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Political Responsibility (political + responsibility)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

Change in Order to Conserve: Explaining the Decision to Introduce the 1958 Life Peerages Act

PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 2 2009
PETE DOREY
The introduction of life peers in 1958 represented the 20th century's most significant change in the composition of the house of lords, until the removal of (most) hereditary peers in 1999. Yet the 1958 reform was introduced by a Conservative government which was under no discernible pressure to do so, least of all by its own back benchers. Yet the Conservative leadership in both houses of parliament decided to seize the initiative on house of lords reform, partly to enable the house of lords to discharge its political responsibilities more effectively, thereby preventing it from atrophying, and partly to pre-empt more extreme reform by a future Labour government. Yet having agreed to undertake such a reform, senior Conservatives encountered a range of often unforeseen constitutional and political problems, which ensured that the final reform was actually rather less comprehensive than many ministers had originally envisaged. [source]

Locating Responsibility: The Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Its Rationale

DISASTERS, Issue 2 2004
James Darcy
Criticised by some as a technical initiative that neglects core principles, Sphere was seen by its originators precisely as an articulation of principle. The Humanitarian Charter was the main vehicle through which this was expressed, but its relationship to the Minimum Standards has remained a matter of uncertainty. Specifically, it was unclear in the original (1999) edition of Sphere how the concept of rights informed the Minimum Standards. The revised (2004) edition goes some way to clarifying this in the way the standards are framed, yet the link between the standards and the charter remains unclear. The concern with the quality and accountability of humanitarian assistance, which motivated the attempt to establish system-wide standards through the Sphere Project, was accompanied by a desire to establish such actions in a wider framework of legal and political responsibility. In part, this reflects the conditional nature of the undertaking that agencies make when they adopt Sphere. This aspect of the charter has been neglected, but it is fundamental to an understanding of the standards and their application. This paper considers the rationale of the Sphere Humanitarian Charter and the conceptual model that underpins it. It discusses the relationship between the charter and the Minimum Standards, and the sense in which the latter are properly called ,rights-based' (explored further in a related paper herein by Young and Taylor). The author was closely involved in the conception and drafting of the charter, and this paper attempts to convey some of the thinking that lay behind it. [source]

Changing Definitions of Risk and Responsibility in French Political Scandals

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2002
Violaine Roussel
In the 1990s in France, a large number of political scandals developed and many political actors were prosecuted. This process of making politicians responsible related, in particular, to the rise of ,new risks' regarding public health and security. In this paper, I analyse the diffusion and the crystallization of discourses linking public risk and political responsibility. First, I point to some of the social and cognitive bases in which the recent uses of the notions of risk and responsibility are rooted. Second, I focus on the mechanisms through which the notions were mobilized and invested with new definitions in the course of the scandal hearings. Third, I explore some of the effects of the changes which occurred during the 1990s: new perception frames in terms of risk and responsibility are consolidated and are progressively appropriated by social actors located in various professional spheres. [source]

NGOs' transnational advocacy networks: from ,legitimacy' to ,political responsibility'?

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2001
Alan Hudson
NGOs that operate as part of transnational advocacy networks face a number of ,legitimacy challenges' concerning their rights to participate in the shaping of global governance. Outlining the legitimacy claims that development NGOs make, the article argues that ,legitimacy' is a socially constructed quality that may be ascribed to an NGO by actors and stakeholders with different viewpoints. NGOs operating transnationally link disparate communities and conceptions of legitimacy, and undermine the discourse and practice of sovereignty. Therefore such NGOs will find it difficult to be universally regarded as legitimate, especially by states that hold a sovereignty-based conception of legitimacy. However, relationships are the building blocks of networks, and efforts to improve them should not be abandoned simply because ,legitimacy' is too closely connected with sovereignty. In particular, NGOs ought to improve their relationships with the poor and marginalized communities whose interests they claim to promote. To this end, the concept of ,political responsibility' is suggested as a pragmatic approach to understanding power relations as they arise in transnational advocacy networks and campaigns. [source]