Federal antitrust enforcement: A principal-agent perspective

We study the choices of two types of maximizing Public Servants over how far to carry privatization of industries and in what order to privatize. Two stylizations of the Public Servant's objectives are considered, a Niskanen-style Bureaucrat who maximizes a surplus budget subject to the constraint of staying in office, and a Populist who maximizes popularity/consumer welfare subject to the constraint of a balanced budget. Other things being equal, the Bureaucrat will privatize the sector (firms) with the least market power and the largest subsidy first. The Populist will adopt the same policy, if the marginal costs of products in the private sectors are not too high with respect to the marginal utilities. If the marginal costs are too high, however, the Populist will privatize the sector with the largest market power first. We also show that privatization is easier and faster in less democratic societies.     

Equilibria in multi-party systems

This paper deals with equilibria in multi-party systems, not excluding systems with two parties. The model has a one-dimensional policy space for the positions of parties and voters. Furthermore it assumes an arbitrary continuous density of voters, voters vote for the nearest party, and parties try to maximize the number of votes. Sufficient and necessary conditions for equilibria are given, and from these conditions it is deduced that for systems with a large number of parties equilibria are rare, unless the density of voters is uniform.     

Lobbying in the sunshine—hiding behind transparency?

Lobbying in Israel was unregulated for 60 years. Scholars have decried the fact that high value is attached to the written decree, but implementation does not necessarily follow: quite a few laws have remained at symbolic level in Israel. There were two unsuccessful bills submitted to legislate lobbying regulation: first by Knesset Member (MK) Merom in 1993 and the second one by MK Naot in 2001. The bill submitted by MKs Yechimovich and Sa'ar in 2007 resulted in passing the Israeli lobbying regulations in 2008, but the Lobbyist Law displayed unexpected characteristics, and there was a 500% growth in lobbyist numbers. In 2012, a scandal shook the Israeli lobbying world as a crew from the Israeli Channel 2's investigative show Uvda (‘Fact’) infiltrated the training program of the Gilad Government Relations & Lobbying firm. Following the Channel 2 exposé, the Speaker of the Knesset MK Rivlin instructed Knesset employees to immediately forbid the entrance of all lobbyists to areas heavily used by MKs. These steps, taken almost 4 years after that the Knesset had passed a weak Lobbyist Law, scoring 28 points according to the Center of Public Integrity score, did not create more transparency but only set certain restrictions on the lobbyists' movements in the Knesset building. In 2013, MK Koll submitted a bill to further regulate the lobbying followed by another bill by MKs Yechimovich and Tsur in 2014. However, these bills were thrashed as the Knesset was dispersed in December 2014. This paper would analyze the bills from 1993, 2001, 2007, 2013, and 2014 by measuring their strength according to the Center of Public Integrity Index in order to explore the path that resulted in passing the Lobbyist Law in 2008 and in the following developments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Failing to tell friend from foe: A comment on Wijn et al. (2017)

Behavioural observation programmes are becoming increasingly popular at transportation hubs, sporting events, and other large crowd gatherings. Premise of these programmes is that malicious intention can be accurately deduced from observable behaviour. In a recent article published in this journal, Wijn et al. (2017, Legal and Criminological Psychology, 22, 378–399.) conclude that environmental cues improve the correct detection of participants with malicious intent. This conclusion can and will be interpreted as support for behavioural observation programmes. In this comment, we argue that Wijn and colleagues draw a fundamentally wrong conclusion from their data. What their data show is that malicious intentions could not be detected in any of the conditions. Their findings can therefore not be conceptualized as evidence for behavioural observation programmes. Rather, they add to the growing critique voiced towards such programmes.     

政治儒学与民主

现代中国思想史在总体上充斥着对许多中国传统文化和思想——尤其是儒学——的拒绝和批判。二十一世纪初,儒学和自由主义在中国的命运和前途似乎开始改变。当今中国一位著名的儒家学者蒋庆反对将西方式的民主引入中国。另外一位在当代中国富有影响力的学者康晓光也如此认为,他倡议用儒家的"仁政"来代替民主。另一方面,二十世纪著名的新儒家学者们却完全接受在西方演化而来的民主宪政。尽管已有半个世纪之久,但徐复观所宣扬的以及1958年《宣言》所体现的政治儒学思想,对我们今天仍具有启示意义,并回荡在我们心中。蒋庆和康晓光提出的将儒学作为中国的意识形态的建议,不是中国政治改革的长远之道。     

The Democratic Duty to Oppose Brexit

What should be the position of democrats in response to the Brexit referendum? Many urge a duty to accept the result. This article argues the contrary. If someone is a UK citizen, has a belief that leaving the European Union will be damaging to the common good of the UK and is a convinced democrat, then that person has a duty to oppose Brexit. Neither of the two principal reasons for accepting the result—a claim of popular sovereignty or of parliamentary sovereignty—imply a duty not to continue to oppose. Arguments from political equality for simple majority rule do not apply when the alternatives are ill defined. More generally, popular sovereignty presupposes and does not replace constitutional democracy, and in a parliamentary democracy there is always a continuing right to oppose.