Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures

Using a new dataset drawn from American state legislatures, I modeled the informativeness of legislative committees as a choice over institutions. I found higher informativeness to be associated with better preparedness for information transfer, morepartisan chambers, and higher demand for information combined with greater incentives to control committee assignments. These associations shed light on congressional committee informativeness. A simple model of committee informativeness can predict the informativeness of the U.S. House's committees.     

Holding (Quasi-)Autonomous EU Administrative Actors to Public Account

Abstract:  This article addresses problems of accountability in relation to two specific kinds of administrative actors in the EU system of multilevel governance, namely comitology committees and EU-level agencies. With regard to both sets of actors, the accountability issue is often framed in terms of delegation from a principal to an agent. This article explores the delegation of powers discourse and the question whether this framing adequately covers accountability forums and mechanisms that are emerging as a matter of legal and institutional practice. The latter sub-constitutional level is particularly relevant given the high degree of institutionalisation of both categories of administrative actors. Using these two categories of administrative actors as case studies, this article suggests that a delegation model of accountability in a democratic sense is not adequate and only captures part of emerging practice. A looser conceptual framing, understanding public accountability as a process in which power is checked and balanced by various actors, fits better within a more constitutional perspective on holding EU executive power to account.     

To have a voice in the matter: A comparative study of the Swedish and Danish European committees

This article deals with the issue of how the national parliaments might be strengthened in order to decrease the democratic deficit within the EU. It examines the parliamentary European committees in the Danish and Swedish Parliaments and concludes that their potential to influence and control their respective governments’ EU policies mainly depends on the Government's parliamentary base and opportunities for legislative influence open to parliamentary oppositions. Moreover, it examines various organisational aspects of the European committees, including distribution of tasks and internal co‐ordination within the Parliament, at what stage in the decision‐making process the European Committee and the Parliament are involved and information management. With some conspicuous exceptions, Denmark and Sweden have chosen the same organisational arrangements for dealing with EU affairs both in the Parliament as a whole and, specifically, in the European committees. The principal conclusion is that the European committees in Sweden and Denmark are effective means for giving the national parliaments a voice in EU matters, but the article also addresses some reforms to strengthen their positions.     

西方弹劾制度探源

弹劾制度是西方宪政制度的重要组成部分。西方弹劾制度的历史发展过程可分为四个阶段:民主监察,弹劾制度在古希腊、古罗马的萌芽;权宜之计,弹劾制度在英国的产生;精心设计,弹劾制度在美国的成熟;技术革新,弹劾制度在世界范围内的普及。     

Accountability, Control and Independence: The Case of European Agencies

This article points at two problematic assumptions made in some of the contemporary European agency literature. It proposes a conceptual framework, integrating accountability, autonomy and control, and aims to demonstrate how this type of conceptualisation contributes to clarifying problematic aspects of the current European agency debate. Empirical evidence from interviews with high-level practitioners is provided to illustrate the relevance of the proposed framework. The empirical information reveals that, at times, the de facto level of autonomy displayed by some European agencies is below the autonomy provided by the formal legal rules as a result of ongoing controls exercised by one (or other) of the principals. The repercussions that flow from these empirical insights for the agency debate in general, as well as for our understanding of agency accountability, will be discussed at length.     

Informative Committees and Legislative Performance in the American States

The information theory of legislative organization suggests that legislative committees are designed to provide their parent chamber with necessary information to legislate. Despite empirical evidence for various aspects of the theory, we have limited knowledge of committees’ influence on legislative outputs. I argue that informative committees are more than information providers, that they also substantively impact legislative outcomes. With supportive evidence from the US state legislatures, this article shows that the presence of an informative committee system not only lowers the number of bills introduced to the legislature but also enhances the chamber's efficiency in transforming legislative proposals into laws.     

论我国行政问责制的法律缺失及其重构

目前我国行政问责制的法律缺失表现为:在全国范围内,问责制仅是中央政策而非法律;已有的专门问责制只是地方政府规章而非全国性法律;问责规定中,问责事由不具体、责任不全面、程序不规范,等等。问责法制不健全导致了问责面前不平等、问责客体不清、主体缺位、范围太窄、力度不强等消极后果。应当从以下方面来完善问责制:规范问责主体及其权力、问责的客体及其职责,明确问责事由、情形以及责任的种类、内容,完善问责程序。     

How to Make Congress Popular

Abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that Congress is unpopular because it does not measure up to the people's populist expectations. Instead of being the “citizen's legislature” that the people desire, it is an institutionalized legislature with well‐paid, longtime members and an elaborate infrastructure of committees, caucuses, parties, and perquisites. The people, it is alleged, desire more of a voice in the decisions made by Congress, they want congressional procedures to be more open so ordinary people know what is going on in the halls of power, and they want more accountability and more representation of the interests of real people. In this paper, I argue that the enactment of this populist reform agenda would actually make Congress substantially less popular with the people. In other words, I contend that the more Congress gives people voice, accountability, representation, and open, visible procedures, the more the people will be dissatisfied with Congress. The real cause of congressional unpopularity is not that people would rather make decisions themselves but that people do not trust members of Congress to make decisions in a non‐self‐interested fashion.     

Reviewable Automated Decision-Making

In this paper we introduce the concept of ‘reviewability' as an alternative approach to improving the accountability of automated decision-making that involves machine learning systems. In doing so, we draw on an understanding of automated decision-making as a socio-technical process, involving both human (organisational) and technical components, beginning before a decision is made and extending beyond the decision itself. Although explanations for automated decisions may be useful in some contexts, they focus more narrowly on the model and therefore do not provide the information about that process as a whole that is necessary for many aspects of accountability, regulatory oversight, and assessments for legal compliance. Drawing on previous work on the application of administrative law and judicial review mechanisms to automated decision-making in the public sector, we argue that breaking down the automated decision-making process into its technical and organisational components allows us to consider how appropriate record-keeping and logging mechanisms implemented at each stage of that process would allow for the process as a whole to be reviewed. Although significant research is needed to explore how it can be implemented, we argue that a reviewability framework potentially offers for a more useful and more holistic form of accountability for automated decision-making than approaches focused more narrowly on explanations.     

Disruptive accountability? Temporal regimes and social change in decolonization struggles in Belgium

To address the legacies of colonialism, several former colonial states have implemented a range of initiatives commonly considered to belong to the domain of transitional justice (TJ). These contexts are, however, very different from those for which TJ was initially conceptualized. As such, the implementation of elements from the TJ toolbox in these decolonization struggles raises several questions, which this article seeks to address. One of these questions relates to how diverging temporalities affect central normative objectives of TJ, such as accountability. The Belgian case is used to explore how a more pertinent approach to transitional temporalities enables a ‘thicker’ understanding of accountability that re-centres the debate around accountability's normative objectives in ways that are aligned with the objectives of decolonization struggles. I call this encompassing approach to accountability ‘disruptive accountability’ to underline the normative objective of disrupting harmful social structures and relations.     

Analysing and Assessing Accountability: A Conceptual Framework1

Abstract: It has been argued that the EU suffers from serious accountability deficits. But how can we establish the existence of accountability deficits? This article tries to get to grips with the appealing but elusive concept of accountability by asking three types of questions. First a conceptual one: what exactly is meant by accountability? In this article the concept of accountability is used in a rather narrow sense: a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the actor has an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct, the forum can pose questions and pass judgement, and the actor may face consequences. The second question is analytical: what types of accountability are involved? A series of dimensions of accountability are discerned that can be used to describe the various accountability relations and arrangements that can be found in the different domains of European governance. The third question is evaluative: how should we assess these accountability arrangements? The article provides three evaluative perspectives: a democratic, a constitutional and a learning perspective. Each of these perspectives may produce different types of accountability deficits.     

Accountability by design in technology research

What does research look like in practice? Aside from popular assumptions of how researchers are lonely isolated individuals sitting disconnected from the rest of the world enmeshed in thought, a considerable part of research involves working with data. Whether this data is quantitative, qualitative, gathered through experiments or involves writing code, all of this data is not just magically ‘invented’ out of thin air, but instead develops in a process of interaction with both human beings and technical systems. However only a small fragment of this process is presented to outside reviewers, the outputs and the framing often specifically designed to make a specific point. How the author got there, and which assumptions were made on the way and how these assumptions developed over time is seldom included in the final write-up. The following article argues that rather than just providing output data to be considered in research – or providing explanations for technical outcomes as is frequently proposed in computer science, accountability can only be developed by better understanding the research process. In order to do this, we suggest a series of mechanisms that can be built into existing research practices to make them more intelligible to outside reviewers and scholars. These mechanisms are designed to develop the accountability principle of the GDPR and ensure more accountable scientific research. As the GDPR recitals also explicitly references scientific research, an accountability by design approach to technology research is grounded both in the articles and recitals of the GDPR. By documenting the key elements of a narrative research story which explains not just what you believe to have discovered but also how researchers got there, it may also be possible to create better accountability mechanisms.     

Accountability, New Public Management, and the Problems of the Child Support Agency

This paper seeks to evaluate the accountability of Next Steps Agencies through the medium of a case study of the Child Support Agency (CSA). The CSA was widely considered to offer a substandard service to its customers. It was the subject of multiple reports by the House of Commons Social Services Select Committee, the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner, and the Public Accounts Committee. In addition, these committees had at their disposal internal reports from an adjudicator and the Child Support commissioner. The interlock between internal and external machinery for accountability is also considered.     

Framing the Choice Between Cash and the Courthouse: Experiences With the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund

In this article I report the results of a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of how those who were injured or lost a family member in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks evaluated the tradeoff between a cash payment—available through the Victim Compensation Fund—and the pursuit of litigation. Responses make it clear that potential plaintiffs saw much more at stake than monetary compensation and that the choice to forego litigation required the sacrifice of important nonmonetary, civic values: obtaining and publicizing information about what happened, prompting public findings of accountability for those responsible, and participating in the process of ensuring that there would be responsive change to what was learned about how the attacks and deaths happened. The results shed light on the framing component of the transformation of disputes, and in particular on how potential litigants see the decision to sue, or not, as a decision as much or more about how they understand their relationship to their community and their responsibilities as a citizen as how they evaluate monetary considerations.     

Common law country update on international humanitarian law: annual update on national legislation, 2010

The article highlights the challenge before the courts to the decision of the parliamentary select committee to remove the former Chief Justice of Sri Lanka in January 2013. Parliament and the President proceeded with the impeachment and removal of the Chief Justice, despite court decisions, on the basis that this was a power specifically granted to the parliament under the constitution. The article examines how the legitimacy of impeachment proceedings of superior court judges can be ensured within the concept of the separation of powers without adversely impacting on the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.     

Engaging the demand dynamic: promoting internal forces for reform through targeted legislative strengthening support

Institutional reform or development happens when those within the organisation want that development and are willing to commit the time, effort and necessary resources under their control to support it. This may be referred to as the will for development. Over the years, a general strategy for legislative development has emerged in which the will for development is enlisted in one or more of three ways: mapping, incentivising, and creating demand. These efforts focus on identifying the will for development independent of the legislative strengthening project itself. This paper will explore how success in supporting the budget process by the United States Agency for International Development-funded Afghanistan Parliamentary Assistance Programme enhanced and/or created the will for further development within that legislature. The paper will demonstrate how budget process support can be used to engage a broader constituency of committees and civil society organisations, creating a self-sustaining reform dynamic to be referred to as the demand dynamic.     

国际法视野下的企业社会责任与劳工权益保护——兼论社会责任标准在我国的实施

企业社会责任运动要求公司尤其是跨国公司在参与市场竞争的过程中应承担其应尽的社会责任以保障基本人权和劳工权利。考查企业社会责任运动的发展及相关国际法律文件的规定、实施及影响,相较于我国法律的相关规定,企业社会责任标准并非高不可攀的道德苛求,只要我国建立起规范、明确的约束体系,切实实施劳动法等相关法律的规定,劳工权益得到切实维护,企业社会责任的标准也就基本达到了。     

Intended Consequences: Jurisdictional Reform and Issue Control In the U.S. House of Representatives

The power of congressional committees rests in large part on their ability to set the legislative agenda in particular issue areas. But how do committees acquire their issue jurisdictions? Existing research points to informal committee turf wars— not collective reforms—as the roots of jurisdictional allocations (King 1994, 1997). Yet the House of Representatives has made nearly 150 formal changes to its committees' jurisdictions since 1973. We investigated the effects of one prominent instance of extensive jurisdictional changes, the Bolling‐Hansen reforms of 1975, and found that this body of reforms advanced collective goals of improved policy coordination and enhanced information sharing.     

Majority Party Change and Committee Jurisdictions in State Legislatures

Committee jurisdictions are important in legislative organization, but the reorganization of jurisdictions has received scant attention, particularly in state legislatures, where the fluidity of committee organization allows us to examine rationales for change. In this article, I examine whether new majorities use jurisdiction reorganization for agenda‐control purposes. Examining 39 state legislatures between 2003 and 2012, I test whether committee patterns are less stable in legislative sessions under new majorities and the extent to which reorganization reflects party priorities. I find that new majority parties eliminate committees that reflect the other party's policy priorities and create committees that reflect their priorities.