Beyond Camelot (ebook)

Argumento de Beyond Camelot (ebook)

This book argues that many of the basic concepts that we use to describe and analyze our governmental system are out of date. Developed in large part during the Middle Ages, they fail to confront the administrative character of modern government.

These concepts, which include power, discretion, democracy, legitimacy, law, rights, and property, bear the indelible imprint of this bygone era's attitudes, and Arthurian fantasies, about governance. As a result, they fail to provide us with the tools we need to understand, critique, and improve the government we actually possess.

Beyond Camelot explains the causes and character of this failure, and then proposes a new conceptual framework, drawn from management science and engineering, which describes our administrative government more accurately, and identifies its weaknesses instead of merely bemoaning its modernity.

This book's proposed framework envisions government as a network of connected units that are authorized by superior units and that supervise subordinate ones. Instead of using inherited, emotion-laden concepts like democracy and legitimacy to describe the relationship between these units and private citizens, it directs attention to the particular interactions between these units and the citizenry, and to the mechanisms by which government obtains its citizens' compliance. Instead of speaking about law and legal rights, it proposes that we address the way that the modern state formulates policy and secures its implementation. Instead of perpetuating outdated ideas that we no longer really believe about the sanctity of private property, it suggests that we focus on the way that resources are allocated in order to establish markets as our means of regulation. Highly readable, Beyond Camelot offers an insightful and provocative discussion of how we must transform our understanding of government to keep pace with the transformation that government itself has undergone.

"[A] fascinating and provocative book. . . . Rubin is to be congratulated. Beyond Camelot is an extraordinary effort, brilliant in places; it is certain to provoke a great deal of thought and suggest numerous avenues of future research."--Howard Schweber, Journal of Politics

"Anyone who desires to understand modern government should read Beyond Camelot."--Brian Z. Tamanaha, Law and Politics Book Review0Acknowledgments vii

Chapter One: Introduction 1
The Thesis 1
The Method 12
The Administrative State 22

PART I: THE STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT 37

Chapter Two: From Branches to Networks 39
The Government as Body and Branches 39
The Modern Image of a Network 48
Applying the Network Model 56
Chapter Three: From Power and Discretion to Authorization and Supervision 74
Power and Discretion 74
Authorization and Supervision 91
The Microanalysis of Intra-Governmental Relations 96
Chapter Four: From Democracy to an Interactive Republic 110
The Pre-Modern Concept of Democracy 110
Electoral Interaction 120
Administrative Interaction 131
Chapter Five: From Legitimacy to Compliance 144
The Pre-Modern Concept of Legitimacy 144
The Compliance Model 160
The Large-Scale Application of the Compliance Model 171
Conclusion to Part I 179

PART II: LEGAL OPERATIONS 189
Chapter Six: From Law to Policy and Implementation 191
Law and Regularity 191
Policy and Implementation 203
The Morality of Policy and Implementation 214
Chapter Seven: From Legal Rights to Causes of Action 227
The Concept of Legal Rights 227
Causes of Action 237
Causes of Action v. Legal Rights 246
Chapter Eight: From Human Rights to Moral Demands on Government 260
Natural Rights and Human Rights 260
The Concept of Moral Demands on Government 268
The Content of Moral Demands on Government 287
Chapter Nine: From Property to Market-Generating Allocations 296
Property as Control 296
Market-Generating Allocations 308
The Protection of Individual Interests 323
Conclusion to Part II 330

Notes 341
Author Index 455
Subject Index 459