Unaccountable Midnight Rulemaking? A Normatively Informative Assessment

Under a common view, the administrative state inherits democratic legitimacy from the President, an individual who is envisioned both to control administrative agencies and to be electorally accountable. Presidents\u27 administrations continue issuing rules, however, even after Presidents lose elections. Conventional wisdom holds that Presidents use the midnight period of their administrations-the period between the election and the inauguration of the next President-to issue unpopular and controversial rules. Many regard this midnight regulatory activity as democratically illegitimate. Yet we have scant evidence that presidential administrations in fact issue controversial or unpopular rules during the midnight period. In this Article, I examine the content of notice-and-comment rules issued between 1983 and 2010-roughly 20,000 rules-to assess whether midnight regulatory activity plausibly reflects a failure of political accountability. Consistent with a simple theory of political incentives, I find that the administrations of last-term Presidents issue considerably more controversial rules, as measured by the level of public commenting on rules, the level of dissent associated with rules, and the size of rules. However, I depart from the conventional account in finding suggestive evidence that presidential administrations sometimes use the midnight period to rise above ordinary politics rather than exclusively to dole out regulatory favors to interest groups. Industry groups, for example, challenged President G.W. Bush\u27s midnight rules in court at aberrational rates. I discuss the implications of these patterns for the unitary executive theory and the democratic legitimacy of the administrative state

Governing with urban big data in the smart city environment: an italian perspective

A smart city is more than its mere technological components. From a legal standpoint, smartness means a civic-enabling regulatory environment, access to technological resources, and openness to the political decision-making process. No doubt, the core asset of this socio-technical revolution is the data generated within the urban contest. However, national and EU law does not provide a specific regulation for using this data. Indeed, the next EU data strategy, with the open data and non-personal data legislation and the forthcoming Data Act, aims to promote a more profitable use of urban and local big data. Nonetheless, at present, this latter still misses a consistent approach to this issue. A thorough understanding of the smart city requires, first of all, the reconceptualization of big data in terms of urban data. Existing definitions and studies about this topic converge on the metropolises of East Asia and, sometimes, the USA. Instead, we approach the issues experienced in medium-size cities, focusing on the main Italian ones. Especially in this specific urban environment, data can help provide better services, automatize administrations, and further democratization only if they are understood holistically - as urban data. Cities, moreover, are a comprehensive source of data themselves, both collected from citizens and urban things. Among the various types of data that can be gathered, surveillance recordings play a crucial role. On the one hand, video surveillance is essential for many purposes, such as protecting public property, monitoring traffic, controlling high-security risk areas, and preventing crime and vandalism. From another standpoint, these systems can be invasive towards citizens' rights and freedoms: in this regard, urban data collected from video surveillance systems may be shared with public administrations or other interested entities, only afterward they have been anonymized. Even this process needs to be aligned with the transparency and participation values that inform the city's democracy. Thus, the anonymization process must be fully compliant with data protection legislation, looking for the most appropriate legal basis and assessing all the possible sources of risks to the rights and freedoms of people (DPIA). Urban data, indeed, is a matter of local democracy. The availability of data and the economy of platforms can significantly transform a city's services and geography as well as citizens' lifestyles. However, the participation of citizens to express their views on both the use of urban data for public policy and the regulation of the digital economy is still a challenge. The paper aims to analyze the projects of some Italian cities - including Milan, Rome, and Turin - which have tried to introduce participatory urban data management tools and to highlight the possible challenges of a democratic management of service platforms and data transfer for social and economic development

E-Government, transparency, reputation and performance. An empirical study in a sample of Spanish municipalities

Different streams of the Resource-Based View of the Firm (RBV) research have tested diverse relationships among intangible strategic resources and performance in heterogeneous industries, which have made a considerable contribution to our knowledge about firms and competition. The RBV establishes that those organizations capable of creating and developing strategic resources will have a competitive advantage and will enjoy a superior performance. Despite the substantial research effort, scarce empirical work has been developed trying to test the resourcebased view postulates in the public administration domain. The aim of this study is to examine how a set of strategic resources (e-government, transparency and reputation) can be the drivers of performance in public organizations, developing a theoretical model based on the RBV. The methodology considers a structural equation model (SEM) in order to test the hypotheses formulated in a sample of 78 Spanish municipalities. A group of models were designed considering performance as the dependent variable, and measuring it in six different ways: with three indicators of performance (economic activity index per capita, employment, and performance factor) and three indicators of performance growth (economic activity index growth, employment growth and population growth). The empirical research revealed a positive relationship between e-government and transparency, transparency and reputation, e-government and reputation, and reputation and performance, while the relationship between e-government and performance was not supported. Based on empirical findings, several implications emerge for scholars and practitioners; mainly that the RBV presents an adequate perspective for analysing public organizations, and that the development of strategic resources highly linked to local governments could be a source of competitive advantages with a positive impact on several indicators of city performance, and this should be considered by practitioners

Governance arrangements for state owned enterprises

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on key challenges in governance arrangements for state owned enterprises in infrastructure sectors. The paper provides guidelines on how to classify the fuzzy and sometimes conflicting development goals of infrastructure and the governance arrangements needed to reach such goals. Three policy recommendations emerge. First, some of the structures implied by internationally adopted principles of corporate governance for state owned enterprises favoring a centralized ownership function versus a decentralized or dual structure have not yet been sufficiently"tested"in practice and may not suit all developing countries. Second, general corporate governance guidelines (and policy recommendations) need to be carefully adapted to infrastructure sectors, particularly in the natural monopoly segments. Because the market structure and regulatory arrangements in which state owned enterprises operate matters, governments may want to distinguish the state owned enterprises operating in potentially competitive sectors from the ones under a natural monopoly structure. Competition provides not only formidable benefits, but also unique opportunities for benchmarking, increasing transparency and accountability. Third, governments may want to avoid partial fixes, by tackling both the internal and external governance factors. Focusing only on one of the governance dimensions is unlikely to improve SOE performance in a sustainable way.National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Debt Markets,Public Sector Expenditure Analysis&Management

Unravelling the European Community of Debt

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How well do Public-Private Partnerships work?

Public-private partnership (öffentlich-private Partnerschaft) als besondere Form der öffentlichen Aufgabenerfüllung, erfreut sich seit einigen Jahren, zunehmender Beliebtheit in vielen Teilen der Welt, sowie auch in Österreich. Im Unterschied zu herkömmlichen Formen der öffentlichen Auftragsvergabe, ist bei einem public-private partnership (PPP) eine einzige private Firma bzw. ein Konsortium für Planung, Errichtung, Betrieb und in vielen Fällen auch für die Finanzierung des Infrastrukturprojektes zuständig ist. Die öffentliche Verwaltung spezifiziert nur die Leistung die bereitgestellt werden soll und nicht wie dies erreicht werden soll. Das Konsortium erhält, schon ex ante festgelegte, Zahlungen über die gesamte Vertragsdauer, die Finanzierungskosten zurückerstatten und Gewinn für den privaten Partner erzeugen sollen. Auf den privaten Partner werden Risiken transferiert, die traditionellerweise der öffentliche Sektor trägt. Öffentliche Verwaltungen versprechen sich einige Vorteile von dieser Form der öffentlichen Aufgabenerfüllung. Führen public-private partnerships, jedoch, zu effizienteren Ergebnissen als herkömmliche Formen der öffentlichen Auftragsvergabe? Die strategische Interaktion zwischen den beiden Vertragspartnern lässt sich mit Hilfe zweier theoretischer Ansätze dargestellt. Das sind zum einen die Theorie der unvollständigen Verträge und zum anderen die Incentivetheorie wo vollständige Verträge angenommen werden und die Existenz von Informationsasymmetrien zu verzerrenden Phänomenen wie moral hazard und adverse Selektion führen. Die ökonomische Theorie, sowie empirische Studien, liefern keine klare Antwort auf die Frage der Effizienz. Nur unter bestimmten Umständen ist die Leistungserbringung durch ein public-private partnership effizienter als durch traditionelle Formen der öffentlichen Vergabe.Public-private Partnership (PPPs), a specific form of task fulfillment of administrations, has become increasingly popular over the last few years in many parts of the world as well as in Austria. A public-private partnership can be seen as an alternative to conventional public sector procurement. The government specifies only the outputs, which are to be provided by the infrastructure facility, but does not specify how these outputs should be supplied. A private firm/consortium is contracted to participate at different stages in the project (design, build, operate, finance). It receives payments (set already ex ante) over the life of the PPP-contract, which are supposed to repay the funding costs and create a return for the investors. Risks, traditionally borne by the public sector, are transferred to the private partner. Public administrations, naturally, expect advantages of this form of public service provision, but do PPPs really work better? There are two theoretical approaches that can be applied to public-private partnerships, focusing on strategic interactions between the partners. On one hand the contract is likely to be incomplete and thus the relationship can be described by means of transaction costs theory and theory of incomplete contracts, respectively. On the other hand, assuming complete contracts, the partnership can be described as a classic Principal-Agent relationship where the existence of information asymmetries causes distorting phenomena like moral hazard and adverse selection. Economic theory and empiric studies provide inconclusive results concerning efficiency gains through service provision by public-private partnerships. Only under certain circumstances service provision through public-private partnership is more efficient than traditional public sector procurement

Competition Law And Professional Practice

Professional practice has traditionally distinguished itself for being subject to strong regulation, characterized by containing severe restrictions on competition between professionals

Democracy vs technocracy : national parliaments and fiscal agencies in EMU governance

Taken together, both technical and intergovernmental bodies have reinforced their positions in the EU macroeconomic governance framework. By contrast, representative assemblies have a much more limited role on a policy domain that has seen a significant overhaul of EU scrutiny, control and sanctioning powers. This means a reconfiguration of authority, delegation and the institutional governance of the Eurozone. In order to asses these changes, this study looks specifically at two recent developments in the EMU governance framework: the creation and consolidation of Independent Fiscal Institutions (IFIs) and the role of national parliaments in the European Semester. These two phenomena not only represent a significant innovation in terms of governance, but also a new example of the tension between technocracy and democracy that has been at the core of the EMU architecture since its inception and can be linked with the EU democratic deficit. The paper analyses the institutional design and the mandate of the IFIs, as well as the role played by the national parliaments in the European Semester. The analysis concludes that fiscal agencies can have mix effects over legitimacy, democratic representativeness, and accountability, arguing that the key to know which effect dominates over the other lies in the cooperation between fiscal agencies and national parliaments. This cooperation could also improve the national parliaments´ effectiveness and their ability to scrutinize the governments and the European Semester

Translation Policies in Legal and Institutional Settings

This edited volume documents the state of the art in research on translation policies in legal and institutional settings. Offering case studies of past and present translation policies from several parts of the world, it allows for a compelling comparison of attitudes towards translation in varying contexts. The book highlights the virtues of integrating different types of expertise in the study of translation policy: theoretical and applied; historical and modern; legal, institutional and political. It effectively illustrates how a multidisciplinary perspective furthers our understanding of translation policies and unveils their intrinsic link with topics such as multilingualism, linguistic justice, minority rights, and citizenship. In this way, each contribution sheds new light on the role of translation in the everyday interaction between governments and multilingual populations

Measuring corruption indicators and indices

This Working Paper is a background paper delivered to frame the workshop ‘Global Governance by Indicators: Measuring corruption and corruption indicators’ convened by the Global Governance Programme of the European University Institute in Florence on 17 and 18 October 2013. Successively it was developed further in EUI RSCAS WP 2014/37 - http://hdl.handle.net/1814/30582The development of more sophisticated corruption measures has been stimulated by consistent and compelling demands for more effective action against corruption. However, the production of these indicators has rarely been addressed as a ‘technique of governance’ (Davis et al., 2012), or an instrument of ‘governance without government’ (Rosenau & Czempiel, 1992). The first section (1) reviews the major existing measures of corruption, by focusing on different categories of indices and indicators. The second part (2) pays particular attention to the major ontological and methodological criticisms, constraints and pitfalls, connected with these indicators. The third part (3) presents a comparative analysis of two of the most widely used indicators of corruption: the World Bank’s Control of Corruption indicator (CC) and Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI). The fourth section (4) evaluates the policy implications embedded in the construction and employment of indicators, while the last part of the paper (5) concludes by summarizing the most important questions raised by this analysis