Public Governance and the Classical-Liberal Perspective

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Dragos Aligica ◽  
Peter J. Boettke ◽  
Vlad Tarko
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Classical Liberalism ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Classical Liberal ◽  
Incentive Problems ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
Liberal Perspective

Classical liberalism entails not only a view about the proper scope of government and its relationship with the market but also a distinct theory about how government should operate within its proper area. This book presents the basic governance theory and political economy principles underpinning this vision. Building upon the works of diverse authors such as Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, the book offers a profound challenge to how public governance is commonly understood, by shifting the focus along several dimensions. First, it challenges the technocratic-epistocratic perspective in which social goals are set and experts simply provide the means to attain them. Instead, the focus is on the diversity of opinions in any society regarding “what should be done,” and on the design of democratic and polycentric institutions capable of limiting social conflicts and satisfying the preferences of as many people as possible. Second, the book explains the knowledge and incentive problems associated with technocratic-epistocratic governance. This has deep implications for how public governance itself should be construed. The book’s three parts reconstruct the theoretical foundations of the position, then explore its nature and development at the interface between public choice and public administration, and finally illustrate via a set of concrete governance issues how it operates at the applied level. The book thus fills a large gap in the academic literature, as well as the public discourse, about the ways decision makers understand the nature and administration of the public sector.

Public Administration and the Classical Liberal Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 530-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Dragos Aligica
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Collective Phenomena ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Classical Liberal ◽  
Liberal Perspective ◽  
Liberal Position

This article argues that despite the widespread perception to the contrary, it is possible to articulate a classical liberal position on public administration that recognizes and confronts the problems of collective governance in the public domain, as opposed to either circumventing them or imposing institutional designs and policy standards not fully in accordance with the nature and structure of the collective phenomena in case. As such, the article revisits, clarifies, and elaborates a classical liberal inspired perspective on the problem of collective action and public governance, arguing for its distinctiveness while articulating its basic conceptual and theoretical elements.

Conclusions

2019 ◽  
pp. 209-216
Author(s):  
Paul Dragos Aligica ◽  
Peter J. Boettke ◽  
Vlad Tarko
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Public Rhetoric ◽  
The Public ◽  
Classical Liberal ◽  
And Control ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Liberal Perspective ◽  
Complicated Task

The public administration principles articulated in the previous chapters are sufficiently distinct to validate the notion that there is indeed in nuce a classical-liberal theory of public governance to be derived from the foundational liberal philosophical and theoretical writings and from the public rhetoric and positions inspired by them. Further development of the theory and its translation into practice is, however, a more complicated task. Yet, a closer look at the developments in public governance during the past couple of decades offers a fresh and intriguing view of the issue. The more we advance in articulating, by using the intrinsic logic of the classical-liberal perspective, diagnoses and solutions to public governance problems, the more we can see that such diagnoses and solutions are far from alien to the contemporary field and practice of public administration. Those changes have led to a move from regulation based on command and control to flexible and diverse forms of regulation in which self-regulation is an important element. The concluding chapter of the book explores these developments.

Listened to, but not heard! The failure to represent the public in genetically modified food policies

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 923-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesper Lassen
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Genetically Modified Food ◽  
Ethical Aspects ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The Public ◽  
Parliamentary Government ◽  
Public Concerns

‘In the mid-1990s, a mismatch was addressed between European genetically modified food policy, which focused primarily on risks and economic prospects, and public anxieties, which also included other concerns, and there was a development in European food policy toward the inclusion of what were referred to as “ethical aspects.” Using parliamentary debates in Denmark in 2002 and 2015 as a case, this article examines how three storylines of concern that were visible in public discourse at the time were represented by the decision makers in parliament. It shows that core public concerns raising fundamental questions about genetically modified foods, and in particular their perceived unnaturalness, were not considered in the parliamentary debates. It is suggested that the failure of the parliament to represent the public may undermine the legitimacy of politicians and lead to disillusionment with parliamentary government.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Paul Dragos Aligica ◽  
Peter J. Boettke ◽  
Vlad Tarko
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Classical Liberalism ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Classical Liberal ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Systematic Framework ◽  
Key Questions

The introduction sets up the stage for the rest of the book by asking a series of key questions: Does classical liberalism entail a systematic framework of principles regarding public governance? If so, what are its broad recommendations and how does this perspective differ from other, more well-known perspectives on public administration? Classical liberalism accepts a wide range of collective arrangements and activities ranging from certain types of regulation to the provision of specific public goods and even to specific welfare policies. As such, the question arises, within the range of government activities accepted as legitimate, or at least not entirely beyond the pale, what are the particular classical-liberal views on the instruments and procedures of the administration of collective affairs? What kind of doctrine of governance and public administration does classical liberalism inspire? Is it possible to reconstruct or piece together such a position using the existing literature and practice?

scholarly journals Increasing Salience of Crime Control in Finnish Parliamentary Data from the 1970s to the 2000s

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-177
Author(s):  
Esko Häkkinen
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Criminal Policy ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
General Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Post War ◽  
Relative Prevalence ◽  
The Right

In Finland, a post-war expansion of the welfare state was associated with a decline in the use of imprisonment. The 1990s marked the beginning of a more ambivalent era in Finnish criminal justice. How does this turning point appear in the public discourse on crime by political decision-makers? All parliamentary questions and members’ initiatives from 1975 to 2010 were examined with a keyword-based quantitative search, and further content analysis was conducted on data made up of 1589 written parliamentary questions about crime control from 1970 to 2010. The relative prevalence of criminal policy issues rose significantly in the early 1990s. During the same period, the political initiative moved towards the right and the views of the left seemed to move closer to the right concurrently. Although stances became tougher, expressions of leniency were in the minority before the 1990s too, which stresses the significance of the general level of political attention itself. Developments regarding specific types of crime are discussed. Keywords: Criminal justice, penal policy, legal history, parliamentary democracy, political parties, Finland.

scholarly journals Dwelling on the Borders: Self. Text and World

2008 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
GAVIN FLOOD
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Self ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Person ◽  
Textual Traditions

In spite of secularist predictions, religion on a global scale has not gone away and shows little sign of dimnishing. Within the context of the renewal of interest in religion and the assertion of religion in the public realm, I seek in this article to explore the ways in which the self has been (and continues to be) formed in religious traditions. Drawing on substantive examples from my work on textual traditions in India and Europe, the article argues that 'religious reading' is central to the formation of religious traditions and the formation of the religious person, and that this has an impact upon discourse in the public realm. The process of religious reading itself occurs in a borderland between text and world and between self and world. Through 'religious reading', or more precisely textual reception, we can understand the ways in which forms of inwardness are constructed in tradition-specific ways and such inwardness too has an impact on public discourse. I therefore attempt to examine three traditional borderlands - between inwardness and externality, between text and world, and between private religion and public governance - in the light of religious reading.

scholarly journals The Pragmatics of Domestic Violence Discourse in Uruguay

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401668537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Main Hypothesis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Gender Based

Domestic violence (DV) is a form of gender-based violence and a violation of human rights. As such, it was analyzed from the perspective of feminist theory in the dissertation this article is based on, by analyzing discourse pragmatics. Which are the socially accepted DV discourses in Uruguay? Which coincidences, contradictions, and paradoxes appear when we compare these discourses and those of everyday life? Which codes and subcodes should be modified by the sectors interested in the prevention and eradication of DV? The main hypothesis is that there are different types of opposition between the public discourse of different institutional sectors and that of everyday life. Describing these oppositions and, especially, unveiling the pragmatic paradoxes will enable us to develop a different type of discourse for the prevention and eradication of DV. As I am both a researcher and an activist on the topic, my epistemological choice was the autoethnography. This article provides some final reflections, included in the dissertation, on how the feminist movement needs to succeed in persuading decision makers and the mass media, and in building solid alliances to establish an information and monitoring system; the integration of the subject into the educational system; comprehensive legislation on gender-based violence; and new ways of communicating with all sectors, so as to create a new ideology on gender relations for the suitable prevention of DV.

Civility at the Breaking Point

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Laura Newhart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Classical Liberal ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Shared Social Values

This paper explores the recent social phenomenon of the confrontation by critics of government officials while they are out in public, yet engaged in “private” activities, e.g. eating dinner at a restaurant, shopping in a bookstore, or getting into their cars. This paper argues that such confrontations are a symptom of the lack of trust brought on by the absence of shared social values that results in toxic forms of public discourse, the blurring of the classical liberal distinction between the public and the private realms, and the inability to hold one another responsible for the violation of self-avowed moral norms. Implicit in this argument is the conclusion that such confrontations are ineffective at best. Some have suggested more physical intermingling among people who hold conflicting political views in order to establish such trust (Haidt, Wilk). In the absence of such opportunities for intermingling, sharing our value-laden personal stories with each other, in the spirit and style of Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming, might help to create tolerance and trust among those with differing political perspectives.

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