The Administrators of Democracy: A Research Note on Local Election Officials

Local election officials are the administrators of democracy, but we know little about their views. This paper draws from two national surveys of local election officials. The authors find that local election officials generally support the goals of the federal Help America Vote Act but are less enthusiastic about the actual impact of the legislation. Implementation theory helps explain their evaluation of federal reforms. Goal congruence with reform mandates, resource availability, and a willingness to accept federal involvement predicts support for these reforms. Federal policy changes have promoted electronic systems, and some of the authors' findings are relevant to research on e-government. Users of electronic voting machines tend to have high confidence in them despite the significant criticism the machines have faced. Local election officials who support e-government generally are more likely to more positively evaluate federal reforms.     

Unfulfilled promises of the consultation approach: the limits to effective indigenous participation in Bolivia’s and Peru’s extractive industries

Indigenous peoples’ right to prior consultation and to informed consent represents the basis of the new global model shaping state–indigenous relations. Consultation processes promise to enable indigenous people to determine their own development and are especially promoted when extraction projects with significant socio-environmental impacts are planned on indigenous lands. In this article we draw on debates on participatory development in order to analyse the first state-led consultations in Bolivia’s and Peru’s hydrocarbon sectors (2007–14). The analysis shows that effective participation has been limited by (1) an absence of indigenous ownership of the processes; (2) indigenous groups’ difficulties defending or even articulating their own visions and demands; and (3) limited or very general outcomes. The study identifies real-life challenges, such as power asymmetries, a ‘communication hurdle’ and appropriate timing – as well as simplistic assumptions underlying the consultation approach – that account for the unfulfilled promises of this new model.     

TRANSPARENCY IN PUBLIC–PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL?

Scholars' criticism of transparency in public–private partnerships (PPPs) often focuses on ‘external’ transparency, that is, the extent to which internal information is visible to the outside world. However, to achieve external transparency, internal transparency – the availability and inferability of information for the public procurer and the private party – is crucial. In this article we analyse input, process, and output transparency from three different perspectives (institutional, cognitive, and strategic) in four PPPs in the Netherlands. We conclude that input transparency is high, but process and output transparency less so. Moreover, output transparency has gained importance in PPPs. Whether this is problematic depends on the PPPs' institutional environment. In some partnerships the desired output is uncontested and predetermined by clear standards in the institutional environment, whereas other PPPs deal with contested output norms, decreasing the partnerships' transparency. These results nuance the current debate on the lack of transparency in PPPs.     

ONLY GOOD FENCES KEEP GOOD NEIGHBOURS! THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF MINISTRY–AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS AT THE SCIENCE–POLICY NEXUS IN GERMAN FOOD SAFETY POLICY

This article makes a further contribution to opening the ‘black box’ of micropractices in ministry–agency relationships. We argue that the mechanisms that come into play in the course of institutionalizing agencification reforms – such as renegotiating mutual roles and rules in ministry–agency interactions – are only poorly covered in the existing literature. To adequately address the negotiated and contingent nature of de facto agency autonomy and political control, we develop an interpretive approach based on the concept of ‘boundary work’. The empirical focus is on ministry–agency interactions at the science–policy nexus in the contested policy field of food safety. By studying actors' stories about the institutionalization processes following the fundamental reorganization of the German food safety administration in the wake of the BSE crisis from a longitudinal perspective, we show how actors manage boundary conflicts via increasingly differentiated backstage coordination.     

Selecting Constitutional Judges Randomly

This article discusses from the perspective of democratic theory an innovative proposal for the selection of constitutional, supreme court, or federal judges that aims at combining the values of expertise and political independence. It consists in combining a certification process – selecting a pool of properly qualified candidates – with a random selection among this pool. We argue that such selection procedure would better respect the separation of powers and the specific legitimacy of courts, and we champion this two‐stage mechanism vis‐à‐vis other, more traditionally employed, selection procedures. We then deal with a diversity of objections to our proposal and conclude by taking stock of both its virtues and limitations.     

A New Scramble for African Oil? Historical, Political, and Business Perspectives

It has been suggested that Africa is experiencing a ‘NewScramble’ thanks primarily to its oil and gas wealth,with the United States and the People’s Republic of Chinaactively competing for access to Africa’s resources. Thisarticle aims to scrutinize the claim that Africa is facing aNew Scramble, analysing the nature of the economic and politicalchanges at work, the importance of Africa’s oil, and thepolitical and economic forces behind the new oil rush. The articlestarts with an overview of the phenomenon labelled by some asthe ‘New Scramble’. The main body of the articleevaluates the existence of a New Scramble from three subjectperspectives: history, international relations, and businessstudies. Finally, by analysing the likely impact on the economiesof oil-producing states, it considers whether we should dismayor rejoice over the ‘New Scramble for Africa’. Itconcludes that the existence of a New Scramble or a US–Chineserace for Africa should be treated with some caution and thatthe use of terms such as ‘scramble’ and ‘race’is perhaps misleading, while the economic impact of oil investmentsis likely to be bleak.     

Evaluating the shared and unique predictors of legal cynicism and police legitimacy from adolescence into early adulthood

In different theoretical traditions, negative social conditions, attachments, and interactions shape the way individuals view the law and its agents. Although most researchers acknowledge the conceptual distinction between different legal attitudes such as legal cynicism and police legitimacy, it remains unclear to what extent these attitudes stem from the same social sources. In the current study, therefore, we evaluate the social and individual factors that influence trajectories of legal cynicism and police legitimacy using a diverse community sample of youths in Zurich, Switzerland. Latent growth curve models were employed to examine patterns of change in legal cynicism and police legitimacy between 13 and 20 years of age. The findings show that legal cynicism and police legitimacy both decline into early adulthood and exhibit high rank-stability over time. Furthermore, we find that legal cynicism is closely related to individual characteristics that reflect one's inability to recognize or abide by their internal rules. By contrast, police legitimacy is shaped by socialization influences, particularly teacher bonds and police contacts. These results indicate a need to assess the measurement and interpretation of legal cynicism critically in relation to broader legitimacy beliefs and to investigate the shared and distinct sources of these different constructs.     

What is the Theory Legal Argumentation For?

The paper aims to present the legal theories of legal argumentation constructed in the last century, organised into two groups: the precursors (Viehweg, Perelman and Toulmin) and the authors of the standard theory (MacCormick and Alexy). Then, some criticisms about all these conceptions are presented. And finally, an outline of a theory of legal argumentation is made, capable of overcoming some of the previous criticisms. The fundamental idea for this is to build a very abstract concept of argumentation that could then allow various interpretations or conceptions of legal argumentation. From here, one would be in a position to find an answer to the three main argumentative questions raised by legal practice: how to analyse an argument, how to evaluate it, how to argue.