India’s 2005 Right to Information Act (RTIA) was described earlier on this blog by my colleague Darshana Patel , who saw first-hand some of the innovative efforts by district governments in the state of Maharashtra to implement the RTIA. She concludes her post with a caveat: legislation is important, but it is the actual use of it that leads to its effectiveness—and that use depends on public awareness. This important point, among others, is discussed in detail by Alasdair Roberts of Suffolk University Law School in his informative paper, “ A Great and Revolutionary Law?

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Do Ordinary Indians Care about Their Right to Information?

Economists dominate international development, and, in the case of the World Bank , well, that is an instance of full spectrum dominance. In an article in Public Choice (2010) 142:1-8, titled ‘Persuasion, slack, and traps: how can economists change the world? ‘, Bryan Caplan has some bad news as well as some good news.

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How Can Economists Change the World?

As you can see from many of our blog posts, we’re somewhat struggling with getting a good grip on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their role for governance and accountability. We’re also somewhat split along the lines of enthusiasm and scepticism with regard to the possibilities of using ICTs to straighten out a distorted public sphere and further development

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eProcurement: At the Beginning of Every Major Change, There’s a Little Website

I attended the last six talks at the Symposium on Hate on Saturday, which brought together the (mostly postgraduate) talents of the English and Philosophy departments of both UCD and TCD. I’m sorry to have had to miss the first few talks, as there was some really interesting material presented at the symposium, and quite a heated discussion got going at the end of it

The rest is here:
Footnotes to the Symposium on Hate, Part 1: On the Importance of Hatred

Will public opinion kill health care reform in the US? Naturally, I don’t know the answer to that question. What is interesting is how a reform process that appeared close to conclusion can wobble mightily upon the apparent signaling of public displeasure

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Will Public Opinion Kill Health Care Reform in the US?

It is conceivably possible, and some think extremely likely, that future biogerentological research will afford the human species the capacity to extend the span of our natural lives indefinitely. (The prospect is of an indefinite period of youth, not of increasing senescence without death.) This possibility makes clearer a contradiction in the way many of us think about mortality. That modern medicine is a valued and much sought after commodity indicates that the vast majority of us believe death to be a bad thing .

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A Problem in the Ethics of Life Extension

In my last blog post , I introduced agenda setting as a fundamental media effect: The media sets the public and the political agenda by bringing issues to the attention of the audience and of policy makers. Agenda setting has a little brother, priming, sometimes called second order agenda setting. Priming effects of communication are important for decision making, for example which candidate to vote for in an upcoming election

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Media Effects II: Priming

CommGAP believes that social norms transformation is key to fighting petty corruption; we believe that one of the biggest impediments to anti-corruption efforts from the perspective of ordinary citizens is when corruption and bribery become so institutionalized in society that people view corruption as the fixed and incontestable norm. To break down such a system, the public’s ignorance of their rights, cynicism, fear of reprisal and mentality of submission to the status quo must first be defeated

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What Makes Regular Folk Become Anti-Corruption Advocates?

talk with an array of wonderful photographs (available at www.ncuscr.org) –of Service as a child (he was born in Sichuan); as an adult working in China, including his personal meetings with Mao Zedong in Yanan; and his tribulations at the hands of the FBIs J. Edgar Hoover and later Senator Joseph McCarthy.

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Podcasts – Episosde Two – NCUSCR Member Program – Meet the Author: Lynne Joiner

“The public is organized and made effective by means of representatives who as guardians of custom, as legislators, as executives, judges, etc., care for its special interests by methods intended to regulate the conjoint actions of individuals and groups.

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Quote of the Week

In his book “ When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a new Global Order ,” Martin Jacques argues that China is not only ascendant economically. It is also on a path to marginalize the West and change global conceptions of what is modernity. Does this include modern communication

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Speech and “Harmony” in China: An Experiment

I am probably not the only philosopher to have received a copy of Doxiadis and Papadimitriou’s Logicomix for Christmas — a graphic novel, narrated by the character of Bertrand Russell, about the development of logic in the twentieth century. I’ve just finished reading it

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The Cartoon Adventures of Russell and Frege

Imagine that you are an old lady from a poor household in a town in the outskirts of Chennai city, India. All you have wanted desperately for the last year and a half is to get a title in your name for the land you own, called patta . You need this land title to serve as a collateral for a bank loan you have been hoping to borrow to finance your granddaughter’s college education

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Paying Zero for Public Services

Imagine there are accountability mechanisms and no one knows how to use them. Development practitioners in Peru wrestled with exactly this problem in the early 2000s when transparency and accountability became integral parts of government agencies – but citizens had no way of knowing what made public service delivery good and what should be complained about.

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From Inertia to Participation: The Case of RECURSO in Peru

It is generally accepted that independent news media are one of the main building blocks for good governance. Ensuring media’s independence from the control of the powerful is a difficult task, however

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A Delicate Dance between Distance and Access

Some recent research by Jens Förster, Kai Epstude and Amina Özelsel, suggests that thinking about sex, and specifically about casual sex, can increase one’s analytic abilities, whereas thinking about love (specifically, about going for a walk with a beloved person) can increase more holistic/creative thinking. From what I can tell of the explanation that Foerster and collaborators offer the causal relations might go both ways: the hypothesis that their work suggests is that analytic philosophy makes you sexy, whereas continental makes you lovely.

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Why analytic philosophy is sexy

My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government.

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A Roadmap to Open Government

CommGAP ’s second-born has arrived! Yesterday we launched the second book in our series on governance and reform, this one baptized Public Sentinel: News Media and Governance Reform (lovingly called “Sentinel” by all those who worked hard on getting this book published for the last year or so).

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Standing Sentinel: Media and Governance Reform

The leaders of Switzerland have a ticklish problem, one of the most difficult problems in political thought and practice.

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Minarets in Switzerland: The Dilemmas of Public Opinion

On Monday this week, I went to a presentation by Michael Buehler at the Center for Strategic &International Studies in Washington, DC. The title of his talk, “ Of Geckos and Crocodiles: Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Efforts ,” piqued my curiosity as I had blogged about Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission earlier this year. Buehler began by giving a comprehensive overview of Indonesia’s corruption eradication measures since 1998 to date, outlining the passage of corruption-related laws and regulations, establishment of independent anti-corruption bodies, and development of anti-corruption programs

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“Saya Cicak” (I am a Gecko): The Power of Public Support