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Inside job : how government insiders subvert the public interest
\"National decline is typically blamed on special interests from the demand side of politics corrupting a country's institutions. The usual demand-side suspects include crony capitalists, consumer activists, economic elites, and labor unions. Less attention is given to government insiders on the supply side of politics - rulers, elected officials, bureaucrats, and public employees. In autocracies and democracies, government insiders have the motive, means, and opportunity to co-opt political power for their benefit and at the expense of national well-being. Many storied empires have succumbed to such inside jobs. Today, they imperil countries as different as China and the United States. Democracy - government by the people - does not ensure government for the people. Understanding how government insiders use their power to subvert the public interest - and how these negative consequences can be mitigated - is the topic of this book by Mark A. Zupan\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Types of Environmental Public Interest Litigation in China and Exploration of New Frontiers
Since “ecological civilization” was written into the constitution, China has continuously strengthened ecological and environmental protection and innovatively established an environmental public interest litigation system. However, China’s current environmental public interest litigation system is not sound, especially since the types and scope of environmental public interest litigation are unclear, which is the core problem we aim to solve. To explore the types of environmental public interest litigation in China and the possibility of expanding new fields, we first used the normative analysis method to review the legislation of environmental public interest litigation in China and then conducted an empirical analysis of 215 judgment documents of environmental public interest litigation in China, and we concluded that the legal types and scope of application of environmental public interest litigation in China are constantly expanding. To reduce environmental pollution and ecological damage as much as possible, we argue that China should further expand the application of environmental administrative public interest litigation to improve the environmental civil public interest litigation system and adhere to the criteria of “behavior standards first, result standards second” and “prevention first, recovery second”. At the same time, through the internal connection mechanism between procuratorial suggestions and environmental administrative public interest litigation, the external cooperation between environmental organizations, procuratorates, and environmental administrative departments should be strengthened, and a new mechanism for environmental public interest litigation should be established and improved to accumulate useful experience in the judicial protection of China’s ecological environment.
Journal Article
Virtue politics : soulcraft and statecraft in Renaissance Italy
\"Convulsed by a civilizational crisis, the great thinkers of the Renaissance set out to reconceive the nature of society. Everywhere they saw problems. Corrupt and reckless tyrants sowing discord and ruling through fear; elites who prized wealth and status over the common good; military leaders waging endless wars. Their solution was at once simple and radical. \"Men, not walls, make a city,\" as Thucydides so memorably said. They would rebuild their city, and their civilization, by transforming the moral character of its citizens. Soulcraft, they believed, was a precondition of successful statecraft. A dazzlingly ambitious reappraisal of Renaissance political thought by one of our generation's foremost intellectual historians, Virtue Politics challenges the traditional narrative that looks to the Renaissance as the seedbed of modern republicanism and sees Machiavelli as its exemplary thinker. James Hankins reveals that what most concerned the humanists was not reforming laws or institutions so much as shaping citizens. If character mattered more than constitutions, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the humanities. We owe liberal arts education and much else besides to the bold experiment of these passionate and principled thinkers. The questions they asked-Should a good man serve a corrupt regime? What virtues are necessary in a leader? What is the source of political legitimacy? Is wealth concentration detrimental to social cohesion? Should citizens be expected to fight for their country?-would have a profound impact on later debates about good government and seem as vital today as they did then\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A companion to motion pictures and public value
A singular collection of original essays exploring the varied intersections of motion pictures and public value
A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value presents a cross-disciplinary investigation of the past, present, and possible future contributions of the moving image to the public good. This unique volume explores the direct and indirect public value developed through motion pictures of different types, genres, and screening sites. Essays by world-renowned scholars from diverse disciplines present original conceptual work, philosophical arguments, historical discussion, empirical research, and specific case studies.
Divided into seven thematically organized sections, the Companion identifies the various kinds of values that motion pictures can deliver, amongst them artistic, ethical, environmental, cultural, political, cognitive, and spiritual value. Each section includes an introduction in which the editors outline main themes and highlight connections between individual chapters. Throughout the text, probing essays interrogate the issue of public value as it relates to the cinema and provide insight into how motion pictures play a positive role in human life and society. Featuring original research essays on a pioneering topic, this innovative reference text:
* Brings together work by expert authors in disciplines such as Philosophy, Political Science, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Sociology, and Environmental Studies
* Discusses a variety of institutional landscapes, policy formations, and types and styles of filmmaking
* Provides wide and inclusive coverage of cinema's relation to public value in Africa, Asia, China, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas
* Explores the role of motion pictures in community formation, nation building, and the construction of good societies
* Covers new and emerging topics such as cinema-based fields focused on health and wellbeing
A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value is an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, and is a valuable resource for scholars across a variety of disciplines
eBook
Public Values and Public Interest
Economic individualism and market-based values dominate today's policymaking and public management circlesùoften at the expense of the common good. In his new book, Barry Bozeman demonstrates the continuing need for public interest theory in government. Public Values and Public Interest offers a direct theoretical challenge to the utility of economic individualism, the prevailing political theory in the western world. The book's arguments are steeped in a practical and practicable theory that advances public interest as a viable and important measure in any analysis of policy or public administration. According to Bozeman, public interest theory offers a dynamic and flexible approach that easily adapts to changing situations and balances today's market-driven attitudes with the concepts of common good advocated by Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and John Dewey. In constructing the case for adopting a new governmental paradigm based on what he terms managing publicness, Bozeman demonstrates why economic indices alone fail to adequately value social choice in many cases. He explores the implications of privatization of a wide array of governmental servicesùamong them Social Security, defense, prisons, and water supplies. Bozeman constructs analyses from both perspectives in an extended study of genetically modified crops to compare the policy outcomes using different core values and questions the public value of engaging in the practice solely for the sake of cheaper food. Thoughtful, challenging, and timely, Public Values and Public Interest shows how the quest for fairness can once again play a full part in public policy debates and public administration.
eBook
Reflexive governance for global public goods
Global public goods (GPGs)--the economic term for a broad range of goods and services that benefit everyone, including stable climate, public health, and economic security--pose notable governance challenges. At the national level, public goods are often provided by government, but at the global level there is no established state-like entity to take charge of their provision. The complex nature of many GPGs poses additional problems of coordination, knowledge generation and the formation of citizen preferences. This book considers traditional public economy theory of public goods provision as oversimplified, because it is state centered and fiscally focused. It develops a multidisciplinary look at the challenges of understanding and designing appropriate governance regimes for different types of goods in such areas as the environment, food security, and development assistance. The chapter authors, all leading scholars in the field, explore the misalignment between existing GPG policies and actors' incentives and understandings. They analyze the complex impact of incentives, the involvement of stakeholders in collective decision making, and the specific coordination needed for the generation of knowledge. The book shows that governance of GPGs must be democratic, reflexive--emphasizing collective learning processes--and knowledge based in order to be effective.The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.
eBook
The state and civil society : regulating interest groups, parties, and public benefit organizations in contemporary democracies
\"State regulation of civil society is expanding yet widely contested, often portrayed as illegitimate intrusion. Despite ongoing debates about the nature of state-voluntary relations in various disciplines, we know surprisingly little about why long-lived democracies adopt more or less constraining legal approaches in this sphere, in which state intervention is generally considered contentious. Drawing on insights from political science, sociology, comparative law as well as public administration research, this book addresses this important question, conceptually, theoretically, and empirically. It addresses the conceptual and methodological challenges related to developing systematic, comparative insights into the nature of complex legal environments affecting voluntary membership organizations, when simultaneously covering a wide range of democracies and the regulation applicable to different types of voluntary organizations. Proposing the analytical tools to tackle those challenges, it studies in-depth the intertwining and overlapping legal environments of political parties, interest groups, and public benefit organizations across 19 long-lived democracies. After presenting an innovative interdisciplinary theoretical framework theorizing democratic states' legal disposition towards, or their disinclination against, regulating voluntary membership organizations in a constraining or permissive fashion, this framework is empirically tested. Applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), the comparative analysis identifies three main 'paths' accounting for the relative constraints in the legal environments democracies have created for organized civil society, defined by different configurations of political systems' democratic history, their legal family, and voluntary sector traditions\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Law against the State
This collection of rich, empirically grounded case studies investigates the conditions and consequences of 'juridification' - the use of law by ordinary individuals as a form of protest against 'the state'. Starting from the actual practices of claimants, these case studies address the translation and interpretation of legal norms into local concepts, actions and practices in a way that highlights the social and cultural dynamism and multivocality of communities in their interaction with the law and legal norms. The contributors to this volume challenge the image of homogeneous and primordially norm-bound cultures that has been (unintentionally) perpetuated by some of the more prevalent treatments of law and culture. This volume highlights the heterogeneous geography of law and the ways boundaries between different legal bodies are transcended in struggles for rights. Contributions include case studies from South Africa, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Turkey, India, Papua New Guinea, Suriname, the Marshall Islands and Russia.
eBook