Democracy and Public Administration

ICT, Public Administration and Democracy in the Coming Decade

Yogi Berra was famous both as a baseball player and as a source of enigmatic epigrams which often carried a subtle truth. One of his most famous observations was that “the future ain’t what it used to be”. Translated, what Berra was saying was that our view of the future changes all the time and yesterday’s forecasts are often today’s source of wry amusement. For this reason amongst others, man...

Democracy and Public Health.

Public Service and Liberal Democracy

The debate on television’s "public service"obligations can only make full sense if integrated in the broader context of the debate on the best political model for society. In fact, the classic "public service"rationale is based in a normative conception of good and in a suspicious view of the average citizen that is largely tributary of a Platonic or Elitist approach to the political organizati...

Direct Democracy and Public Employees

In the public sector, employment may be inefficiently high because of patronage, and wages may be inefficiently high because of the strength of public employee interest groups. This paper explores whether the initiative process, a direct democracy institution of growing importance, can control these political economy problems, as proponents and some research suggests. Based on a sample of 500+ ...

Constitutional Democracy and Public Judgements

This paper proposes a new conceptual framework of a liberal social order, which emphasizes the freedom of action in social interaction and the freedom of participation in social rule-making process. Our articulation of public decision-making process can be interpreted as a formal way of capturing the essence of constitutional democracy, which is an impure mixture of constructivist rationalism a...