African chiefs: comparative governance under colonial rule

This paper analyzes how British colonial rule altered the club-like and competitive features of chiefdoms and weakened the incentives of political leaders to be accountable to citizens. Political institutions in late pre-colonial West Africa aligned the incentives of the chiefs such that they were responsive to their people. Alignment arose because of a high degree of competition between governance providers and because political leaders were effectively the residual claimants on revenues generated from providing governance services. I identify the mechanisms by which colonialism severed the link that aligned the incentives of government with those of its citizens. British indirect rule did that by reducing political competition and softening the budget constraints of the chiefs. Toward the end of colonial rule, chiefs became less accountable to their people as evidenced by the widespread corruption and extortion by the chiefs and by their unprecedented constitutional violations and abuses of power.     

The Australian constitutional referendum of 1999: evaluating explanations of republican voting

The Constitutional Referendum of November 1999 saw Australians reject a republic and vote to retain the British Monarch as Australian Head of State. Multivariate analyses of data from the Australian Constitutional Referendum Survey were employed to examine the impact of social background, political and social movement leadership, political knowledge and political trust on the referendum vote. Younger, secular, highly educated and Labor partisans, and those who evaluated republican political and social movement leaders positively, were more likely to vote for constitutional change. Republican voting was stronger also, among those more trusting of politicians. The Yes vote was associated positively with higher cognitive skills and greater voter knowledge of political and constitutional issues, highlighting the salience of political education processes for the outcome of referenda.     

Assessing the citizen – candidate model

Citizen–candidate models postulate a politics without political parties. Any citizen may become a candidate for office. A winner is chosen from among the candidates by voting with ties broken by the flip of a coin. All voters have preferences over a set of policies. The winning candidate adopts his preferred policy. It is proved on certain assumptions that there exists an equilibrium in these models and that the equilibrium is efficient. The significance of the proof is tested here with reference to the paradox of voting, the exploitation problem, the transposition of the Nash equilibrium from markets to politics, and constitutional constraints. The quest for a political equilibrium leads in the end to the recognition of a minimal rock-bottom requirement for cooperation and negotiation in democratic government.     

Defining Executive Power: Constitutional Reform for Grown-ups

Australia is well endowed with constitutions. It has seven, one for the commonwealth and each of the six states, and nine if the documents establishing self-government for the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory are included. This gives plenty of scope for constitutional reform: that is, changing the most important rules which specify how a political community is governed. In the event, public debate over constitutional reform in Australia has been sporadic and concentrated on a narrow range of issues. Perhaps this is as it should be. Constitutions should reflect broad public acceptance of the basic rules governing the operation of government, and if the system is running smoothly, there is little reason for change. Only when events occur that demonstrate that there are shortcomings in the structure of government should constitutional reform be considered.     

Justice George Sutherland and Commerce-Clause Federalism Before the New Deal

The jurisprudence of Justice George Sutherland illustrates howthe U.S. Supreme Court justified commerce-clause federalismbetween the end of the Civil War and the ascendancy of the NewDeal. Sutherland presented a constitutional and political defenseof federalism grounded in American natural-rights theory. Thisdefense presents arguments that federalism's skeptics and defendershave not considered sufficiently. Skeptics tend to argue thatis impossible to maintain a federalist constitutional arrangement;Sutherland's defense shows how to do so. Federalism's supporterstend to defend the commerce clause on negative grounds, thatit limits government power by forcing the states to competewith each other and Congress to compete with them all. Sutherland,however, drew on a tradition of political theory which stressedthat commerce-clause federalism offered positive benefits bykeeping the federal government lean and mean. It barred Congressfrom regulating on subjects about which it was less informedand competent than state legislators and regulators. By focusingthe federal government on truly national objects like interstatetrade, it left most regulation where citizens could see it-locally.According to this tradition, the commerce clause played a criticalrole in making the national government energetic and effective,and it also ordered local political processes so as to makecitizens self-reliant and fit for republican self-government.     

Unity Without Totalitarianism: Tensions Within Normativity

Although he did not invent the term, Jürgen Habermas has popularised “constitutional patriotism” as a form of political unity that avoids excessive nationalism. This paper attempts to examine the link between emotivism and normativity that has otherwise been excluded from Habermas’s notion of constitutional patriotism. Beyond Habermas, political theory as a whole has not yet taken emotivism as a serious component of normativity. Rather than developing it in isolation, this paper attempts to reconcile emotivism with cognitive-normative practices found within rational deliberation. Reconciling the two not only provides a better normative steering component for judging good from bad practices, but also depicts contemporary political practices more accurately. In sum, constitutional patriotism’s normativity must be sourced from a complex integration of emotion and cognition, or put another way, from the interplay between citizens’ moral sentiments and rational judgements.     

Constitutional Arrangements of Federal Systems

Constitutions alone do not make or break federations. In anyevent, they are not static, and evolve over time through judicialreview and political understandings, even in the absence ofconstitutional change. Nevertheless, institutions, principles,and procedures for which constitutions provide are significantinfluences on federations. This article examines some key featuresof federal constitutional arrangements in different federalsystems: the status of the constituent instrument; the divisionof powers between the orders of government; the scope of economicunion; regional disparity; and the relationship of federalismto the rest of the system of government. Today, there is a wideand widening variety of federal structures in systems aroundthe world. Borrowing is tempting, but should be done with care;federalist elements are closely linked with other aspects ofa system of government and with the historical, political, andeconomic setting in which it has been developed.     

WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Both the federal and state governments have strong constitutional daims and political resources with which to influence the allocation of water resources. Until the 1970s. federal agencies were able to dominate kr setting goals and objectives. However, when the federal government attempted to implement a national water policy in the 1970s, effective opposition was mounted by the states. Both the states and the federal government now exert decisive influence in water policy.     

Brexit and the British Constitution: Reflections on the Last Three years and the Next Fifty

The decision to leave the EU provoked the biggest constitutional crisis of recent British history. The referendum—a device for circumventing the parliamentary process—was followed by conflict between a minority government and a majority of MPs unwilling to leave the EU without satisfactory alternative arrangements. The courts, drawn into this conflict, upheld conventions that sustain the authority of Parliament and restrain the despotic power of ministers. The reaction of members of the current government was to take disreputable and anti-democratic positions against both the Speaker of the House of Commons and the courts. They now have a sufficient majority in Parliament to resume adherence to constitutional conventions and restore a political culture of debate and tolerance, but they show little sign of doing so, and there is a risk that they will do irreparable damage to the political culture that underpins democracy.     

Party competition and citizens' political attitudes in the American states

Democratic theorists argue that vigorous competition between candidates/parties is essential for democracy to flourish because it engages citizens' political interest and ultimately makes elected officials more accountable to their constituents. Using data on citizens' perceptions of government responsiveness to their political opinions from the American National Election Studies and the Ranney measure of party competition for control of state government, we examine the effects of competition on citizens' political attitudes from 1952 to 2008. Our analysis reveals that citizens feel government is more responsive to them when there is greater competition between the two parties for control of government in their state. However, this relationship is confined only to citizens who identify with the party that controls government in their state. We also find that the relationship between competition and efficacy is strongest among citizens with lower levels of education and income. These results suggest that vigorous competition for control of state government can have important implications for citizens' political attitudes.     

The Portuguese 2005 legislative election: Return to the left

According to the ‘decline of parliaments’ thesis that dominates the literature, the executive branch has increased its powers vis-à-vis the legislature. However, at the same time most studies indicate that the parliaments in the Nordic region are on average stronger than their counterparts in central and southern European countries. This article examines the validity of the ‘decline of parliaments’ thesis in the context of Finland, a country where recent constitutional reforms have strengthened parliamentarism by reducing the powers of the president and empowering the government and the parliament. Analysing the constitutional balance of power between state organs, the interaction between the government and the opposition, and the ability of the parliament to hold the cabinet accountable, this article argues that despite its stronger constitutional position, the Eduskunta faces considerable difficulties in controlling the government.     

The Emerging Federal Quasi Government: Issues of Management and Accountability

There has been a growing trend in the federal government toward reliance on organizations that commingle legal attributes of the government and private sectors. These hybrid organizations now constitute a quasi government that occasions both interest and concern by political leaders, practitioners, and scholars alike because these organizations touch the very heart of democratic governance: To whom are these hybrids accountable? How well is the public interest being protected against the interests of private parties? In this article, the author seeks to define the quasi government and place these hybrid entities into manageable categories from which legal and behavioral generalizations may be drawn. Are hybrid organizations a problem or a solution? Looking critically at this question, the author suggests the answer may depend in large measure on which of two management paradigms the reader accepts: the constitutionalist management paradigm or the entrepreneurial management paradigm, both of which are defined and discussed. The author concludes that the increasin reliance on hybrid organizations constitutes a threat not only to accountable management within the government, but to the fundamental values of democratic governance as well.     

Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia

Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual‐level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization, controlling for participation, political knowledge, confidence in government, education, and income on perceptions of accountability. Our results indicate that administrative and fiscal decentralization improve perceptions of accountability, while political decentralization does not.     

Australian Federalism and the Debate Over a Bill of Rights

Successive Australian Labor governments have tried to nationalizestandards for the protection of rights either by means of astatutory bill binding on the states under the Commonwealth'smuch expanded external affairs power, or by further entrenchingspecific rights in the Constitution. All these attempts havefailed for a variety of political and constitutional reasonsincluding, importantly, the strength of Australia's establishedsystem of federalism and parliamentary responsible government.The article examines the constitutional issues underlying thedebate over a bill of rights for Australia, arguing that Labor'sattempts to implement a bill of rights have been inspired bya preference for more centralized government whereas the defeatof such initiatives indicates, the established strength of Australianfederalism.     

Do Constitutional Rights Make a Difference?

Although the question of whether constitutional rights matter is of great theoretical and practical importance, little is known about whether constitutional rights impact government behavior. In this article, we test the effectiveness of six political rights. We hypothesize that a difference exists between organizational rights—most notably, the rights to unionize and form political parties—and individual rights. Specifically, we suggest that organizational rights increase de facto rights protection because they create organizations with the incentives and means to protect the underlying right, which renders these rights self‐enforcing. Such organizations are not necessarily present to protect individual rights, which could make individual rights less effective. We test our theory using a variety of statistical methods on a data set of constitutional rights for 186 countries. The results support our theory: Organizational rights are associated with increased de facto rights protection, while individual rights are not.     

Choosing between the government and the regions: An empirical analysis of the Italian constitutional court decisions

In this article the extent to which political variables can explain the behaviour of constitutional judges in Italy when dealing with conflicts between the central government and regions is explored. Two competing hypotheses are tested. One hypothesis argues that one should expect some alignment between the political preferences of the judges and the success of the central government primarily due to the appointment mechanism. The other hypothesis suggests that there should be no systematic alignment between the political preferences of the judges and the success of the central government. Unlike previous literature, the empirical results presented in this article seem to confirm that when the Rapporteur and the court's majority are allegedly affiliated with the Prime Minister's coalition, the odds of success of the Prime Minister go up.     

Local Government and political development in Papua New Guinea

The paper examines the history of local government in Papua New Guinea and prospects for it, and offers some comparisons with Commonwealth Africa, particularly East Africa. The P.N.G. system of local government was influenced by that of Tanganyika but grew to greater proportional significance. Although challenged by the rise of nationalism, as in East Africa, local government has played a much greater role in political development. A significant anti-council movement challenged the new system, but mirrored its forms. The regional nature of these protests accompanied by a weak nationalist movement, led to strong pressures for decentralization after independence. The 1976 constitutional settlement has established provincial governments with complete control over local government and has posed fundamental questions about the future shape of local government in P.N.G.     

Constitutional political economy in the European Union

This article surveys recent research in constitutional political economy in Europe. Although not all of the works discussed necessarily focus only on European constitutional issues or are written by Europeans, European constitutional issues figure importantly in each area surveyed. The article examines the literatures linking constitutional institutions to economic growth, government size, government deficits and corruption, bicameralism, direct democracy and federalism. Three exclusively European topics also are covered: constitutional issues in the transition countries, the structure of the European Union and the draft constitution for the European Union.     

Coalition politics and accountability

The paper introduces the possibility of coalition government into the theoretical study of political accountability and analyzes the accountability of coalitions as a problem of team production. It is shown that coalition governments can be held accountable in the presence of an electoral alternative. Accountability becomes problematic if it is certain that at least one of the coalition parties stays in power after the elections. Such a coalition (sometimes called a ‘unity government’) can not be given appropriate collective incentives. To incentivate government performance, voters make one coalition party responsible for the outcome. This, however, makes the other coalition party interested in sabotage. The paper analyzes the resulting conflict and characterizes optimal voter strategy.     

Accountability issues of the resolution trust corporation

Abstract

No other governmental organization ever created can rival the complex patterns of accountability created to manage the bailout of the savings and loan industry. This complexity has, in turn, led to criticism that the bailout structure is too unwieldy to be managerially effective or politically accountable. While the structure does indeed immensely complicate these problems, it is an inevitable product of the political realities that shaped the bailout strategy. The real issues in maintaining accountability to the public for the bailout are: reporting clearly on how the money is being used; improving Congress's ability to track the complex management of the bailout; and using government officials, not contractors, to supervise the government's goals. Indeed, the biggest potential problem of accountability in the savings and loan rescue is not the convoluted political structure at the top but the heavy reliance on private contractors at the bottom.