Who’s Watching? Political Monitoring, Collective Action

As part of an ongoing research project (Lancaster, 2014, 2015), this talk emphasizes the concept of political monitoring in the study of governing institutions.  Building on the psychological notion that people change their behavior if someone is watching them or they think someone is, the argument will be advanced that the choice of how political monitoring is institutionalized, as a necessary element in the process of overcoming collective action problems in the provision of public goods, reflects choices in state-building, institutional engineering, and public policy.  A wide range of examples will illustrate how constitutionally-based structures, operational rules, and policy design might incorporate political monitoring in order to produce specific outcomes normatively held as desirable.  

Co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science, Global Studies, and Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars