Alasdair S. Roberts

Aug 21

Wilson Quarterly revamps article on WikiLeaks

Wilson Quarterly has done a very nice redesign of my 2011 article, “The WikiLeaks Illusion.” Read the article.

Aug 11

ABA panel on national security surveillance after Snowden

I participated on a panel on “national security surveillance after Snowden” at the ABA annual meeting in Boston on June 8. The panel was organized by the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security. Learn more about the panel. Here is an ABA write-up of the session. I drew mainly on the background notes for my talks on transparency in New Zealand and Australia in May.

Aug 8

Logic of Discipline discussed in The Nation

In the June 2 issue of The Nation, Thomas Meaney and Yascha Mounk write an essay on the state of democracy that discusses The Logic of Discipline and several other books. “There are three principal reasons for democracy’s deepening crisis of legitimacy,” write Meaney and Mounk. “The first is rooted in what Alasdair Roberts has called the ‘logic of discipline,’ which refers to the strictures that the draftsmen of global capitalism introduced into the blueprints of national governments during the past three decades.” Read the essay.

Jul 31

Rappaport Center annual report

Here is the last annual report for the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Service, completed in May 2014. Unfortunately Suffolk University closed the Center on July 31, 2014, for financial reasons. We are proud of the Center’s accomplishments since its establishment in 2007. Some personnel details have been redacted from this version of the report.

Jul 30

Public Sector publishes excerpts from lecture

Public Sector, the magazine of New Zealand’s Institute of Public Administration, has published excerpts from my May lecture on Technocrats or populists: Who gained influence during the Global Financial Crisis? Read the article.

Jul 22

Review of “Tocqueville’s Nightmare: The Administrative State Emerges in America, 1900-1940”

I’ve just finished a review of “Tocqueville’s Nightmare: The Administrative State Emerges in America, 1900-1940,” by Daniel Ernst. The review is forthcoming in Public Administration Review. Read the review.

Jul 10

How railroads changed American government

My review of The Great Railroad Revolution by Christian Wolmar has just been published on Early View for Public Administration Review. I focus on the way in which this technological shock shaped American government. “The current fashion is to emphasize the ways in which ideology and institutional inertia constrain the governmental response to such shocks. But Wolmar tells a different story. In the long run, The Great Railroad Revolution suggests, the governmental response to this innovation was pragmatic, hard-headed, and flexible.” A draft of the review is also posted on SSRN.