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Government Reform Policy Studies

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• A Defense of the Elected Judiciary

  By Deborah O’Malley, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Legal Memorandum, 09/09/2010
  

  In recent years, the battle over state judicial selection has intensified. Millions of dollars have been poured into efforts to encourage states that still embrace popular election of judges to switch to selection by unelected “expert” commissions—a system often called “merit selection” or the “Missouri Plan.” The idea is not a new one. The American Judicature Society began its push for merit selection in 1913 and continues to promote it today.

  
  
  

• Hijacking Justice: The Well-Funded Campaign to Replace Judicial Elections with Selection by Liberal Special Interests

  By Colleen Pero, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 09/09/2010
  

  Over the past 10 years, special interests have engaged in a highly coordinated, well-funded campaign to fundamentally alter the composition of America’s state courts. The campaign’s goal: to exclude conservative, rule-of-law judges from the bench. This campaign has been bankrolled by George Soros, a hedge fund operator with a net worth of $13 billion, according to the Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people.

  
  
  

• Bureaucratic Tyranny or the Renewal of Self-Government: The Beginning of Centralized Administration in America

  By John Adams Wettergreen, The Heritage Foundation
  
  First Principles, 08/03/2010
  

  The fully bureaucratized order cannot yet be established by a free popular vote. Indeed, the fully bureaucratized order could only be established by popular vote if the American people were so demoralized that they lacked the capacity to rule themselves politically. Two decades of aggressive centralization have already undermined that capacity to some extent. However, the continued success of the antibureaucratic appeal at the national level is a sign, at least, that the longing for self-government is not yet dead in the American soul.

  
  
  

• Chinese Nongovernmental Organizations: Politics by Other Means?

  By Amy E. Gadsden, American Enterprise Institute
  
  Papers and Studies, 07/26/2010
  

  This paper explores the evolution of Chinese NGOs, their structure, and how they work. The paper analyzes how the state and the Communist Party are responding to the emergence of a “third sector” and offers examples of what some groups are doing to negotiate issues between state and society. Finally, it examines whether the emergence of Chinese NGOs, typically seen as a building block in a liberal political system, increases the likelihood that China will liberalize politically. China’s NGOs take up political issues, but they are not yet political actors.

  
  
  

• The Iranian Clergy’s Silence

  By Mehdi Khalaji, Hudson Institute
  
  Articles, 07/13/2010
  

  Over a year since Iran’s hotly disputed 2009 presidential elections and the subsequent violent crackdown on the opposition Green Movement, the Iranian regime is continuing its campaign to suppress and discredit Shiite clerics. Not unreasonably, Iranian democrats and others in the opposition expect Shiite religious scholars to react to these affronts and to defend their own against the Islamic regime. And yet, by and large the clerical establishment has remained silent against the regime’s attacks. What accounts for this silence of so many?

  
  
  

• PennFuture’s Lobbying

  By Paul Chesser, Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives
  
  Policy Brief, 07/12/2010
  

  PennFuture (a.k.a. Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future), the organization founded by Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection John Hanger over 10 years ago, frequently criticizes the lobbying by traditional energy industries. But a close look at the environmental activist group shows at least questionable and hypocritical, if not unethical or illegal, advocacy practices.

  
  
  

• The National Academy of Blacklists

  By Kenneth Green, American Enterprise Institute
  
  The American, 07/08/2010
  

  Early this year, the National Academy of Sciences issued a blatant call for a specific climate policy, going far beyond serving as an objective voice of scientific explication. And now it has allowed a badly flawed study in its flagship publication that effectively creates a blacklist, in order to delegitimize scientists who might disagree with a vague “consensus” position on climate-change science. With such antics, the NAS risks losing its credibility, which is really all it has to offer. Someone needs to publicly clean house at the NAS, washing the institution’s hands of public policy pronouncements and renouncing efforts to turn them into a propaganda organ for climate alarmists. The alternative will be declining trust in the NAS, and the further erosion of the public’s belief in scientific pronouncements in general.

  
  
  

• Knowing What You Own: An Efficient Government How-To Guide for Managing State and Local Property Inventories

  By Anthony Randazzo, John Palatiello, Reason Foundation
  
  Policy Study, 07/01/2010
  

  How much land does your state or local government own? It seems like a basic question that would have a simple answer, but many states and counties do not have the kind of basic property and asset data that a well-run business or responsible family relies on to manage its finances. Only 16 of the states have well-functioning systems for tracking what they own. And while 17 others states are developing some type of inventory system, another 17 states (plus Washington D.C.) are sorely lacking in this area. With millions of acres and thousands of assets in government portfolios, officials should take steps to identify what they own, determine whether government or private ownership is most effective for that asset, and streamline the efficient transfer of all unneeded real property.

  
  
  

• Hope and Experience: Election Reform through the Lens of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project

  By John C. Fortier, Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas Mann, American Enterprise Institute
  
  Studies, 07/01/2010
  

  The American electoral system is in many respects an outlier among the world’s democracies. The indirect election of its president through the casting of electoral votes by the states, with no federal constitutional standing for the popular vote, is perhaps the most peculiar. Another is the extraordinary range and frequency of elections, matched only by Switzerland’s system. In the realm of election administration, two characteristics stand out: the highly decentralized nature of the system and the oversight and control of the election system by partisan elected officials.

  
  
  

• Statehood for Puerto Rico and the Potential Fiscal Impact of Official Bilingualism for the United States

  By Don Soifer, Lexington Institute
  
  Studies, 06/22/2010
  

  Reconciling language policies between Puerto Rico and the United States would raise a host of policy concerns for both jurisdictions. For the United States, which has no official language designation currently, movement toward a Canadian system of official bilingualism would become a policy possibility. What would be the potential costs and implications? Through a series of calculations and estimates, it is projected at a total cost of $25.661 billion, or $85 per American.

  
  
  
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Government Reform Features

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• Brooke Rollins: The Texas Public Policy Foundation Fights for State Sovereignty

  By The Insider
  
  April 19, 2010
  

  The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a major shaper of public policy in a state that has become increasingly important in providing an alternative to the high-taxing, high-spending models of California and New York. To that end, Texas has also become increasingly resistant to the conforming influence of funds flowing...

  
  
  

• The United Nations’ Troubling Record of Politically Driven Data Manipulation

  By Brett Schaefer
  
  March 01, 2010
  

  One of the most important, if unheralded, tasks performed by the United Nations is the gathering, standardizing, and publishing of statistics on a broad variety of issues and subjects. This data is used by academics, experts, and policymakers from around the globe to ascertain and assess the extent and seriousness...

  
  
  

• Scientific Misconduct: The Manipulation of Evidence for Political Advocacy in Health Care and Climate Policy

  By George Avery
  
  March 01, 2010
  

  In his book The Problem of Knowledge, A. J. Ayer argues that the scientific approach to knowledge is valuable to the extent that “one does not merely insist that factual inferences from one level to another are legitimate but seriously tries to meet arguments that show that they are not.”...

  
  
  

• Mandate for Leadership: Introduction

  By Stuart M. Butler and Larry M. Wortzel
  
  January 20, 2005
  

       George W. Bush's re-election, with his allies widening their control of Congress, was an emphatic mandate for an agenda during the next four years that is based solidly on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. In many respects, the...

  
  
  

• The Coming Crisis: How Government Dependency Threatens America's Freedom

  By Jim DeMint
  
  December 01, 2001
  

  By the next election, the majority of Americans will be dependent on the federal government for their health care, education, income, or retirement - at the same time the number of taxpayers paying for these benefits is rapidly shrinking. How can any free nation survive when a majority of its...

  
  
  

• Clear Lessons from a Cloudy Election

  By Edwin J. Feulner
  
  January 01, 2001
  

  With all the debate over "chads," butterfly ballots and sunlight tests, many Americans seem ready to dismiss the 2000 Election as a new low point in American politics. That’s too bad, because despite the division among voters, an astounding story unfolded in this election cycle, and many positive developments can be...