Congress and the costs of information: A response to jane schacter

Boston University Law Review

Volumn 89, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 677-687

  Vermeule, Adrian ^a  

^a HARVARD LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67649531414     PISSN: 00068047     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (41)

1. 1 See Jane S. Schacter, Digitally Democratizing Congress? Technology and Political Accountability, 89 B. U. L. REV. 641, 643 (2009).
2. 2 A wiki is, according to Merriam-Webster, a "[w]eb site that allows visitors to make changes, contributions, or corrections." Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, Wiki, http://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/wiki (last visited Feb. 19, 2009).
3. 3 Schacter, supra note 1, at 651-52 (using the case of roll call voting information to illustrate the transparency and ease of access that the Internet allows).
4. 4 Id. at 648-62.
5. 5 See, e.g., Change Congress, http://change-congress.org (last visited Feb. 13, 2008) (advocating transparency and campaign finance reform);
6. Sunlight Foundation, http://www.sunlightfoundation. com (last visited Feb. 13, 2008) (advocating transparency in "money, lobbying, influence and government").
7. 6 For some devices of this sort, see ADRIAN VERMEULE, MECHANISMS of DEMOCRACY 200-15 (2007) (identifying the costs of transparency and suggesting a system of delayed disclosure as a means of accomplishing selective transparency).
8. 7 See Schacter, supra note 1, at 672-73.
9. 8 See, e.g., Eric Maskin and Jean Tirole, The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government, 94 AM. ECON. REV. 1034, 1035 (2004).
10. 9 "Private information" simply means that the representative gets an unobservable signal about the state of the world, a signal that the representative may not be able to credibly transmit to the public.
11. 10 See Maskin and Tirole, supra note 8, at 1035.
12. 11 Gilat Levy, Anti-Herding and Strategic Consultation, 48 EURO. ECON. REV. 503, 504 (2004) (arguing that decision makers with career concerns may go "against the herd" or against their own beliefs).
13. 12 Id. at 504-05; see also Gilat Levy, Careerist Judges and the Appeals Process, 36 RAND J. ECON. 275, 286-87 (2005) (arguing that careerist judges tend to be more creative, going against precedent more than efficient judges).
14. 13 See Stephen Morris, Political Correctness, 109 J. POL. ECON. 231 passim (2001).
15. 14 Justin Fox, Government Transparency and Policymaking, 131 PUB. CHOICE 23, 25 (2007).
16. 15 See id. at 28.
17. 16 See JÜRG STEINER et al., DELIBERATIVE POLITICS in ACTION 98-137 (2004). The authors conducted case studies of the quality of deliberation in national legislatures in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors found that deliberation behind closed doors involved more bargaining and less arguing than in public, with fewer arguments appealing to the common good; however, public deliberation involved significantly more disrespectful speech acts. See id. at 128-31.
18. 17 See David Stasavage, Polarization and Publicity: Rethinking the Benefits of Deliberative Democracy, 69 J. POL. 59, 60 (2007).
19. 18 See Jon Elster, Deliberation and Constitution Making, in DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY 97, 111 (Jon Elste red., 1998).
20. 19 See id. at 128-31.
21. 20 STEINER et al., supra note 16, at 128-31
22. see also DANIEL NAURIN, DELIBERATION BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 143-53 (2007) (studying lobbying in the European Union and finding little evidence that transparency increases the ratio of arguing to bargaining, or that it triggers the civilizing force of hypocrisy).
23. 21 See Edmund L. Andrews and Robert Pear, With New Rules, Congress Boasts of Pet Projects, N. Y. TIMES, Aug. 5, 2007, at Al (describing how Democrats denounced earmarks and then addressed the problem not by eliminating them but by making them more open to the public).
24. 22 Id.
25. 23 Id.
26. 24 See id.
27. 25 Id.
28. 26 See CASS SUNSTEIN, REPUBLIC.COM 2.0, at 19-22 (2007).
29. 27 See DIANA MUTZ, HEARING the OTHER SIDE: DELIBERATIVE VERSUS PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY 3 (2006) ("Although diverse political networks foster a better understanding of multiple perspectives on issues and encourage political tolerance, they discourage political participation, particularly among those who are averse to conflict.").
30. 28 U. S. CONST, art. I, § 4, cl. 2.
31. 29 Id. § 6, cl. 1.
32. 30 Id. § 8, cl. 5.
33. 31 John Ferejohn, Accountability and Authority: Toward a Theory of Political Accountability, in DEMOCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND REPRESENTATION 131, 136-40 (Adam Przeworski, Susan C. Stokes and Bernard Manin eds., 1999).
34. 32 See generally James E. Alt and Robert C. Lowry, Transparency and Accountability in US States: Taking Ferejohn's Model to Data (Apr. 14, 2006) (unpublished manuscript, available at http://www.allacademic.com//meta/ p-mla-apa-research-citation/1/3/7/3/6/pagesl37364/pl 37364-1. php).
35. 33 For an overview, see generally John G. Matsusaka, Direct Democracy Works, 19 J. ECON. PERSP. 185 (2005) (finding that direct democracy "often seems to improve the performance of government").
36. 34 Politicopia Utah, http://www.politicopia.com/(last visited Feb. 11, 2009);
37. see Scott Martelle, Site Cedes Power to People, L. A. TIMES, June 18, 2007, at A9.
38. 35 See JAMES SUROWIECKI, THE WISDOM of CROWDS, at xiii-xv (2004).
39. 36 See Adrian Vermeule, Many-Minds Arguments in Legal Theory 24 (Harvard Law Sch. Pub. Law Research, Paper No. 08-02, 2008), available at http://ssrn. com/abstract= 1087017.
40. 37 See, e.g., REID PRIEDHORSKY et al., DEP'T of COMPUTER SCI. and ENG'G, UNIV. of MINN., CREATING, DESTROYING, AND RESTORING VALUE in WIKIPEDIA 2 (2007), http://www.cs.umn. edu/~reid/papers/group282-priedhorsky.pdf.
41. 38 Thanks to Jonathan Zittrain for suggesting this point.