Why Congressional Reforms Fail

Why Congressional Reforms Fail

Author: E. Scott Adler

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2002-06-15

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0226007561

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For decades, advocates of congressional reforms have repeatedly attempted to clean up the House committee system, which has been called inefficient, outmoded, unaccountable, and even corrupt. Yet these efforts result in little if any change, as members of Congress who are generally satisfied with existing institutions repeatedly obstruct what could fairly be called innocuous reforms. What lies behind the House's resistance to change? Challenging recent explanations of this phenomenon, Scott Adler contends that legislators resist rearranging committee powers and jurisdictions for the same reason they cling to the current House structure—the ambition for reelection. The system's structure works to the members' advantage, helping them obtain funding (and favor) in their districts. Using extensive evidence from three major reform periods—the 1940s, 1970s, and 1990s—Adler shows that the reelection motive is still the most important underlying factor in determining the outcome of committee reforms, and he explains why committee reform in the House has never succeeded and probably never will.


Race, Rights and Reform

Race, Rights and Reform

Author: Sarah C. Dunstan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-02-18

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1108486975

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Innovative new study mapping African American and Francophone black intellectual collaborations over human rights and citizenship from 1919 to 1963.


World Poverty and Human Rights

World Poverty and Human Rights

Author: Thomas W. Pogge

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2023-02-10

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1509560645

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Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.


Reforms

Reforms

Author: Miguel Soto

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-28

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9781734753240

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The oppression, repression and abuse of the king and parliament of England in 1776 forced the people to declare their independence. It was necessary for the people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another; and assume a separate and egalitarian station to which the Laws of Nature and the God of Nature entitles them. Today we face similar situations and the people have the right to reform its government. No one should mess around with the people's dream, endowed by Nature, because the Creator of Nature created all men equal, with inalienable rights, among them, Life, Freedom and Pursuing Happiness. No one should alter these rights. Benjamin Franklin said that Freedom, once lost, never returns. So, we need a revolution every 200 years because all governments become obsolete and corrupt. And corruption is what we, the people, see nowadays. There is corruption, abuse of power, injustice, disrespect to the rules of law in our system of government. We need to review the government's behavior and performance, working to make a more perfect Union, preserve justice, interior tranquility, and promote general welfare for us-the people. Our current government is sick; corruption corrodes its separation of powers and democracy. Our Union is becoming more vulnerable to having a monarchy, instituting a despotic autocratic government, or installing a dictatorship like the one in Rusia, China, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc. We. the people must make a more perfect Union, for we are the ultimate sovereignty. No power is above the peoples' power because all governments are formed by the will of the people. We must eliminate all sources of corruption in the three branches of our republican government, holding the separation powers as the sacred guaranty to prevent corruption. The selection and election of the representatives to the three branches of the government is, and must be, the exclusive right of the people. No president should have power to nominate either Justices to the Supreme Court or judges to federal courts, or directors of autonomous agencies, because this is a violation of the will of the people. The people must have the right to elect their representatives to the three branches of power by popular vote on regular elections. because the political parties corrupt the selection and election of governments officials, benefiting their corrupted political agendas. Ethic and transparency are top priority and any violation to these two principles is, and or must be, a high political crime, subject to impeachment. The constitution must be reformed with firm, clear and extrinsic letter, maintaining the spirit of the constitution as the founding fathers had envisioned the Union. It is the people's right and duty to prepare government plan of actions, platforms, that satisfy their needs for every government period, federal or state. No political party should propose any government platform. The political parties must propose, and only propose, their plan, schedule, and funding required to execute the people's government platform for every government period. This is "a government of the people, by the people and for the people, having the right to create a government to run their business; "But when a long train of abuse and usurpation, invariably pursuing the same Object, evidences a design for reducing them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to discard that government, and provide new guards for their future security. "Such has been the patient suffering of these colonies; and such is now the need for them to alter their former Government Systems..." This book is a wake-up call for the reader to demand necessary reforms to preserve the American dream, now. The constitution reserves the right to the people of this nation, the United States of America,


Globalisation, Human Rights Education and Reforms

Globalisation, Human Rights Education and Reforms

Author: Joseph Zajda

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-09-23

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9402408711

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This book, the seventeenth instalment in the 24-volume series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, explores the interrelationship between ideology, the state and human rights education reforms, setting it in a global context. The book examines major human rights education reforms and policy issues in a global culture. It focuses on the ambivalent and problematic relationship between the state, globalisation and human rights education discourses. Using a number of diverse paradigms, ranging from critical theory to historical-comparative research, the authors examine the reasons for, and the outcomes of human rights education reforms and policy. The authors discuss discourses surrounding the major dimensions affecting the human rights education, namely national identity, democracy, and ideology. These dimensions are among the most critical and significant dimensions defining and contextualising the processes surrounding the nation-building, identity politics and human rights education globally. With this as its focus, the chapters represent hand-picked scholarly research on major discourses in the field of human rights education reforms. The book draws upon recent studies in the areas of globalisation, equality, and the role of the state in human rights education reforms. Furthermore, the perception of globalisation as dynamic and multi-faceted processes clearly necessitates a multiple-perspective approach in the study of human rights education. This book provides that perspective commendably. It also critiques current human rights education practices and policy reforms. It illustrates the way shifts in the relationship between the state and human rights education policy. In the book, the authors, who come from diverse backgrounds and regions, attempt insightfully to provide a worldview of current developments in research concerning human rights education, and citizenship education globally. The book contributes, in a very scholarly way, to a more holistic understanding of the nexus between nation-state, human rights education both locally and globally.


The Politics of Court Reform

The Politics of Court Reform

Author: Melissa Crouch

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-09-19

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1108493467

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Offers an analysis of the politics of court reform through a focused review of Indonesia's complex court system.


Justice as Prevention

Justice as Prevention

Author: Pablo De Greiff

Publisher: SSRC

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 0979077214

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Countries emerging from armed conflict or authoritarian rule face difficult questions about what to do with public employees who perpetrated past human rights abuses and the institutional structures that allowed such abuses to happen. Justice as Prevention: Vetting Public Employees in Transitional Societies examines the transitional reform known as "vetting"-the process by which abusive or corrupt employees are excluded from public office. More than a means of punishing individuals, vetting represents an important transitional justice measure aimed at reforming institutions and preventing the recurrence of abuses. The book is the culmination of a multiyear project headed by the International Center for Transitional Justice that included human rights lawyers, experts on police and judicial reform, and scholars of transitional justice and reconciliation. It features case studies of Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, El Salvador, the former German Democratic Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and South Africa, as well as chapters on due process, information management, and intersections between other institutional reforms.


The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

Author: Matt Andrews

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-02-11

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1139619640

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Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in some developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits, although challenging to adopt, can be overcome by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process that involves multiple agents.


Parliamentary Reform 1785-1928

Parliamentary Reform 1785-1928

Author: Sean Lang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-07-15

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1134670141

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Parliamentary Reform 1785–1928 surveys the dynamically changing role of the British Parliament from the pre-reformed Parliament through: the 1832 Great Reform Act Chartism the campaign for working class suffrage Catholic emancipation the long struggle for the granting of female suffrage. Beginning with a wide survey of the origins and nature of Parliament, the author offers a detailed context for the campaigns for its reformation of in the nineteenth century and the attitude of Victorians towards it. This comprehensive approach promotes understanding of the wider issues of parliamentary reform and provides an essential aid and context to students studying this topic.