Download Free Constraining Government Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Constraining Government and write the review.

Moderate government is a time-honored and cherished doctrine. It has been considered the best solution of preventing tyranny and anarchy alike. However, expositions of the doctrine tend either to be entrenched by the technicalities of constitutional and public choice theory, or to remain largely exhortative. This book aims at providing a larger and more commonsensical defense of it. It addresses the issue of moderation but within a broader perspective of reflecting on how governments have developed with inherent constraints. This offers an analysis of the Antigone and Measure for Measure to discuss the necessary fall of tyranny, and the problems of how to distinguish between order and disorder. It is then argued that doing political theory is another important constraint on governments. Even conceptions that envision an unconstrained sort of government run into difficulties and as an unintended consequence, confirm the soundness of the idea that governing is an inherently constrained business. The book then takes issue with the recently growing awareness, associated with political realism, that governing is as much a personal as an institutional activity. In this context, the virtue of moderation will be discussed, and shown how it grows out of the experience of shame, whereby we are made conscious of our limitations of control over ourselves. Governing is to a large part about control, and as a personal activity it preserves the centrality of shame, and the insight that moderation is the best way to maintain effective control without pretending to have full control. Then, the book discusses three offices of government, traditionally considered to be the pivotal ones: the legislator, the chief executive, and the judge. Each will be analyzed by help of three fundamental distinctions: normal vs exceptional times, personal vs institutional aspects, and governing vs anti-governing. They highlight and confirm the inherent constraints of each office. Finally, three political conceptions of governing will be discussed, ending with a reflection on the principle of the separation of powers.
Examining constitutional rules and power-sharing in Africa reveals how some dictatorships become institutionalized, rule-based systems.
How do some dictatorships become institutionalized ruled-based systems, while others remain heavily personalist? Once implemented, do executive constraints actually play an effective role in promoting autocratic stability? To understand patterns of regime institutionalization, this book studies the emergence of constitutional term limits and succession procedures, as well as elite power-sharing within presidential cabinets. Anne Meng argues that institutions credibly constrain leaders only when they change the underlying distribution of power between leaders and elites by providing elites with access to the state. She also shows that initially weak leaders who institutionalize are less likely to face coup attempts and are able to remain in office for longer periods than weak leaders who do not. Drawing on an original time-series dataset of 46 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2010, formal theory, and case studies, this book ultimately illustrates how some dictatorships evolve from personalist strongman rule to institutionalized regimes.
Does constitutionalizing rights improve respect for those rights in practice? Drawing on statistical analyses, survey experiments, and case studies from around the world, this book argues that enforcing constitutional rights is not easy, but that some rights are harder to repress than others. First, enshrining rights in constitutions does not automatically ensure that those rights will be respected. For rights to matter, rights violations need to be politically costly. But this is difficult to accomplish for unconnected groups of citizens. Second, some rights are easier to enforce than others, especially those with natural constituencies that can mobilize for their enforcement. This is the case for rights that are practiced by and within organizations, such as the rights to religious freedom, to unionize, and to form political parties. Because religious groups, trade unions and parties are highly organized, they are well-equipped to use the constitution to resist rights violations. As a result, these rights are systematically associated with better practices. By contrast, rights that are practiced on an individual basis, such as free speech or the prohibition of torture, often lack natural constituencies to enforce them, which makes it easier for governments to violate these rights. Third, even highly organized groups armed with the constitution may not be able to stop governments dedicated to rights-repression. When constitutional rights are enforced by dedicated organizations, they are thus best understood as speed bumps that slow down attempts at repression. An important contribution to comparative constitutional law, this book provides a comprehensive picture of the spread of constitutional rights, and their enforcement, around the world.
How do Supreme Court justices decide their cases? Do they follow their policy preferences? Or are they constrained by the law and by other political actors? The Constrained Court combines new theoretical insights and extensive data analysis to show that law and politics together shape the behavior of justices on the Supreme Court. Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman show how two types of constraints have influenced the decision making of the modern Court. First, Bailey and Maltzman document that important legal doctrines, such as respect for precedents, have influenced every justice since 1950. The authors find considerable variation in how these doctrines affect each justice, variation due in part to the differing experiences justices have brought to the bench. Second, Bailey and Maltzman show that justices are constrained by political factors. Justices are not isolated from what happens in the legislative and executive branches, and instead respond in predictable ways to changes in the preferences of Congress and the president. The Constrained Court shatters the myth that justices are unconstrained actors who pursue their personal policy preferences at all costs. By showing how law and politics interact in the construction of American law, this book sheds new light on the unique role that the Supreme Court plays in the constitutional order.
Abstract: Scholars and policymakers generally regard democracy as a force for better governance; however, democracy is a many-splendored thing and it is not clear which elements of a democratic regime are critical in the governance equation. Moreover, we have only an imprecise understanding of the causal mechanisms in the democracy-governance relationship. Accordingly, the goals of this dissertation are to identify those elements of democracy that have a positive impact on the quality of government and to understand the causal mechanisms underlying this relationship. I turn from the question " Does democracy improve the quality of government?" to "How does democracy improve the quality of government?" Of all the various ways in which democracy might improve the quality of government (e.g., political participation, electoral competition, press freedom and political constraints created by checks and balances), I argue that political constraints on the executive's discretionary authority, activated by checks and balances, have the greatest impact on the quality of governance. Legislative constraints, particularly, have a strong effect on the quality of government by reducing the discretionary authority of the executive over the public bureaucracy. The dissertation follows a mixed-method research strategy. In the first section, I begin with a theoretical chapter to develop the main argument and conduct cross-national statistical analyses to identify the component of democracy underlying variations in the quality of government, using time-series data and disaggregating democracy into specific components. The second part of the dissertation comprises three case studies: Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Here, I process-trace the decisions these new democracies took to create professional and non-corrupt bureaucracies.
Using anticorruption efforts in New York City to illustrate their argument, Anechiarico and Jacobs demonstrate the costly inefficiencies of pursuing absolute integrity. By proliferating dysfunctions, constraining decision makers' discretion, shaping priorities, and causing delays, corruption control - no less than corruption itself - has contributed to the contemporary crisis in public administration.
Why do some democracies reflect their citizens' foreign policy preferences better than others? What roles do the media, political parties, and the electoral system play in a democracy's decision to join or avoid a war? War and Democratic Constraint shows that the key to how a government determines foreign policy rests on the transmission and availability of information. Citizens successfully hold their democratic governments accountable and a distinctive foreign policy emerges when two vital institutions—a diverse and independent political opposition and a robust media—are present to make timely information accessible. Matthew Baum and Philip Potter demonstrate that there must first be a politically potent opposition that can blow the whistle when a leader missteps. This counteracts leaders' incentives to obscure and misrepresent. Second, healthy media institutions must be in place and widely accessible in order to relay information from whistle-blowers to the public. Baum and Potter explore this communication mechanism during three different phases of international conflicts: when states initiate wars, when they respond to challenges from other states, or when they join preexisting groups of actors engaged in conflicts. Examining recent wars, including those in Afghanistan and Iraq, War and Democratic Constraint links domestic politics and mass media to international relations in a brand-new way.
Holmes argues that the aspirations of liberal democracy - including individual liberty, the equal dignity of citizens, and a tolerance for diversity - are best understood in relation to two central themes of classical liberal theory: the psychological motivations of individuals and the necessary constraints on individual passions provided by robust institutions. Paradoxically, Holmes argues, such institutional restraints serve to enable, rather than limit or dilute, effective democracy.
Why do some democracies reflect their citizens' foreign policy preferences better than others? What roles do the media, political parties, and the electoral system play in a democracy's decision to join or avoid a war? War and Democratic Constraint shows that the key to how a government determines foreign policy rests on the transmission and availability of information. Citizens successfully hold their democratic governments accountable and a distinctive foreign policy emerges when two vital institutions-a diverse and independent political opposition and a robust media-are present to make timely information accessible.Matthew Baum and Philip Potter demonstrate that there must first be a politically potent opposition that can blow the whistle when a leader missteps. This counteracts leaders' incentives to obscure and misrepresent. Second, healthy media institutions must be in place and widely accessible in order to relay information from whistle-blowers to the public. Baum and Potter explore this communication mechanism during three different phases of international conflicts: when states initiate wars, when they respond to challenges from other states, or when they join preexisting groups of actors engaged in conflicts.Examining recent wars, including those in Afghanistan and Iraq, War and Democratic Constraint links domestic politics and mass media to international relations in a brand-new way.