using desertification control experiences in 12 counties in northern China as policy examples and through case studies and analysis of a survey of more than 4000 individuals, the study finds that the collaboration with high participation of both research-oriented and practice-oriented experts had the highest governance performance, due to reducing information and knowledge asymmetry, enhancing trust, and strengthening expert participation in public governance. The study also reveals that there are eight institutional design principles that are important for the success of experts’ participation. These principles emphasized knowledge and experts themselves, experts’ relationship with other social actors, and external support (support from laws and regulations and financial support). The study is enlightening to policy makers and public administrators in their endeavor to integrate research (theory) and practice, design public policy, and maximize the use of their knowledge and expertise to advance the cause of public administration.

Democratic Meta-Deliberation: Towards Reflective Institutional Design

2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 38-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Landwehr
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Democratic Practices ◽  
Participatory Politics ◽  
Democratic System

Theories of deliberative democracy are popular for their promise that in a deliberative polity, democracy can realise both participatory politics and rational policies. However, they are also confronted with the allegation that by qualifying essentially non-democratic practices as deliberative, they inadvertently (or not) become accomplices in the trend towards post-democratic governance. A central example of such a development is the rise of non-majoritarian bodies to which governments delegate decision making, thereby de-politicising conflicts and turning democratic discourses into technocratic ones. This article adopts a systemic perspective on deliberative democracy, asking whether non-majoritarian forums can be legitimated in a democratic system and whether they can contribute to their deliberative quality. It is argued that the legitimation of delegated decision-making is not possible without a culture and practice of democratic meta-deliberation which enables reflective institutional design.

Democratic Institutional Design: The Powers and Incentives of Venezuelan Politicians and Interest Groups. By Brian F. Crisp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. 294p. $100.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 496-498
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Hellinger
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Dark Period ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Urban Riots ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The 1960S

Venezuelan politics attracted little attention from political scientists for thirty years after the defeat of the fidelista guerrillas in the 1960s, but there has been a surge of interest in recent years. The country retained civilian, elected govern- ment through a dark period of authoritarianism in Latin America, which seemed to make it a good candidate for deriving lessons about transitions to democracy. In the 1990s, however, the democratic system entered into crisis. Venezu- ela experienced urban riots, two unsuccessful coups, removal of a president from office before completion of his term, rising electoral abstention, collapse of the traditional parties at the heart of the system, and the election of a coup leader to the presidency. Attention shifted from what went right to what went wrong. These books help us understand the limitations of the Venezuelan democratic model.

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