Search

The article discusses the need to establish an independent administrative agency that would be responsible for the enforcement of the transparency obligations of the U.S. government.

The article focuses on the importance of transparency in antitrust enforcement, highlighting its role in promoting predictability in outcomes and increasing compliance. It includes perspectives on transparency in competition enforcement globally, with a focus on the U.S., and explores opportunities for enhancing transparency in antitrust enforcement practices.

As Americans, we are conditioned to believe that involving partisans in the administration of elections is inherently problematic. Understandably. The United States is a major outlier; virtually every other developed democracy mandates nonpartisan election administration. Whether on the left or right--especially since the 2020 election--we are barraged with headlines about actual or feared partisanship on the part of those who run our elections. What this narrative misses, however, is a crucial and underrecognized fact: by design, partisans have always played central roles at every level of U.S. election administration. What is more, partisans are baked into the U.S. election process for lofty reasons. Placing rival partisans in the election process increases transparency, enhances accountability, and (in theory) improves public trust in outcomes. Rival partisans populate election administration for the same reason we rely on the adversarial process in court: adversarialism leads to outcomes in which members of the public are more likely to abide. As with the justice system, adversarial election administration is not a perfect formula. But the better we understand the mechanisms of rival partisanship in election administration, the better our chances of improving them. This Article takes on this task, examining the history of adversarial election administration in the United States, describing how adversarial actors function in modern U.S. elections, and suggesting how states might better leverage adversarial election administration to bolster transparency, boost accountability, and secure election outcomes voters can trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Governments around the world face an apparent tension when considering whether to allow public access to the governing process. In principle, transparent institutions promote accountability and good governance. However, politicians and scholars contend that such reforms also constrain politicians' capacity to negotiate and compromise, producing inefficiency and gridlock. This argument—that transparency inhibits compromise—is widely accepted, but rarely empirically tested. We develop a theoretical framework around the claim and evaluate it in the context of American state legislatures. We leverage temporal variation in state "sunshine law" adoptions and legislative exemptions to identify the effects of transparency on several observable indicators of compromise: legislative productivity, polarization, partisanship, policy change, and budget delay. Our analyses generally do not support the argument; we mostly report precisely estimated negligible effects. Thus, transparency may not be the hindrance to policy making that conventional wisdom suggests. Effective governance appears possible in state legislatures even under public scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the current state of independent correctional, jail and prison oversight in the U.S. as of July 2020. Other topics include the aim of oversight to improve transparency and accountability within said facilities, the proposed criminal justice reforms to address the high incarceration rates in the country, and the de-incarceration programs like community services and productive citizenship.

This article explores an organizational design perspective of open government. A conceptual model is developed of how contingency factors, design parameters, and goals fit together in an open government organization based on two case studies in the United Kingdom and the United States. The cases are compared, and the unique and common organizational design choices are drawn out and evaluated. The countries' political systems mean they differ in how they design open government. However, they both designed organizational structures of centralized leadership, technology-driven processes of coproduction, and co-option of existing policy networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the level of transparency in the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) by government agencies in the U.S. Topics include the controversies over the use of CBA in agency decisionmaking, the proposed improvements on CBA transparency particularly on process transparency and policy transparency, as well as some government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

In this Nuclear Notebook, the authors write about nonstrategic nuclear weapons—starting with the difficulty of finding a universal definition for them. Although the United States and Russia have reduced their nonstrategic stockpiles, significant inventories remain. And other nuclear weapons states appear to have nonstrategic nuclear weapons as well. Today, at least five of the world’s nine nuclear weapons states have, or are developing, what appears to meet the definition of a nonstrategic nuclear weapon: Russia, the United States, France, Pakistan, and China. The authors present information on the weapons at each of these arsenals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While there is no doubt that some information on nuclear weapons must remain undisclosed, excessive nuclear secrecy hinders progress toward the twin goals of improved nuclear materials security and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. With the March 2012 Nuclear Security Summit afoot and the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in sight, now is the time for nuclear weapons states to implement new transparency measures such as declaring additional information regarding the capabilities, size, and purpose of weapons stockpiles and fissile materials, and providing the means to verify a larger portion of those declarations. Increased transparency can reduce uncertainty, build trust, establish baselines for future reductions, and place political pressure on other states possessing nuclear weapons to take similar steps. Because they possess the vast majority of nuclear weapons and fissile material in the world, the United States and Russia should lead the way by creating a model for declarations, including non-deployed and nonstrategic weapons. Declarations of nuclear weapons and fissile materials could be verified bilaterally, through new multilateral agreements and a multilateral inspections agency or by expanding the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Some transparency actions can be taken immediately, either unilaterally or reciprocally. Increased transparency can provide short-term benefits for some states and establish a foundation for additional bilateral and multilateral nuclear arms reductions. Transparency can be embraced by non-nuclear weapons states and states with nuclear weapons outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without undertaking new treaty obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proliferation concerns have generally been associated with the acquisition of the fissile material needed for nuclear weapons; however, the spread of the knowledge needed to build very light and powerful weapons that can be carried long distances by missiles is also a serious concern. Such knowledge could accelerate and destabilize regional arms races, and lead to the deployment of powerful weapons able to target the US and its allies. Classified weapons-related information has previously spread through the international effort to harness inertial confinement fusion. Success in achieving net fusion gain in the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could lead to greatly increased R&D in inertial confinement fusion worldwide, along with increased proliferation risks. The authors write that these issues have not yet been adequately addressed and require direct and transparent examination so that means to mitigate risks can be assessed and residual risks can be balanced against potential benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government transparency is a key component of democratic accountability. The U.S. Congress and the president have created multiple legislative avenues to facilitate executive branch transparency with the public. However, when the executive branch withholds requested information from the public, the federal judiciary has the power to determine whether agencies must release documents and information to requestors. When enforcing standards of executive branch transparency, judges must balance concerns of executive autonomy and judicial intrusion into administrative decisionmaking. While much judicial scholarship focuses on the decisionmaking on high courts, in the U.S. context, federal district courts play a key role in adjudicating transparency disputes. In this article, I examine case outcomes in disputes involving agency claims of deliberative process privilege over internal agency documents litigated between 1994 and 2004. I find that U.S. federal district courts largely defer to administrative agencies in transparency disputes. However, factors such as agency structure and the congruence between judicial and administrative agency policy preferences influence whether federal judges require executive branch officials to release requested information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern government is comprised of a complex admixture of public and private actors. From the provision of public services, to growing movements to sell off national parks, to the very task of legislating, the public is unlikely to encounter an area of government that is untouched by privatization. But public transparency mechanisms, including the seminal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), rely upon an outdated, rigid conception of the private-public dichotomy. They fail to provide the public with any meaningful access to what we call the “private government,” which includes the private actors who bear an increasing responsibility for performing governmental functions. A paradigm shift is required, from a focus on who creates or possesses a document, to the public impact and importance of the document. We propose to turn the primary tool of privatization—the private law contract—into a mechanism for injecting public oversight into contractual delegation. Specifically, we outline a framework for a statute which would require agencies to retain ownership of information created pursuant to a contractual relationship or to justify, ex ante, why the public interest in public access is outweighed by other considerations. The agency-owned records would be subject to the full panoply of ordinary FOIA provisions and any decision to exempt records from the ownership requirement would be subject to judicial review. Our proposal mitigates some of the problems inherent in asking private entities to open their books to FOIA scrutiny and properly places the onus on public agencies to fulfill their roles as protectors of the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent public concern about political conspiracy theories and disinformation has led some to favor restrictions on free speech or call for greater government transparency. These proposals are likely to fail, as they are based upon the faulty assumption that belief in conspiracies is a product of ignorance. It is surprising that few scholars in recent years have focused on the special connection between conspiracy theories and the populist movements that commonly spawn them. Historically, the American system has restricted political action outside certain normal bounds, eventually encouraging frustrated citizens to develop new opposition movements. Populists then adopt conspiracy theories as tools to reshape political coalitions and forge unified organizations of their own. In light of the functional purpose of conspiracy theories and the oppositional critique of populist movements, conspiratorial narratives no longer appear to be the product of ignorance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the nation, child protective authorities are turning to machines to assist them in their work, developing predictive analytic tools to forecast risk to children and families. While there is clear evidence that current child welfare decision-making processes are flawed and in need of change, the advent of predictive analytics carries with it numerous risks to children and families that cannot be ignored. This Article explains the fundamentally human processes that go into the creation of predictive analytic tools and highlights some of the risks that these tools pose. It argues that the choices made in developing predictive tools implicate some of the most fundamental and as-yet unanswered questions in our child welfare system. As a result, the advent of predictive analytics in child welfare presents a moment for systemic reflection. Without careful attention to the issues that predictive analytics raise, communities risk simply coding over the cracks in the foundation of a flawed system, burying problems of bias, transparency, and accountability deeper, and imbuing the status quo with an undue patina of inevitability. Instead, communities should use this moment to demand more of their child welfare systems and see these tools as opportunities to build better, more humane systems that focus more on support and prevention and less on too-Iittle, too-late crisis response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governmental transparency is among the most fundamental requirements of a democracy. This belief is the backbone of codes of ethics amongst both states and the federal government. Codes of ethics universally apply to state employees, as well as those attempting to influence policy. We call these influencers lobbyists. Every state regulates the actions of lobbyists. Some states have broad, sweeping language that requires lobbyists to report a great deal of information to the state, which is then made public to voters, while other states allow for express exemptions to keep certain actions out of the public eye. Because the federal government does not provide many guidelines or restrictions on what can be included in lobbyist regulation, the states have free reign to regulate as they please. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Iowa, and Georgia have been able to include broad exemptions to lobbyist filing and disclosure rules for those lobbying on behalf of a religious institution. Other states, like Connecticut, have made no direct mention of religious organizations in their regulations, but have changed the rules to appease or benefit religious groups. These examples raise serious concerns about favoring religious speech over non-religious speech. This Note argues for a more uniform method of regulation on lobbying, the goal being to avoid favoring religious lobbying over non-religious lobbying. The need for a more uniform method of regulation will be demonstrated by addressing serious policy concerns as well as applying principles of the First Amendment regarding both the Freedom of Speech and Free Exercise of Religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyze data protection regimes in three large jurisdictions across the globe including the European Union, China, and the U.S., to offer insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each regime, and to predict the path that data protection laws in the U.S. It discusses the use of a five-element framework put forth by Professor Fred H. Cate to analyze the regimes, and mentions the element like data stewardship, a balance between harms and benefits, and a system of transparency.

Cyber is the battlefield that nations, enterprises and citizens need to face in the next years. New paradigms and new threats are growing daily. During the cold war only a limited number of countries had the economic and technology capacity to build “weapons" to impose their role. The United States invented the internet, but the future of cyberspace and its leader is not yet defined. Now 29 countries have units able to provide offensive operations through cyber techniques and 49 have purchased malwares. The global connection and nature of internet, that provide itself instrument to hide who is behind an attack and determine whom to punish, will leave several questions open. This paper tries to provide an overview of these issues leaving some questions open to government and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine-learning algorithms are improving and automating important functions in medicine, transportation, and business. Government officials have also started to take notice of the accuracy and speed that such algorithms provide, increasingly relying on them to aid with consequential public-sector functions, including tax administration, regulatory oversight, and benefits administration. Despite machine-learning algorithms’ superior predictive power over conventional analytic tools, algorithmic forecasts are difficult to understand and explain. Machine learning’s “black box” nature has thus raised concern: Can algorithmic governance be squared with legal principles of governmental transparency? We analyze this question and conclude that machine-learning algorithms’ relative inscrutability does not pose a legal barrier to their responsible use by governmental authorities. We distinguish between principles of “fishbowl transparency” and “reasoned transparency,” explaining how both are implicated by algorithmic governance but also showing that neither conception compels anything close to total transparency. Although machine learning’s black-box features distinctively implicate notions of reasoned transparency, legal demands for reason-giving can be satisfied by explaining an algorithm’s purpose, design, and basic functioning. Furthermore, new technical advances will only make machine-learning algorithms increasingly more explainable. Algorithmic governance can meet both legal and public demands for transparency while still enhancing accuracy, efficiency, and even potentially legitimacy in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of the Union is [REDACTED]. The United States is facing a new kind of transparency problem that manifests when the President speaks on a secret or classified topic: the exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) keep what the President has spoken about secret, despite the President's public discourse. To remedy this problem, this article proposes the "presidential acknowledgment test," a new judicial test for application when the President speaks--or tweets--about information that would ordinarily be exempt from access via FOIA. This proposed test is more lenient than the existing "official acknowledgment test" that is applied in cases where a FOIA exemption may have been waived by public discussion of a topic. This article argues that the ordinary official acknowledgment test is flawed as applied to the President, and that adopting the separate test proposed by this article will foster the government transparency that FOIA is meant to facilitate. This article reflects upon an original collection of thirteen cases in which the ordinary official acknowledgment test has been applied to a President, from President Reagan to President Obama to President Trump. The author reaches the conclusion that courts have inconsistently applied the official acknowledgment test to Presidents and that the unique position of the President as the elected Commander-in-Chief makes the existing test unsuitable for application to the Chief Executive. The proposed presidential acknowledgment test redresses these issues and better fits the purpose of the FOIA statute as amended by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016. The article further mulls the implications of transparency issues on the "fake news" phenomenon and how more transparency, achieved by applying the proposed presidential acknowledgment test, would help promote the informed citizenry necessary for a healthy democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been acknowledged by both practitioners and the government that transparency in the calculation of criminal antitrust fines by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is important for the continued success of criminal antitrust policy. Recent auto parts investigations provide a large and diverse set of plea agreement observations that are compared to gain a better understanding of DOJ's criminal fining policy for corporations and to assess whether the sentencing outcomes are consistent, both across the investigations and with DOJ's stated policies. The analysis shows that with regard to certain inputs into the fine calculations, the DOJ provided additional transparency in the auto parts plea agreements, although in other areas the methods used to determine inputs remain opaque. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article refers to studies by Poole and Pierce concerning the United States Federal Reserve Board and focuses on the monetary policy of Chairman Arthur Burns in the 1970s. The central bank is characterized as having a penchant for secrecy and obfuscation. The agency's stance against an audit by the General Accounting Office, Freedom of Information, and Government in the Sunshine is attributed to distrust of the legislative branch of government and efforts to preserve the Federal Reserve's independence. Topics include the Federal Reserve's short-run perspective on monetary policy and how it affected interest rates, the money supply, and forecasts of the gross national product.

In 1996, to address the persistent problem of delays in the processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act (EFOIA), which included a suite of reforms. Chief among them was the affirmative disclosure mandate: a requirement that agencies proactively post frequently requested records on their websites. These affirmative disclosures were intended to increase public access to government records and to free up agency resources spent reactively responding to FOIA requests by making such requests "an avenue of last resort. However, more than two decades since the affirmative disclosure mandate was enacted, delays in processing FOIA requests remain excessive, compliance with it is spotty at best, and attempts to enforce it have met with procedural hurdles. In an effort to make good on the decades-old promise of EFOIA's affirmative disclosure mandate, this Article tackles those procedural hurdles and urges courts reconsider how they handle challenges to agencies' noncompliance with the mandate. This Article argues that the judicial decisions regarding the relief available for violations of the affirmative disclosure mandate have overlooked critical issues and have rendered Congress's mandate largely unenforceable. It concludes with a call to revisit these decisions and to allow relief in the form of compelling precisely what Congress intended--the posting online of frequently requested records. Only by doing so might we finally make good on EFOIA's promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defense ministries conduct strategic planning in various ways. In this article I outline tradeoffs in the design of strategic planning processes, and consider the implications of these tradeoffs for choices about the conduct of defense planning in different circumstances. Whereas an inclusive and transparent planning process is well-suited to building internal and external buy-in for a defense strategy, a more exclusive and opaque process is more likely to generate a defense strategy that departs from the status quo and speaks candidly about key challenges. The design of a defense planning process should therefore be informed by certain features of its context, such as whether the international security environment is stable or in flux and whether the defense ministry enjoys or lacks strong political support. I base the article’s findings on an in-depth analysis of the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review, which served for nearly two decades as the major strategy process of the U.S. Department of Defense. This analysis draws on interviews I conducted of 23 defense officials and experts, as well as primary and secondary sources. More generally, my findings highlight for scholars and practitioners the importance of understanding how planning processes can shape defense and national security policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tracks the evolution of ethics in American public administration from the inception of the field in the late nineteenth century to the present, and employs the ethical lens to address some of the current pressing problems (e.g., immigration, climate change, and e-surveillance). The study acknowledges the fact that ethics has not evolved in a vacuum. Ever since the Progressive Era, various forces—social, political, legal, as well as technological—have greatly shaped the evolution of ethics, with every era injecting its opportunities and challenges, as well as its dictating values. This article highlights the continuity of ethics in public administration, by arguing that administrative ethics has not been static as it evolved over the years; it has evolved not by omission but by addition, in reflecting the changing reality of every age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anecdotal evidence exists to suggest a shortage of licensed foster parents in the United States. However, empirical support for this claim is lacking. A content analysis of state-level websites was conducted to explore foster home licensing data transparency. Analysis of data collected from 50 state child welfare agency websites found that 54% (n = 27) of states did not report foster home licensing outcomes. Reporting states (n = 23) varied widely in data presentation, ranging from one to five licensing outcomes reported (M = 2.52, SD = 1.31). Implications of this limited transparency are discussed for foster care policy, research, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationships between foundations and the government in the United States have long been difficult with government attitudes ranging from hostile to at best indifferent in the past. American foundations have long claimed innovation as a distinctive function to perform in society in order to preserve their legitimacy. One hundred years after the rise of the large-scale American philanthropic foundation, however, the relationships between foundations and government have come into flux. Between demands from fiscally-strapped local governments and a new openness of state and federal governments to develop collaborative relationships, a variety of public-philanthropic partnerships have emerged that question the traditional roles and distribution of labor between philanthropy and the state. This article traces the historical development of the government/foundation relationship and discusses its changing nature using recession-induced ad hoc partnerships, the emergence of foundation liaison offices, and the Obama Administration’s Social Innovation Fund and Investing in Innovation program as examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media are regarded to be a cornerstone for addressing the open government challenge that public administration faces. However, scientific knowledge about how social media can leverage open government is limited. Therefore, this study applies a mixed-methods research proceeding to develop a conceptual framework for the strategic use of social media concerning open government initiatives. The study concludes that social media applications can be strategically applied to foster open government and to improve citizen-government interaction. From the findings, strategic recommendations for open government-related social media adoption are developed and practical advice for responsible public managers is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normative theorists of corruption have developed an institutional conception that is distinct from both the individualist approaches focused on quid pro quo exchanges and other institutional approaches found in the literature on developing societies. These theorists emphasize the close connection between patterns of corruption and the legitimate functions of institutions. The corruption benefits the institution while undermining it. Reforms therefore should be directed toward finding alternatives for the functions the corruption serves. Also, institutional corruption does not require that its perpetrators have corrupt motives, and it is not limited to political institutions. This review examines four leading theories and discusses criticisms of their approach. A tripartite framework for analyzing the elements of institutional corruption is proposed. Although the theories are useful for distinguishing institutional corruption from the more familiar forms of individual corruption, they could be enriched by giving greater attention to the work on individual corruption in its structural forms in developing societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative approaches to public management are generally known to represent sources of public value. However, certain theoretical and empirical gaps in understanding this process of value creation persist. We adopt a resource-based view to analyse how public and private collaborations moderate relations among resources and processes and creation of public value. Our results show that collaboration with private organizations negatively moderates the effect of resources on public value creation and positively moderates the effect of processes on public value creation. Collaboration within the public sector positively moderates the effect of resources but not the effect of processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the problems associated with transparency and accountability of U.S. law enforcement among African American communities. Topics discussed include the stop and frisk activities of police officers; the veil of secrecy around violent police encounters with African Americans; and focuses on the misuse of guns and Tasers as the primary weapons used in taking the lives of African Americans.

Transparency and accountability were the announced aims of the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") as it unveiled a new policy of requiring some enforcement targets to admit wrongdoing when they settled with the agency. The SEC had come under fire for allowing targets to settle with the agency without admitting or denying wrongdoing. Critics, including prominent judges, put pressure on the agency to require admissions as a way to hold wrongdoers accountable, particularly in the long aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. In response, the agency announced a policy change in 2013: roughly speaking, it would require admissions when doing so would further public accountability. The empirical study reported in this Article explores how the agency has implemented this policy. We identify and analyze SEC settlements in court and administrative proceedings announced during SEC fiscal years 2010 through 2017 that required any type of admission of wrongdoing from the settling target. The data set includes the full text of the underlying agreements between the SEC and the target. The resulting number of settlements including admissions is low. A few of these settlements were in high-profile cases, but many were against individuals rather than entities and resulted in low or no monetary sanctions. The numbers, however, do not tell the whole story. We examine the text of the agreements to provide a more nuanced picture, revealing the prominent role of factual admissions, but also identifying admissions of wrongdoing, legal violations and scienter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effectiveness of the imposition of attorneys' fees in the post-2007 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in encouraging citizens to use their rights to information and in preventing agencies from withholding data. Also cited are the enactment of the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2007 (OPEN Act), as well as the court case Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.