Kicking the Bastards Out?

03 November 2006

Professor Jane Mansbridge

Advocates of reform want to subject their representatives to constant scrutiny, allowing voters to judge every word spoken, coalition joined, and compromise approved. Professor Jane Mansbridge believes that this approach to reform is misguided. She argues that a better strategy is to allow more discretion in office and concentrate on three goals: one, select better legislators to begin with; two, communicate with both legislators and bureaucrats in settings where they have a strong incentive to listen; and three, kick out the legislators who don’t do their job well.

This is the annual John Passmore Lecture, presented by the Social and Political Theory Program, Research School of Social Science, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.

John Passmore was Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, from 1959 to 1979. The Passmore Lecture has been held annually in his honour since 2000.

Broad Topics: Arts and Social Sciences

Sub-topics: Policy & Political Science

Areas: ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Jane Mansbridge is the Adams Professor at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In Beyond Adversary Democracy she showed why marginalised people often fail to participate, even in 'open door' participatory democracies. That book also showed what happens when democracies are based on common interests. In Why We Lost the ERA she analysed the reasons why social movement activists do not listen to the opposition. She has also edited Beyond Self-Interest, Feminism (with Susan Moller Okin), and Oppositional Consciousness (with Aldon Morris). She is currently writing Everyday Feminism, a book on the 'everydayactivism' of ordinary people, as well as articles on the importance of self-interest in deliberative democracy and the 'selection model' of political representatives.

Part of the 2006 Toyota-ANU Public Lecture Series