Searching for civil society: changing patterns of governance in Britain

To understand governance, we ask who is telling the story from within which tradition. We argue there is no essentialist notion of governance but at least four conceptions each rooted in a distinctive tradition. The first section of the paper describes the relevant traditions: Tory, Liberal, Whig and Socialist. The second section describes the different notions of governance associated with each tradition; intermediate institutions, marketizing public services, reinventing the constitution and trust and negotiation. We explain these distinct conceptions of governance as responses to the dilemmas of inflation and state overload. In the conclusion, we summarize how and why traditions change, concluding, there is no such thing as governance, but only the differing constructions of the several traditions.     

PLESSY V.FERGUSON IN LIBERTARIAN PERSPECTIVE

Law and Philosophy -     

An economic theory of governability: Choosing policy and optimizing performance

When collective violence occurs, a management and decision-making crisis exists for governmental authorities. We examine this situation with an economic model of governability within states. Political decision-makers wish to minimize two goals that enter as components of the government's performance function: political violence and revolutionary change of regime. We further assume that authorities have only a scarce supply of two policy instruments available with which to respond to violence: the accommodation and repression of the demands of their oppositions. Moreover, these elites confront a number of structural determinants of violence and revolution. After laying out these basic components of the model, we propose several theorems about the causes of political performance and about the regime's decision-calculus. These are then proven through a comparative static analysis of the model and by optimizing the performance function. The deductions indicate that the regime's policy instruments produce contradictory effects on the targetted levels of violence and revolution. In general, both accommodation and repression of opponents will, up to some point, reduce violence (an intended consequence) but increase revolution (an unintended consequence). Thus, upon close examination the goals of political decision-makers, to simultaneously minimize both violence and revolution, turn out to be inconsistent. Authorities therefore select an optimal level of performance by balancing the costs and benefits that come from accommodating and repressing their opponents.     

The first decade of the Congressional Budget Act: Legislative imitation and adaptation in budgeting

The influence of institutions on budgetary behavior at the federal level is the subject of this article, which examines the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. While its impact on budgetary priorities and growth seems modest at best, the Act has had a substantial impact on the process of budgetary decisionmaking, the nature of budgetary debate, and the budgetary strategies employed within Congress. These new and generally dysfunctional forms of congessional budgetary behavior are consequences of a budgetary reform that attempted to transfer many of the resource allocation procedures of the Executive branch to a legislative context. The transfer of many Executive branch budgetary procedures has led to the appearance within Congress of budgetary behavior previously confined largely to the Executive branch. The article also discusses attempts to render the congressional budget process more compatible with the legislative environment, analyzing the modifications in the original budget process that have been effected and proposed in recent years.Earlier versions of this article were delivered at the Workshop on Budgetary Control in the Public Sector, Brussels, Belgium, October 13–14, 1983, the meetings of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, October, 1983, and the meetings of the American Political Science Association, September, 1983. Allen Schick, Robert X. Browning, Alex Hicks, Robert Strauss, John R. Hibbings, Evelyn Brodkin, and Rod Kiewiet provided helpful comments, and Pamela Reyner provided secretarial assistance. All remaining deficiencies are the responsibilities of the authors.     

The Japanese legal system: Why many Americans fail

In the United States, a businessperson can operate within the familiar framework of American law, relying on a legal expert only for the relevant specifics. However, because the historical background, modern usage, and basic logical structure of the Japanese legal system differs so completely from American expected norms, this simple acquaintance with the law is insufficient in Japan. The failure of the American trans-Pacific business community to acquaint itself adequately with the unique Japanese legal system has contributed to America’s inability to penetrate Japanese markets, the default of many business ventures, and ultimately to the decline of America’s economic status relative to Japan.