Alasdair S. Roberts

Oct 15

Winnipeg Free Press: The attack on openness

I”ve published an oped in the Winnipeg Free Press on the pushback against governmental openness. “Six years have passed since the financial collapse of 2008. We liberated global financial markets to rule themselves, and they let us down. Now we are witnessing one of the perverse results of this collapse: a boom in complaints about the weaknesses of democracy, and the dangers of too much governmental openness.” Read the oped in the Winnipeg Free Press. The oped has also been republished by freedominfo.org.

I’ll be giving a lecture on government openess next week in Mexico City, at the Accountability Network’s international seminar on accountability and corruption control. The working text for my address can be downloaded from SSRN.

Oct 12

Talk at Brown University’s Taubman Center

On October 16, I’ll be giving a talk based on my book The Logic of Discipline at Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. Details here.

Oct 8

Chapter in volume on “politics of fiscal squeeze”

When The Party’s Over: The Politics of Fiscal Squeeze in Perspective, has just been published by Oxford University Press. The volume is edited by Christopher Hood, David Heald, and Rozana Himaz. I’ve contributed a chapter, “Managing Fiscal Squeeze After the United States’ Panic of 1837.” Read the British Academy news release.

Sep 18

CIDE to publish Spanish language edition of Logic of Discipline

Honored that the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) will publish a Spanish language edition of “The Logic of Discipline” next year.

Sep 17

Fourth Global Conference on Transparency Research

I’m pleased to be serving on the Advisory Committee for the Fourth Global Conference on Transparency Research to be held at the Universita della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, June 4-6, 2015. Details here.

Sep 11

AFGD to be published in Chinese

SDX Publishing has signed an agreement with Cornell University Press to publish a Chinese translation of America’s First Great Depression in April 2015.

Sep 10

Paper on fiscal rules for Maurer School symposium

I’ll be presenting this paper, No Simple Fix: Fiscal Rules and the Politics of Austerity, at the annual symposium of the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies on September 11. The symposium will be held at the Indiana Maurer School of Law. More about the journal.

Aug 25

17 Comments

America in decay: Is Fukuyama right?

Update July 2016: Readers of this post might also be interested in my new book, Four Crises of American Democracy. Details here.

One of the odd consequences of the global financial crisis — an instance of massive market failure — has been a boom in literature about the defects of contemporary democracy. I’ve recently written reviews of several books in this genre. In the new issue of Foreign Affairs, the distinguished political scientist Francis Fukuyama joins in the fray. America, says Fukuyama, is in the process of “political decay.” Certainly, this is not the best of times for American democracy. But there are five reasons why we should take Fukuyama’s assessment with a grain of salt. Read more

Aug 22

n+1 magazine reviews End of Protest and Logic of Discipline

The Fall 2014 issue of n+1 magazine includes a review essay by Jamie Martin discussing The End of Protest and The Logic of Discipline. “The 2008 crash and its aftermath have amounted, as the legal scholar Alasdair Roberts argues in The End of Protest, to little more than a ‘quiet crisis.'” Read the review.