Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 PDF Download

Author: Jack Goldsmith
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393083519
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

View

Book Description
The surprising truth behind Barack Obama's decision to continue many of his predecessor's counterterrorism policies. Conventional wisdom holds that 9/11 sounded the death knell for presidential accountability. In fact, the opposite is true. The novel powers that our post-9/11 commanders in chief assumed—endless detentions, military commissions, state secrets, broad surveillance, and more—are the culmination of a two-century expansion of presidential authority. But these new powers have been met with thousands of barely visible legal and political constraints—enforced by congressional committees, government lawyers, courts, and the media—that have transformed our unprecedentedly powerful presidency into one that is also unprecedentedly accountable. These constraints are the key to understanding why Obama continued the Bush counterterrorism program, and in this light, the events of the last decade should be seen as a victory, not a failure, of American constitutional government. We have actually preserved the framers’ original idea of a balanced constitution, despite the vast increase in presidential power made necessary by this age of permanent emergency.

Author: Andreas Schedler
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555877743
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

View

Book Description
This text states that democratic governments must be accountable to the electorate; but they must also be subject to restraint and oversight by other public agencies. The state must control itself. This text explores how new democracies can achieve this goal.

Author: Piotr Mikuli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000424677
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 225

View

Book Description
This book discusses contemporary accountability and transparency mechanisms by presenting a selection of case studies. The authors deal with various problems connected to controlling public institutions and incumbents’ responsibility in state bodies. The work is divided into three parts. Part I: Law examines the institutional and objective approach. Part II: Fairness and Rights considers the subject approach, referring to a recipient of rights. Part III: Authority looks at the functional approach, referring to the executors of law. Providing insights into increasing understanding of various concepts, principles, and institutions characteristic of the modern state, the book makes a valuable contribution to the area of comparative constitutional change. It will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policy-makers working in the areas of constitutional law and politics.

Author: Heidi Kitrosser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022619177X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 292

View

Book Description
Americans tend to believe in government that is transparent and accountable. Those who govern us work for us, and therefore they must also answer to us. But how do we reconcile calls for greater accountability with the competing need for secrecy, especially in matters of national security? Those two imperatives are usually taken to be antithetical, but Heidi Kitrosser argues convincingly that this is not the case—and that our concern ought to lie not with secrecy, but with the sort of unchecked secrecy that can result from “presidentialism,” or constitutional arguments for broad executive control of information. In Reclaiming Accountability, Kitrosser traces presidentialism from its start as part of a decades-old legal movement through its appearance during the Bush and Obama administrations, demonstrating its effects on secrecy throughout. Taking readers through the key presidentialist arguments—including “supremacy” and “unitary executive theory”—she explains how these arguments misread the Constitution in a way that is profoundly at odds with democratic principles. Kitrosser’s own reading offers a powerful corrective, showing how the Constitution provides myriad tools, including the power of Congress and the courts to enforce checks on presidential power, through which we could reclaim government accountability.

Author: R. Mulgan
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781349431410
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

View

Book Description
This book provides a general overview of accountability, a key concept in modern democratic governance. Richard Mulgan draws on examples and analyses from the United States and the United Kingdom as well as other 'Westminster' countries. Major topics discussed include the contrast between accountability in the public and private sectors, the effects of public management reforms on accountability, accountability for collective actions, accountability in networks and the limits of accountability.

Author: Erik O. Eriksen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000409546
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

View

Book Description
Based on in-depth studies of the relationship between expertise and democracy in Europe, this book presents a new approach to how the un-elected can be made safe for democracy. It addresses the challenge of reconciling modern governments’ need for knowledge with the demand for democratic legitimacy. Knowledge-based decision-making is indispensable to modern democracies. This book establishes a public reason model of legitimacy and clarifies the conditions under which unelected bodies can be deemed legitimate as they are called upon to handle pandemics, financial crises, climate change and migration flows. Expert bodies are seeking neither re-election nor popularity, they can speak truth to power as well as to the citizenry at large. They are unelected, yet they wield power. How could they possibly be legitimate? This book is of key interest to scholars and students of democracy, governance, and more broadly to political and administrative science as well as the Science Technology Studies (STS).

Author: Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316552888
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

View

Book Description
Corruption is a significant problem for democracies throughout the world. Even the most democratic countries constantly face the threat of corruption and the consequences of it at the polls. Why are some governments more corrupt than others, even after considering cultural, social, and political characteristics? In Clarity of Responsibility, Accountability, and Corruption, the authors argue that clarity of responsibility is critical for reducing corruption in democracies. The authors provide a number of empirical tests of this argument, including a cross-national time-series statistical analysis to show that the higher the level of clarity the lower the perceived corruption levels. Using survey and experimental data, the authors show that clarity causes voters to punish incumbents for corruption. Preliminary tests further indicate that elites respond to these electoral incentives and are more likely to combat corruption when clarity is high.

Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264183639
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 142

View

Book Description
There is growing recognition of the need for new approaches to the ways in which donors support accountability, but no broad agreement on what changed practice looks like. This publication aims to provide more clarity on the emerging practice.

Author: Susan Rose-Ackerman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300262477
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 421

View

Book Description
A defense of regulatory agencies’ efforts to combine public consultation with bureaucratic expertise to serve the interest of all citizens The statutory delegation of rule-making authority to the executive has recently become a source of controversy. There are guiding models, but none, Susan Rose-Ackerman claims, is a good fit with the needs of regulating in the public interest. Using a cross-national comparison of public policy-making in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, she argues that public participation inside executive rule-making processes is necessary to preserve the legitimacy of regulatory policy-making.

Author: Bjorn Stensaker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136932364
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 331

View

Book Description
The latest volume in the Routledge International Studies in Higher Education series, Accountability in Higher Education takes an in-depth look at accountability initiatives around the world. Various evaluations, reporting schemes, and indicator systems have been initiated both to inform the public about higher education performance and to help transform universities and colleges and improve their functioning. This edited collection provides a comparative analysis of the promises, perils and paradoxes of accountability, and the potential effect on power structures and higher education autonomy, trust and the legitimacy of the sector. Part I describes how accountability is perceived and understood in different regions of the world, identifies some of the most common elements in established accountability initiatives, especially related to quality assurance, and provides direction for possible future development. Part II focuses on responses to new demands for accountability at institutional, national and international levels, and provides practical guidance for handling accountability going forward, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between international development, government strategies and organizational change. This volume is a must-have resource for HE managers, administrators, policy makers, researchers, HE graduate students and those interested or involved with HE accountability practices.