Topic
Legislation
About: Legislation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 62664 publications have been published within this topic receiving 585188 citations. The topic is also known as: law & act.
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Book•
01 Jan 1977
TL;DR: Schultze as discussed by the authors argues that government may intervene when private markets fail to provide goods and services that society values, but this view has led to the passage of much legislation and the creation of a host of agencies that have attempted, by exquisitely detailed regulations, to compel legislatively defined behavior in a broad range of activities affecting society as a whole.
Abstract: According to conventional wisdom, government may intervene when private markets fail to provide goods and services that society values. This view has led to the passage of much legislation and the creation of a host of agencies that have attempted, by exquisitely detailed regulations, to compel legislatively defined behavior in a broad range of activities affecting society as a whole--health care, housing, pollution abatement, transportation, to name only a few. Far from achieving the goals of the legislators and regulators, these efforts have been largely ineffective; worse, they have spawned endless litigation and countless administrative proceedings as the individuals and firms on who the regulations fall seek to avoid, or at least soften, their impact. The result has been long delays in determining whether government programs work at all, thwarting of agreed-upon societal aims, and deep skepticism about the power of government to make any difference. Strangely enough in a nation that since its inception has valued both the means and the ends of the private market system, the United States has rarely tried to harness private interests to public goals. Whenever private markets fail to produce some desired good or service (or fail to deter undesirable activity), the remedies proposed have hardly ever involved creating a system of incentives similar to those of the market place so as to make private choice consonant with public virtue. In this revision of the Godkin Lectures presented at Harvard University in November and December 1976, Charles L. Schultze examines the sources of this paradox. He outlines a plan for government intervention that would turn away from the direct" command and control" regulating techniques of the past and rely instead on market-like incentives to encourage people indirectly to take publicly desired actions.
254 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that everyday border has become a major technology of control of both social diversity and discourses on diversity, in a way that threatens the convivial coexistence of pluralist societies, especially in metropolitan cities, as well as reconstructs everyday citizenship.
Abstract: The paper argues that everyday bordering has become a major technology of control of both social diversity and discourses on diversity, in a way that threatens the convivial co-existence of pluralist societies, especially in metropolitan cities, as well as reconstructs everyday citizenship. The article begins with an outline of a theoretical and methodological framework, which explores bordering, the politics of belonging and a situated intersectional perspective for the study of the everyday. It then analyses the shift in focus of recent UK immigration legislation from the external, territorial border to the internal border, incorporating technologies of everyday bordering in which ordinary citizens are demanded to become either border-guards and/or suspected illegitimate border crossers. We illustrate our argument in the area of employment examining the impact of the requirements of the immigration legislation from the situated gazes of professional border officers, employers and employees in their bordering encounters.
252 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the American regulatory state is becoming a cost-benefit state, and argue for a shift from command-and-control to more flexible strategies, including "environmental contracting."
Abstract: Gradually, and in fits and starts, the American regulatory state is becoming a cost-benefit state. This essay argues on behalf of the transformation, as a method for overcoming selective attention, public ignorance, "legislation by anecdote," and rent-seeking. At the same time it identifies three serious risks in current theory and practice: excessive proceduralism; engrafting cost-benefit requirements on top of existing command-and-control regulation; and using the criterion of private willingness to pay in contexts for which that criterion is ill-suited. The essay urges a shift from command-and-control to more flexible strategies, including "environmental contracting." It also attempts to identify and cast light on the most complex issues involving valuation of regulatory benefits.
245 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that Italian public administration performed comparatively poorly during the postwar era as a result of the deliberate behaviour of parliamentary officials, who were concerned to enhance their own re-election prospects.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between the legislature and the public administration in postwar Italy (understood as the period from about 1948 through 1994). Italian public administration is normally characterized as badly designed and inefficient, and government performance is usually classed as poor. I argue by contrast that bureaucratic inefficiency, excessive legislation and widespread bureaucratic corruption were features of Italian public administration that were deliberately designed by legislators and intended to enhance the re-election prospects for incumbents by providing them with opportunities for extensive constituency service. The underlying incentives stemmed from the candidates’ search for the personal vote, essential for retaining public office. Differences in the laws regulating the financing of political campaigns explain why excessive bureaucratization in the Italian context also resulted in extensive political corruption. ‘For a country as prosperous as Italy,’ reports a standard textbook on postwar Italian politics, ‘the resulting quality of public services – education, health, social security, justice, transport – is exceptionally low’. 1 Not surprisingly, public dissatisfaction with the national bureaucracy and with political performance more generally has traditionally run high in Italy, much higher than in other West European countries. 2 Why has postwar Italian public administration and government performed so badly? This article argues that Italian public administration performed comparatively poorly during the postwar era as a result of the deliberate behaviour of parliamentary officials, who were concerned to enhance their own re-election prospects. ‘Bad government’ provided reasons for members of parliament to offer voters compensatory constituency services. It also enhanced the partisan political loyalty of civil servants, who were typically appointed on a patronage basis, by providing them with extensive opportunities to engage in bureaucratic corruption. While the overall system that emerged was not itself planned, the interactions and behaviours that underpinned it were strategic and self-serving. This interpretation is an application and extension of a model of bad government originally elaborated with the United States in mind. 3 It stands in stark contrast to at least two other interpretations of government performance that have been forwarded specifically to understand the Italian case and that rest on more general theoretical foundations:
244 citations
TL;DR: Ethical and empirical doubts about whether proxies can select interventions that the patient would have selected confront us just as there is a growing need to develop policies on this issue.
Abstract: RECENTLY, proxy or surrogate decision making regarding the termination of life-sustaining interventions for incompetent patients has been widely endorsed and promoted. After theCruzandecision and the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990, many states enacted proxy statutes specifically for health care. Indeed, even states such as New York and Massachusetts, which in the past had avoided enacting any legislation on living wills and securing the rights of patients, have quickly adopted See also pp 2082 and 2101. health care proxy laws. Simultaneously with this growing enthusiasm for proxy decision making have arisen ethical and empirical doubts about whether proxies can select interventions that the patient would have selected. These divergent trends confront us just as there is a growing need to develop policies on this issue. Consequently, it is important to examine several questions on proxy decision making: How widely endorsed is proxy decision making? What is the justification of
244 citations