柏克保守主义政治法律思想解读

基于对法国大革命理论基础的反思,柏克质疑理性主义,推崇经验思维,强调具体的人权和具体的道德与人性。在对待传统上,主张改革,主张在政治上应审慎;在法律发展上,注重历史和传统的渐进性与延续性,为我们的政治改革与法治建设提供了有益的启示。     

论美国政府信息公开制度的演进及其启示

知情权作为公民的基本权利之一,是实现其他政治权利的重要条件。而传统体制惯性作用下政府部门控制信息的内在偏好不利于公众及时获取信息。消解信息资源服务社会的障碍,保障公民知情权,必须推进政府信息公开制度化建设。综观世界各国,美国政府信息公开制度建设起步较早,制度化水平高,发展更为完备。在实践中,我们应立足本国国情,借鉴国外的有益经验,重视制度衔接,明确公开范围,完善公开方式,强化外部监督等。     

Catch Us If You Can: Election Monitoring and International Norm Diffusion

Why has the decision to invite foreign election observers become an international norm? More generally, how do international norms develop in the absence of incentives for cooperation or activism by norm entrepreneurs? Motivated by the case of election observation, I argue that international norms can be generated through a diffusely motivated signaling process. Responding to increased benefits associated with being democratic, international election observation was initiated by democratizing governments as a signal of a government's commitment to democracy. Increased democracy‐contingent benefits gave other “true‐democrats” the incentive to invite observers, resulting in a widespread belief that all true‐democrats invite election monitors. Consequently, not inviting observers became an unambiguous signal that a government was not democratizing, giving even pseudo‐democrats reason to invite observers and risk a negative report. I evaluate this theory with an original global dataset on elections and election observation, 1960–2006.     

Media in the Policy Process: Using Framing and Narratives to Understand Policy Influences

Policy scholarship has long sought to understand the role of knowledge and information in the policy process. Of the actors, institutions, and resources involved in shaping policy processes and outcomes, media and narratives have been incorporated into empirical policy scholarship and theories with varying success. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a framework through which scholars can bring analysis of narratives into studies of policy making. The NPF moves the field forward in understanding the role of narratives, communication, and stakeholder beliefs in the policy process, while at the same time striving for theoretical rigor. We embed the discussion of frames and narratives in the NPF to provide an empirical and theoretical cohesion to our understanding of media and public policy and then provide a brief empirical example of how such an integration may prove fruitful for policy scholars.     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

Broadcasting system in Italy: Evolution and perspectives

Italian public broadcasting service (RAI) has had a monopoly until the middle of the 1970s. The peculiarity of public monopoly in broadcasting is its tendency to secure political rather than economic rents. The dangers that public monopoly causes to consumers (viewers-listeners), has not emerged at least until the mid-seventies for the simple reason that broadcasting has been conceived under the ideological umbrella of public good rather than in terms of opportunity costs. A law limiting monopoly has taken fourteen years to be passed so that the proliferation of private radio and television stations has orgininated the subrogatory intervention by the Constitutional Court. From 1975 to 1989 regulation has tended to perpetuate RAI's monopoly, in a context which was very different from the one in which the RAI was established. It is no wonder, therefore, that reforms have been motivated by RAI's financial crisis in the seventies and eighties, and not by political choices. The 1990 law puts a stop to public monopoly in broadcasting giving rise to what now appears to be a duopoly, but which in 1990 to many seemed to introduce a contestable market able to respond to both consumers' demand and technological innovations more efficiently, so ensuring more freedom of information.     

Democracy and Changes: How Research Tails Reality

The most important traditional topics of empirical theory of democracy have been deeply reshaped by the phenomenon of the diffusion of democracies in the world during at least the last 30 years. More precisely, the definition of democracy is reconsidered under the new light shed by that phenomenon; the issue of hybrid regimes is addressed with all its problems of empirical intractability; the issue of the emergence of a theory, a quasi theory or at least a good theoretical framework about democratisation processes is discussed; and finally a contested issue such as that of the empirical assessment of democratic quality is introduced.     

Public Management and Administration: a Need for Evolution

Recently, British public management has relied too much on private sector approaches suited to market‐facing situations, to the detriment of systems based on a realistic estimate of the special nature of public business, and its needs for economy and co‐ordination. Accountability processes have suffered from over‐simplification (targetry) and from a gross multiplication of mechanisms focusing on individual error, as opposed to ensuring intelligent assessment of business results. There has been an over‐emphasis on management of inputs and outputs, as opposed to systems gearing the result‐producing mechanisms to means for policy formation and co‐ordination of effort. We need now to re‐think and define properly the systems whereby ministers are advised, account is rendered, resources are allocated and effort is co‐ordinated—and the qualifications of the relevant actors. Suggestions are made to these ends.