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EL INFLUJO DE LA TRADICIÓN REPUBLICANA: DE LOS INDIGNADOS A PODEMOS
Abstract
En esta comunicación se sostiene que los nuevos movimientos sociales encuentran su
fundamento participativo dentro del paradigma neorrepublicano porque se movilizan
abiertamente a favor de un modelo de democracia más inclusiva, de la idea de
autogobierno, de mayor visibilidad de la toma de decisiones y de la necesidad de una
vigilancia permanente sobre los poderes públicos para impedir derivas oligárquicas.
Estos ideales han cristalizado en Podemos, partido que promulga un profundo cambio
de fundamentos en el sistema político español que, como las democracias liberales
contemporáneas, es representativo. Sus ideas principales se fundamentan en una
democratización del sistema político actual desde abajo, empoderando a la ciudadanía y
sometiendo a las instituciones a la voluntad popular. Su programa se basa en la virtud
cívica de raigambre republicana y en la idea de que las sociedades contemporáneas
necesitan transcender los esquemas de la democracia representativa y dar un salto
cualitativo hacia una democracia más participativa e inclusiva.
El presente trabajo se ha elaborado desde un enfoque teórico normativo, pero ha
incorporado elementos de la observación empírica de movimientos sociales concretos;
que se han desarrollado en nuestro contexto, como el de los Indignados, a partir del
estudio de sus websites y el partido político Podemos, mediante el estudio de su
programa político.
El texto aborda, en primer lugar, la participación ciudadana en las democracias actuales
y sus vínculos con la acción colectiva, especialmente la contenciosa. A continuación, se
conceptualiza una aproximación a los nuevos movimientos sociales (NMS) y su papelen las sociedades contemporáneas como vehículos de participación política. En tercer
lugar, se señala la convergencia entre el neorrepublicanismo y los nuevos movimientos
sociales en su objetivo común de ensanchar la participación, en el autogobierno y el
empoderamiento del ciudadano. Seguidamente, se presenta el movimiento de
Indignados en el que convergen numerosas reivindicaciones políticas de raíz
republicana, que son subsumidas bajo un enfoque postmaterialista. Finalmente, se
analizarán los principales ejes programáticos del programa electoral de Podemos para
las elecciones europeas de 2014 y su proceso de aprobación, sin ánimo de ser
exhaustivos, puesto que como flamante organización política, aún se encuentra en
proceso de configuración de sus estructuras organizativas.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
La actividad contractual de las administraciones públicas se sujeta al principio de transparencia, manifestación esta del derecho a la información y herramienta que facilita la participación de la ciudadanía en los asuntos públicos. La transparencia promueve, a su vez, un uso eficiente de los fondos públicos, la libre competencia y la selección de la oferta económicamente más ventajosa.
Por otra parte, la proliferación de medios electrónicos aplicados al ámbito de lo público está suponiendo un cambio sustancial en el modo de entender la actuación administrativa, pues comporta una mayor accesibilidad y proporciona nuevas posibilidades y formas de acompañamiento/control de la acción de gobierno por otros poderes públicos y también por los particulares.
El presente trabajo aborda la configuración actual y perspectivas de futuro de la contratación pública electrónica, describiendo y analizando las relaciones entre los diferentes stakeholders implicados en el proceso contractual — poderes públicos, empresas y ciudadanos —, corresponsables, en última instancia, del diseño e implementación de las políticas públicas. Asimismo muestra en qué grado la “e-contratación” coadyuva a la consecución de la transparencia, garantía última de los diferentes intereses públicos y privados que concurren en dicho proceso.
El texto que se presenta procede
a tratar de explicar la llegada de la ley de Transparencia, Acceso a la información y Buen gobierno en España, desde un enfoque de política pública, definiendo sus objetivos esenciales. Tras ello, analizamos
la norma y, finalmente, explicamos si la norma, tal y como
está redactada, va a permitir o no alcanzar los fines para los que nace.
In recent years, and from different social disciplines, the quality of the government has gained relevance as a topic in the international debate. Scholars and international organizations have developed a variety of methodologies that try to explain the causes and the effects of the quality of government on social, economic, and political development. Despite this emergent industry of methodologies and indicators, the conceptual discussion of the definition of quality of government itself has been understudied. This has led to a set of conceptual inconsistencies and weaknesses. In this paper, we present a brief discussion of the main perspectives developed on this topic, discuss the ways in which this notion has been defined, and point to their main shortcomings. Finally, we offer some criteria to develop a more useful and conceptually defensible definition of quality of government.
his paper reports on research undertaken in Nepal into perceptions of trust in public e-procurement systems and of their anti-corruption capabilities. The research set out to examine the relationships between factors including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust, and intent to adopt anti-corruption technology in public procurement. The research was guided by the Technology Acceptance model and Principal-agent theory. The findings suggest that the intent-to-adopt public e-procurement has a positive and significant relationship with concepts of usefulness, ease of use, and trust when democratic governments in developing countries attempt to combat corruption in public procurement.
Reducing corruption and improving citizen satisfaction are important aims of government, yet the link between these two policy aims has rarely been explored. This article reports a study into the roles played by transparency and trust in the relationship between governmental corruption and citizen satisfaction with public services. The study was based on data gathered in South Korea to evaluate a specific initiative that had sought to reduce corruption and increase citizen satisfaction with public works programmes. The data indicated that the relationship between corruption and satisfaction was moderated by transparency and partially mediated by trust.
Points for practitioners
The study sheds light on the roles of transparency and trust in the relationship between corruption and citizen satisfaction with public services, and thus provides insights for developing policy aimed at curtailing corruption and improving satisfaction.
The term open government is often used to describe initiatives of putting government information on the Internet. This conceptualization is too restricted since open government is not only about openness in informational terms ( vision) but also about openness in interactive terms ( voice). On the basis of an analysis of 103 articles, this article provides insight into the concepts of openness, transparency and participation, their interactions, and the manner in which they have been discussed in the literature. This analysis shows the differences and similarities between economic, political science and legal perspectives on open government and argues that a multidisciplinary approach needs to be taken. The authors conclude that open government is much too important to leave it to the ‘techies’: scientists and practitioners with backgrounds in law, economics, political science and public administration should also get involved to build sound connections between vision and voice that facilitate active citizenship.
Points for practitioners
This article provides guidelines for the realization of open government: (1) design open government for synergistic or complementary relationships between transparency and participation, (2) design open government for a diverse population, (3) design open government for direct and indirect effects, (4) design open government acknowledging a variety in desirables and (5) design for continuous learning about effects and side-effects. The authors emphasize that a diversified approach to the design of open government will be more fruitful in the long run than merely understanding it in terms of making information publicly available.
This paper aims to describe a public procurement information platform which provides a unied pan-european system that exploits the aggregation of tender notices using linking open data and semantic web technologies. This platform requires a step-based method to deal with the requirements of the public procurement sector and the open government data initiative: 1) modeling the unstructured information included in public procurement notices (contracting authorities, organizations, contracts awarded, etc.), 2) enriching that information with the existing product classication systems and the linked data vocabularies; 3) publishing relevant information extracted out of the notices following the linking open data approach; 4) implementing enhanced services based on advanced algorithms and techniques like query expansion methods to exploit the information in a semantic way. Taking into account that public procurement notices contain information variables like type of contract, region, duration, total amount, target enterprise , etc. dierent methods can be applied to expand user queries easing the access to the information and providing a more accurate information retrieval system. Nevertheless expanded user queries can involve an extra-time in the process of retrieving notices. That is why a performance evaluation is outlined to tune up the semantic methods and the generated queries providing a scalable and time-ecient system. Moreover, this platform is supposed to be especially relevant for SMEs that want to tender in the European Union (EU), easing their access to the information of the notices and fostering their participation in cross-border public procurement processes across Europe. Finally an example of use is provided to evaluate and compare the goodness and the improvement of the proposed platform regarding to the existing ones.
Declining citizen trust in government is an important driver for NPM-style reforms. Increasing people’s knowledge by providing factual knowledge about government performance outcomes is seen as an important way of increasing citizen trust in government. Does this promise hold or is knowledge about performance outcomes not that important? Two rivalling hypotheses are being investigated. One proposition postulates a link between knowledge and trust, whereas the alternative hypothesis borrows from social-psychological research arguing that subconscious and affective cues are more important. In order to investigate this question, this article presents the results of an experiment ( N = 658) investigating the effect of performance outcome transparency on citizen trust in a specific government organization. Four groups visited different websites with varying degrees of transparency and performance outcome. The results demonstrate that the link between transparency and trust in a government organization is determined by a mix of knowledge and feelings. Further, the overall effect of transparency is limited. Pre-existing and fundamental ideas about what government does and whether it is benign or not are far more determining than a single experience with a government organization. This article concludes that knowledge about performance outcomes is only part of the link between transparency and trust, and that more realistic views about transparency’s effects should be developed.
Points for practitioners
Transparency is generally hailed by many as the key to trust in government. This study shows that the magnitude of transparency on citizens’ trust in government is often exaggerated as most people have pre-existing, fundamental beliefs about government which are only marginally influenced by transparency. However, transparency can contribute to maintaining existing trust levels through a mix of people’s cognition and feeling about government. Transparency is necessary, yet professionals in public management and administration should develop realistic expectations about what transparency can really achieve for trust in government.
Whereas in 1990 only a dozen freedom of information (FOI) laws existed, today there are over 85. But do they promise windows into government or merely ineffective window-dressing? The struggle against secrecy has become one of the most important issues of our time. This article examines the contingent nature of FOI by analyzing various window-dressing dilemmas in light of recent developments. It explores the challenges and promise of disclosure laws, drawing on the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Mexico, and the U.S. The article stresses how presidential-legislative dynamics and media activism powerfully influence the degree of openness and transparency.
The concept of organizational transparency has vaulted to prominence in recent years. While the virtues of transparency have been tied to trust and credibility, there have been no efforts to measure this abstract concept. Guidelines exist to help organizations be more transparent, but the real test is how stakeholders perceive an organization's transparency. This paper focuses on developing a stakeholder measurement of organizational transparency. Factor analyses, structural equation models, and reliability alphas on the measurement items indicate the instrument measures three transparency reputation traits (integrity, respect for others, openness) and four transparency efforts (participation, substantial information, accountability, and secrecy).
Health and Social Justice (Ruger 2009a59.
Ruger , J. P. 2009a. Health and social justice, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [CrossRef]View all references) developed the “health capability paradigm,” a conception of justice and health in domestic societies. This idea undergirds an alternative framework of social cooperation called “shared health governance” (SHG). SHG puts forth a set of moral responsibilities, motivational aspirations, and institutional arrangements, and apportions roles for implementation in striving for health justice. This article develops further the SHG framework and explains its importance and implications for governing health domestically.
Este trabajo tiene como objeto el estudio de la ética en el ámbito de gobierno o ética pública. El estudio pretender responder a las preguntas ¿Qué es la ética pública? ¿Cuál es su importancia? ¿Por qué es necesaria? así como el identificar las acciones existentes para su fomento. Para una mayor comprensión sobre la importancia y necesidad de la ética en el ámbito público, esta investigación hará referencia al tema de la corrupción inmerso en los gobiernos y administraciones públicas.
Traducción de: Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion
RESUMEN: En este trabajo se exploran cuáles fueron las principales variables que influyeron en el ascenso, mantenimiento y caída de Alberto Fujimori, el líder antipolítico más exitoso de América Latina y cuyos designios marcaron la década de 1990 en Perú. Se mantiene que la crisis de los partidos políticos así como la crisis de otras instituciones relevantes del Estado, el sistema presidencialista y las leyes electorales, unido a la crisis económica por la que atravesaba el país influyeron directamente en el ascenso. Su mantenimiento en el poder fue favorecido por los éxitos relativos que el Gobierno consiguió en el campo de la economía y la lucha contra el terrorismo. Sin embargo, el ansia de Fujimori por perpetuarse en el poder, la aparición a la luz pública de casos de corrupción a gran escala y el empeoramiento de la situación económica llevó al régimen a su fin.ABSTRACT: This work seeks to identify the main variables which affected the rise, the maintenance and the fall of Alberto Fujimori, the most successful antipolitical leader in Latin America, whose aims delineated the course of the decade of the 1990s in Peru. The paper argues that his rise to power was directly influenced by the crisis of the party system and the crisis of other relevant institutions of the State, the presidential regime and electoral laws, joined with the economic crisis that the country was experiencing. Hís ability to remain in power was facilitated by the relative success of his government in the economic realm and in the fight against terrorism. However, his own desire to perpetuate himself in power, the unraveling of high-level corruption scandals and the worsening of economic conditions finally lead the regime to its end.
This paper explores the link between information flows and governance. It develops a new indicator, the transparency index, which measures the frequency with which governments update economic data that they make available to the public. The paper also uses the existence of a Freedom of Information Act and the length of time for which it has been in existence as an indicator reflecting the overall legislative environment for transparency. Measures of the type developed in this paper have hitherto not been used in the cross-country literature on governance and growth. Cross-country regression estimation shows that countries with better information flows as measured by these indices also govern better. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
This article examines the relationship between party regulation, trust in political parties and partisanship in 24 European democracies in 2010. It tests two rival hypotheses, one suggesting that the regulation of political parties improves party support among electorates, and the other arguing the opposite case that regulation weakens support for parties. These hypotheses are tested using a multi-level modelling strategy that controls for a number of variables that might account for trust in parties and partisanship at the individual level. The evidence suggests that heavy regulation of political parties is associated with low levels of trust in parties and fewer partisans in these countries. This finding persists even in the presence of a variety of control variables. The analysis uses cross-sectional data and so definitive causal relationships cannot be fully identified, but the data implies that regulation by the state in the context of a severe economic recession could be having the effect of stifling support for political parties and weakening civil society.
This article examines the self-placement on a 10 point left-right scale in eight West European countries from 1973 to the beginning of the 1990s. The findings indicate a high degree of stability in the willingness of the mass publics in Western Europe to place themselves on the left-right scale. There is, however, a pronounced tendency for the mass publics to place themselves increasingly in the center of the left-right scale. This increase is analyzed in relation to political involvement and social background variables. The centrist increase is not concentrated among those with little political involvement, but is somewhat larger among those with less education and women. These findings are discussed on the basis of three interpretations of the increased centrist location: a genuine centrist location, a cognitive limitation and an irrelevance hypothesis.
this paper we will be especially concerned with ratings of the performance of the central government bureaucracy. Keefer and Knack (1993) use ratings by the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) and by Business and Environmental Risk Intelligence (BERI) of "corruption in government" and "bureaucratic delays," respectively; Mauro uses ratings by Business International (BI) of "corruption" and "bureaucracy and red tape;" and Knack and Keefer (1995) and Easterly and Levine (1996) use an ICRG rating of "bureaucratic quality" in their indices of institutional quality. Keefer and Knack find that better performance on both of their variables is positively and significantly associated with growth in per capita income, Mauro finds that better performance on both of his variables is positively and significantly associated with the private investment share of GDP, and Knack and Keefer and Easterly and Levine find positive and 2 significant effects of their institutional quality indices on growth in per capita income. While the cross-country statistical evidence reinforces the idea that differential governmental performance may have an impact on economic growth, it tells us little about what kind of institutional characteristics are associated with lower levels of corruption or red tape. If the findings just listed are meaningful, it is worth identifying which characteristics of government bureaucracies lead to good ratings from the ICRG, BERI, and BI on the variables cited above. This is our aim in the present paper. In a companion paper (Evans and Rauch 1997) we examine the direct impact of bureaucratic structure on economic performance. To achieve this aim required a major data collection effort. Although it is increasingly recognized that without the help of the central gov...
One of the central objectives of the field of international political economy (IPE) in the last 20 years has been to introduce insights from the field of international relations into the study of global economic affairs. Although this effort has been largely successful in the study of international trade, much less attention has been focused on the financial sector of the global economy. Seemingly highly technical and arcane, the study of international finance has been left largely to specialists in international economics, financial journalists, and international financial practitioners.
Fiscal transparency is fundamentally important but difficult to achieve. The conceptualization of transparency has to be more sophisticated than current rhetoric implies. Analytical tools relating to the generic concept of transparency can be applied to public expenditure. Achieving transparency about public expenditure presents challenges that require explicit strategies in the context of what can be very different sets of local conditions. This article identifies the specific meaning of transparency about public expenditure, defined in terms of the four directions of transparency: inwards, outwards, upwards and downwards. It identifies barriers to the effective transparency of public expenditure, characterizing these as intrinsic or constructed. Tackling these barriers, especially those constructed by policy actors, constitutes a route towards more effective transparency, not only about public expenditure itself but about surrogates for it. It is not just quantity that matters: different varieties of transparency will have differential effects on the achievement of public policy objectives. How transparency mechanisms are structured will therefore shape their impact on public policy – on efficiency, on equity and on democratic accountability.
Points for practitioners
Public expenditure transparency is fundamentally important, but elusive. The difficulty stems from technical complexities and from the political process. Governments that genuinely wish to improve public expenditure transparency must address intrinsic barriers (such as low public understanding of budgeting numbers and their relationship to national accounts) and desist from building constructed barriers (such as misleading spinned numbers and substituting surrogates for direct public expenditure). It is not just the quantity of transparency that matters: different varieties of transparency will have differential effects on the achievement of public policy objectives. How transparency mechanisms are structured will shape their impact on public policy – on efficiency, on equity and on democratic accountability.
There is a growing recognition that the emerging global system of business has become a serious threat to human interests. The aim of this book is to confront the issue of modern corporate power. It argues that a convergence of ideological, political and technological forces is occurring, separating their interests from humanity at large. The harmful effects of economic globalisation are exposed and the roots of today's social, economic, environmental, and political crises are traced. A strategy is proposed for creating localised economies that empower people and communities within a system of global cooperation. The author stresses that human survival depends upon on a community-based, life-centred alternative beyond the outmoded strictures of communism and capitalism, and steps to achieve this goal are proposed. -from Publisher
There is a growing consensus that trust may resolve an enduring tension between political accountability and managerial flexibility in the modern administrative state. This complex issue is dealt with by the development of a model of public trust in government. Theoretical foundations are drawn froma wide range of social science literature in conceptualizing trust, identifying factors affecting the trustworthiness of government, and exploring behavioral implications for effective governance. An empirical test of the present model remains for future research. However, the model suggests that a trustworthy government requires both accountability and flexibility of administration and that trust would serve as a key variable in reconciling this tension by expanding citizens’willingness to accept government authority.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess whether corporate reputation can be analyzed or not with the present impressions related to “service quality that the customers have observed during the corporate's developing process”, “communication”, “experiences based on past actions”, “responsibility towards society and enviroment” and “trustworthy that is the total evaluation of all”.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis of corporate reputation, a field research, is a descriptive study. While forming the samples, judgement sampling method within non‐probability sampling is used and a questionnaire is applied to 300 patients having service in the 18 different polyclinics of a private hospital (ANDEVA) in Turkey.
Findings
The findings have confirmed the thesis that since the patients explain reputation with more than one sub dimension in their perceptions towards corporation, reputation cannot be explained by only one experience, contact or impression; and as stated in the literature, reputation consists of various components (sub dimensions). Also, there is a difference within the perceived components (sub dimensions) to explain reputation.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited with the measurement of corporate reputation basing the private health corporation AN‐DEVA's polyclinic patients.
Originality/value
It is important to deal with corporate reputation in a private health service sector. Because health sector where customer relations are very dense is the most problematic sector to provide customer satisfaction.
What makes a democracy work and which are the causes behind economic growth? One answer is given by Robert D. Putnam in his book about regional reforms in Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, which by now must be considered as a 'modern classic'. Putnam's theory, which is both complicated and sophisticated, is centred on the concept of social capital. The main thrust is that a working democracy depends on a population that is engaged in different social networks and forms of voluntary association. However, two important types of critique have been raised against the theory. One concerns what type of networks and associations actually serves the purpose of making a democracy work. This can be called the 'Hells Angels' problem. Obviously, not all organisations or networks seem to produce the right type of 'bridging' social capital that is at the heart of the theory. There is, as Putnam recognises in his latest book, also a dark side of social capital. It can be argued that societies like Northern Ireland, the Middle East or Bosnia have too much social capital in the forms of networks and organisations that create distrust. The theoretical problem is that there seems to be no way to find a conceptually clear definition that can be used to differentiate between 'the good, the bad and the ugly' organisations in this story. For example, while the Catholic Church is excluded from producing social capital in Putnam's analysis of Italy because of its hierarchical character, churches are included in his study of the USA. Second, several empirical analyses which have tried to find empirical survey-based support at the micro level for Putnam's theory show that, while it is true that individuals who are members of many voluntary associations are more trusting, activity in these organisations and networks does not increase social trust. The correlation between membership in voluntary associations and high social trust seems to be caused by a self-selection mechanism. It is individuals that for other reasons already have high social trust that become active members, but the activity in voluntary associations does not seem to generate social trust. At this vital point, Putnam's theory about the causes of social capital seems to be wrong. If so, this will have important implications both for research and especially for policy purposes. The aim of this article is to provide an alternative explanation for the causes of social capital, an explanation that is grounded more in political instead of sociological variables.
Aunque en mayor o menor medida limitadas y condicionadas, las democracias latinoamericanas han logrado sobrevivir a sucesivas o simultáneas crisis económicas, sociales, políticas y financieras durante los últimos años. Su suerte no parece ser ajena a lo que ya, a fines de los años 80, Zermeño denominó «el regreso del líder», postulando una directa correlación entre la fragmentación y la generalizada inseguridad colectiva, y la confianza depositada en figuras carismáticas a las que se considera capaces de poner un remedio a la «situación de emergencia». En este contexto no resulta extraño que haya renacido el interés por el tema del populismo, cuya vigencia como tradición predominante en la cultura política latinoamericana ha sido señalada recientemente en forma reiterada. La mayor parte de los observadores reconoce, sin embargo, que los fenómenos políticos en que se inscriben los nuevos liderazgos latinoamericanos no son fácilmente identificables con el populismo de los años 40: Zermeño se refiere a ellos como «neopopulismos», en tanto está ausente un sujeto popular global y uniforme, un «pueblo» en el sentido lato del término; Ducatenzeiller y Oxhorn destacan las continuidades en el terreno político (principalmente la tendencia autoritaria, antipluralista, y el escaso respeto por las reglas institucionales), pero advierten significativas variaciones en cuanto a las políticas económicas y las alianzas sociales; también Gibson se refiere a estos cambios en los constituencies y políticas públicas, en términos de una «conservatización» de las fuerzas populistas de la región. Pero, entonces, cabría preguntarse si, habida cuenta de todas estas diferencias, aún puede hablarse de populismo; si los cambios registrados en el PRI
Salience is an important concept throughout political science. Traditionally, the word has been used to designate the importance of issues, particularly for voters. To measure salience in political behavior research, scholars often rely on people's responses to the survey question that asks about the “most important problem” (MIP) facing the nation. In this manuscript, I argue that the measure confuses at least two different characteristics of salience: The importance of issues and the degree to which issues are a problem. It even may be that issues and problems are themselves fundamentally different things, one relating to public policy and the other to conditions. Herein, I conceptualize the different characteristics of MIP. I then undertake an empirical analysis of MIP responses over time in the US. It shows that most of the variation in MIP responses reflects variation in problem status. To assess whether these responses still capture meaningful information about the variation in importance over time, I turn to an analysis of opinion-policy dynamics, specifically on the defense spending domain. It shows that changes in MIP mentions do not structure public responsiveness to policy or policymaker responsiveness to public preferences themselves. Based on the results, it appears that the political importance of defense has remained largely unchanged over time. The same may be true in other domains. Regardless, relying on MIP responses as indicators of issue importance of any domain is fundamentally flawed. The responses may tell us something about the “prominence” of issues, but we simply do not know. The implication is clear: We first need to decide what we want to measure and then design the instruments to measure it.
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This paper is a conceptual and empirical exploration of the tensions inherent in the drive to increase openness and transparency in government by means of information access and dissemination. The idea that democratic governments should be open, accessible, and transparent to the governed is receiving renewed emphasis through the combination of government reform efforts and the emergence of advanced technology tools for information access. Although these initiatives are young, they already exhibit daunting complexity, with significant management, technology, and policy challenges. A variety of traditional and emerging information policy frameworks offer guidance, while diverse research perspectives highlight both challenges to and opportunities for promoting information-based transparency. Early experience with Data.gov, a central component of the US Open Government Initiative, suggests that two fundamental information policy principles, stewardship and usefulness, can help guide and evaluate efforts to achieve information-based transparency.
In this paper we discuss the existing accounting literature on the real effects of financial reporting transparency in international equity markets, present aspects of an international setting that make it a fruitful environment for investigating these effects and suggest directions for future research.
The normative concept of transparency, along with the open government laws that purport to create a transparent public system of governance, promises the moon - a democratic and accountable state above all, and a peaceful, prosperous, and efficient one as well. But transparency, in its role as the theoretical justification for a set of legal commands, frustrates all parties affected by its ambiguities and abstractions. The public's engagement with transparency in practice yields denials of reasonable requests for essential government information, as well as government meetings that occur behind closed doors. Meanwhile, state officials bemoan the significantly impaired decision-making processes that result from complying with transparency's sweeping and powerful legal mandates and complain about transparency's enormous compliance costs. This Article argues that the frustrations with creating an open government originate in the concept of "transparency" itself, which fails to consider the tensions it conceals. The easy embrace of transparency as a basis for normative and utilitarian ends evades more difficult questions. When is transparency most important as an administrative norm? To what extent should an agency be held to that norm? Open government laws fall short in answering these questions because, relying on the assumptions of "transparency," they typically operate at exceptionally high levels of abstraction. As a result, they establish both broad mandates for disclosure and broad authority for the exercise of a state privilege of non-disclosure, and they ultimately fail to produce an effective, mutually acceptable level of administrative openness. Transparency theory's flaws result from a simplistic model of linear communication that assumes that information, once set free from the state that creates it, will produce an informed, engaged public that will hold officials accountable. To the extent that this model fails to describe accurately the state, government information, and the public, as well as the communications process of which they are component parts, it provides a flawed basis for open government laws. This Article critiques the assumptions embedded in transparency theory and suggests an alternative approach to open government laws that would allow a more flexible, sensitive means to evaluate the costs and benefits of information disclosure. It also proposes institutional alternatives to the current default regime in open government laws, which relies on weak judicial enforcement of disclosure mandates, and offers substantive suggestions that would improve efforts to establish a more accountable state and an informed public.
Different PR methods should be seen not as being more proportional or less proportional than each other but as embodying different ideas as to what maximizing proportionality means and, by extension, what minimizing disproportionality means. Each of the main methods of PR (d'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, largest remainders) generates its own index of proportionality and, thus, its own way of measuring disproportionality. Applying these indices to competitive elections of the period 1979–1989 shows a high correlation between the rankings produced by the various methods, but the ordering of countries is sufficiently different to require a choice to be made between the indices.
Traducción de: Grundlegung zur metaphysik der sitten Reimpresión en 1971
Exposición analítica de la necesidad imperativa de la integración de la dimensión ética en la práctica de la administración pública, cuyo autor aborda las herramientas preventivas provistas por el derecho administrativo y las medidas represivas del derecho penal, con especial referencia a los ordenamientos españoles, que permiten garantizar el comportamiento ético en la función pública.
President Obama has trumpeted transparency as a major part of his reform agenda, promising an "unprecedented" degree of governmental openness and overseeing a variety of open government reforms, from changes in Freedom of Information Act policies to the creation of new websites like Recovery.Gov. Although transparency is politically popular, and the Obama Administration benefits in the short run by contrasting itself with the Bush Administration's reputation for secrecy, in the long run President Obama's rhetoric on openness in government may backfire politically. Too much emphasis on making government a fishbowl will only raise expectations about an unattainable or undesirable level of openness. Transparency has clear benefits but it also has its costs, as when, for example, the prospect of disclosure dampens internal deliberation and self-criticism by government officials. The real choice for government, then, is how much transparency, and what type, to offer over different processes. The Obama Administration has already found itself needing to make tradeoffs and place limits on transparency, and it is likely to continue to do so in the years to come. Yet members of the public, and certainly open-government activists, are unlikely to appreciate the need for making such tradeoffs, generating disappointment among the administration's supporters and charges of hypocrisy by its opponents. It remains unclear whether Barack Obama will ultimately earn the mantle of the "transparency president" - or whether the unrealistic hopes for openness in government he has raised will, when unfulfilled, only serve to reinforce public cynicism about government.
La observación principal de Ilya Prigoine, tal como la desarrolla en Las leyes del caos (1993), es que la ciencia natural contemporánea pone de manifiesto la existencia del azar y del caos en la constitución de la mayoría de los sistemas dinámicos; afirma que tales sistemas son una mezcla irreductible de determinismo y de azar. El químico ruso contrapone así su interpretación de la ciencia contemporánea -actividad consciente del indeterminismo y de la irreversibilidad temporal creadora, y que por eso estaría en lo cierto- a la ciencia moderna que habría estado, según él, condicionada por un tiempo reversible conservador y erróneamente orientada hacia el determinismo. Por su parte, la contribución principal del físico francés Théodore Vogel en su obra Por una teoría mecanicista renovada (1973) consiste en mostrar que no existe mejor modelo científico que el mecanicismo. Este modelo presupone la estabilidad de los sistemas, la relación causal, el determinismo, y se enracina en la esperanza de que las matemáticas, la herramienta principal del pensador mecanicista, permitirán renovar las categorías mecanicistas y reducir, en consecuencia, las áreas de indeterminación. Ahora bien, yo no adopto una actitud neutra en esta oposición de filosofías de la ciencia natural sino que intento criticar las ideas de Prigogine y poner de relieve el valor de la posición de Vogel.
We argue that making lawmakers more accountable to the public by making it easier to identify their policy choices can have negative consequences. Specifically, we analyze a model of political agency with a single lawmaker and a representative voter. In our model, the lawmaker has better information than the voter about the appropriateness of alternative policy courses. In addition, the voter is uncertain about the incumbent's policy preferences – specifically, the voter is worried the incumbent is an ideologue. Our model suggests that when lawmakers expect their policy choices to be widely publicized, for those lawmakers sufficiently concerned about reelection, the desire to select policies that lead the public to believe they are unbiased will trump the incentive to select those policies that are best for their constituents. Hence, lawmakers who would do the right thing behind close doors may no longer do so when policy is determined in the open. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007