Legislative Voting and Accountability

Legislative Voting and Accountability PDF Author: John M. Carey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139476793
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Legislatures are the core representative institutions in modern democracies. Citizens want legislatures to be decisive, and they want accountability, but they are frequently disillusioned with the representation legislators deliver. Political parties can provide decisiveness in legislatures, and they may provide collective accountability, but citizens and political reformers frequently demand another type of accountability from legislators – at the individual level. Can legislatures provide both kinds of accountability? This book considers what collective and individual accountability require and provides the most extensive cross-national analysis of legislative voting undertaken to date. It illustrates the balance between individualistic and collective representation in democracies, and how party unity in legislative voting shapes that balance. In addition to quantitative analysis of voting patterns, the book draws on extensive field and archival research to provide an extensive assessment of legislative transparency throughout the Americas.

Legislative Voting and Accountability

Legislative Voting and Accountability PDF Author: John M. Carey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139476793
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
Legislatures are the core representative institutions in modern democracies. Citizens want legislatures to be decisive, and they want accountability, but they are frequently disillusioned with the representation legislators deliver. Political parties can provide decisiveness in legislatures, and they may provide collective accountability, but citizens and political reformers frequently demand another type of accountability from legislators – at the individual level. Can legislatures provide both kinds of accountability? This book considers what collective and individual accountability require and provides the most extensive cross-national analysis of legislative voting undertaken to date. It illustrates the balance between individualistic and collective representation in democracies, and how party unity in legislative voting shapes that balance. In addition to quantitative analysis of voting patterns, the book draws on extensive field and archival research to provide an extensive assessment of legislative transparency throughout the Americas.

Accountability in State Legislatures

Accountability in State Legislatures PDF Author: Steven Rogers
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226827240
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"State legislatures hold tremendous authority over key facets of our lives, in domains ranging from healthcare to education to election administration. And in an era of polarization and frequent policy gridlock at the national level, their significance has only increased. Political scientist Steven Rogers asks what voters know about state legislators, whether they have a meaningful opportunity to register their preferences in state legislative elections, and if there is evidence of accountability for performance in the outcomes of those elections. Drawing on broad-ranging evidence and creative research strategies, Rogers shows that, most often, state legislatures can produce policies contrary to citizens' priorities with little fear of being held accountable at the ballot box. Assembling an encyclopedic range of data on candidacy and retirements, lawmaker issue stances, news coverage, general elections, primaries, electoral competition, legislator effectiveness, state economic performance, public opinion, voter knowledge, and election outcomes, this book foregrounds a major issue: Voters do not know enough about their state representatives. They are often not presented with alternatives in elections where incumbents routinely run unopposed, and outcomes normally fail to correlate with indicators of legislative performance, either for individual lawmakers or in the aggregate performance of state government"--

The Politics Industry

The Politics Industry PDF Author: Katherine M. Gehl
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633699242
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.

Making Politics Work for Development

Making Politics Work for Development PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464807744
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

Democracy, Accountability, and Representation

Democracy, Accountability, and Representation PDF Author: Adam Przeworski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521646161
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
6 Party Government and Responsiveness: James A. Stimson

Accountability without Democracy

Accountability without Democracy PDF Author: Lily L. Tsai
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139466488
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
Examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services they need by studying communities in rural China. In authoritarian and transitional systems, formal institutions for holding government officials accountable are often weak. The state often lacks sufficient resources to monitor its officials closely, and citizens are limited in their power to elect officials they believe will perform well and to remove them when they do not. The answer, Lily L. Tsai found, lies in a community's social institutions. Even when formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are weak, government officials can still be subject to informal rules and norms created by community solidary groups that have earned high moral standing in the community.

Decentralized Governance and Accountability

Decentralized Governance and Accountability PDF Author: Jonathan A. Rodden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110849790X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Reviews recent lessons about decentralized governance and implications for future development programs and policies.

Congress

Congress PDF Author: David R. Mayhew
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300130010
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Any short list of major analyses of Congress must of necessity include David Mayhew’s Congress: The Electoral Connection." —Fred Greenstein In this second edition to a book that has achieved canonical status, David R. Mayhew argues that the principal motivation of legislators is reelection and that the pursuit of this goal affects the way they behave and the way that they make public policy. In a new foreword for this edition, R. Douglas Arnold discusses why the book revolutionized the study of Congress and how it has stood the test of time.

The American Congress Reader

The American Congress Reader PDF Author: Steven S. Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139473743
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1112

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Book Description
The American Congress Reader provides a supplement to the popular and updated American Congress undergraduate textbook. By the same authors who drew upon Capitol Hill experience and nationally recognized scholarship to present a crisp introduction and analysis of Congress's inner mechanics, the Reader compiles the best relevant scholarship on party and committee systems, leadership, voting, and floor activity to broaden and illuminate the key features of the text.

Congressional Oversight

Congressional Oversight PDF Author: Walter J. Oleszek
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 143793059X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. A fundamental objective of congressional oversight (CO) is to hold exec. officials accountable for the implementation of delegated authority. This objective is especially important given the huge expansion of executive influence in the modern era. Clearly, given the role and scope of the fed. establishment, the importance of Congress¿s review function looms large in checking and monitoring the delegated authority that it grants to fed. departments and agencies. This report: (1) highlights several reasons for the expansion of the fed. gov¿t.; (2) discusses a few definitions of CO; (3) spotlights 3 purposes of oversight; (4) comments upon CO laws and rules; (5) reviews CO techniques; and (6) identifies incentives and disincentives to CO. Illus.