Justice and Culture: Rawls, Sen, Nussbaum and O'Neill

Is it possible, in a multicultural world, to hold all societies to a common standard of decency that is both high enough to protect basic human interests, and yet not biased in the direction of particular cultural values? We examine the recent work of four liberals – John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Onora O'Neill – to see whether any of them has given a successful answer to this question. For Rawls, the decency standard is set by reference to an idea of basic human rights that we argue offers too little protection to members of non-liberal societies. Sen and Nussbaum both employ the idea of human capabilities, but in interestingly different ways: for Sen the problems are how to weight different capabilities, and how to decide which are basic, whereas for Nussbaum the difficulty is that her favoured list of capabilities depends on an appeal to autonomy that is unlikely to be acceptable to non-liberal cultures. O'Neill rejects a rights-based approach in favour of a neo-Kantian position that asks which principles of action people everywhere could consent to, but this also may be too weak in the face of cultural diversity. We conclude that liberals need to argue both for a minimum decency standard and for the full set of liberal rights as the best guarantors of that standard over time.     

Transparency, Democratic Accountability, and the Economic Consequences of Monetary Institutions

Debates about the appropriate mix between autonomy and accountability of bureaucrats are relevant to numerous areas of government action. I examine whether there is evidence of a tradeoff between transparency, democratic accountability, and the gains from monetary delegation. I begin by presenting a simple theoretical model which suggests that central banks that are transparent, in the sense of publishing their macroeconomic forecasts, will find it easier to acquire a reputation. Despite making central banks more subject to outside scrutiny then, monetary transparency can lead to improved economic outcomes. I also consider arguments about the effect of accountability provisions involving parliamentary oversight and control over central bankers. The article then uses a new data set to examine these issues empirically, focusing on a natural experiment involving disinflation costs under different central banking institutions during the 1990s. Results suggest that countries with more transparent central banks face lower costs of disinflation while accountability provisions have no clear effect on disinflation costs. My results also concord with earlier findings that the effect of monetary institutions is conditional on other features of the political environment.     

Ford Motor Company and the Firestone tyre recall

This paper was prepared as the basis for a class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. It may be appropriate for public affairs, business and public policy, and/or crisis management courses at the undergraduate or graduate level. In conjunction with this case, it may be useful to use the framework for crisis management developed by Dr Ian I. Mitroff, the Harold Quinton Distinguished Professor of Business Policy at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. This best practice model is discussed in ‘Managing Crises Before They Happen’, which Mitroff published in 2001 with Gus Anagnos, Vice President of Comprehensive Crisis Management. This case leads the audience through the Ford–Firestone tyre crisis from 1997—when Ford began to learn of a problem with Firestone tyres on its popular Explorer sport‐utility vehicle—up until the summer of 2001, just after Ford recalled 13 million Firestone tyres and the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration cleared Ford of further investigation into potential defects in the Explorer. The case addresses potential causes of the tyre problem, how Ford handled the crisis from a corporate public affairs perspective and, tangentially, how Firestone handled the issue. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Similar Ends, Differing Means: Contractualism and Civil Service Reform in Denmark and New Zealand

State sector reform was an integral component of the radical economic and social policy changes enacted by New Zealand governments between 1984 and 1991. This reform replaced the traditional tenured public service with a contractual regime. Through a comparison with Denmark, it is shown that New Zealand's reforms were not unique. Similar reforms were enacted in Denmark. But contrary to what occurred in New Zealand, the Danish reforms had already begun in the 1960s, and have since been gradually expanded. The parallel contractual regimes introduced in the two countries are accounted for by an increasing demand among politicians to secure a civil service that is responsive to political executive demands. However, because of institutional differences and diverging regulatory regimes, the strategic approaches in the two countries have been different. Whereas the New Zealand approach was dominated by an appeal to a coherent and sophisticated body of theoretical knowledge, combined with strict formalization, the Danish strategy has been based on political bargaining with the civil service unions. In both cases the reforms rest on critical assumptions regarding their positive and negative implications.     

Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationally directed or locally produced?

Along with a number of other researchers, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley have consistently argued that constituency campaigning in Britain influences constituency election outcomes. In recent work, however, they have denied that the major efforts made by the Labour Party’s national headquarters to target resources and expertise into key seats in the 1997 general election was effective and that, as a consequence, the party had better results in these seats than elsewhere. Using various measures of campaign intensity, however, it is clear that target constituencies did have significantly stronger Labour campaigns than comparable constituencies that were not nationally targeted. Multivariate analysis also suggests that Labour’s performance in targeted seats was better than in comparable seats.     

A Public Choice Analysis of Endangered Species Listings

Sizable economic consequences may resultfrom listing under the Endangered SpeciesAct (ESA). Potentially adversely affectedparties will attempt to use the politicalprocess to protect their interests. Thequestion is, “are listing determinationssubject to political manipulation?” Inthis paper, we explore empirically thepossibility that implementation of the ESAis determined, in part, by politicalconsiderations. Specifically, weinvestigate whether states with strongcongressional representation are able touse their political muscle to reduce thenumber of listings in their states, ascompared to states with weak congressionalrepresentation. Controlling for otherfactors, we find that states with greaterrepresentation on the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service’s budgetary oversightsubcommittee in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives have significantly fewerESA listings than states with weakerrepresentation on that subcommittee.