The Reoccurring Concept Of The Principal Agent Problem

In his book Hardball, Chris Matthews discusses the useful strategies for getting ahead in politics that he observed during his time working in Washington, D.C. He breaks up his observations into chapters with different lessons. Three of the most important lessons are “It's Not Who You Know; It's Who You Get to Know,” (Chapter 1) “All Politics is Local,” (Chapter 2) and “Dance With the One That Brung Ya.” (Chapter 4). These chapters illustrate how important making and keeping connections and relationships is in Washington. The “game of politics” is played by using these relationships to gain favors, votes, support, etc. According to Matthews, the people who get ahead are the ones who make and keep these important connections and relationships with other politicians and the public.

The theory of political control of bureaucracy is about whether appointed administrative employees should have flexibility and discretion to run day-to-day government operations, or whether government activities should be strictly controlled through a well-defined laws and policies implemented by elected officials (Fredrickson & Smith, 2003). Various models are used to represent differing degrees of control exercised by elected officials and appointed bureaucratic employees, and how much impute each group has into the formation and execution of policy (Fredrickson & Smith, 2003). Under the Theory of Bureaucratic Capture and Client Responsiveness bureaucracies

The term gerrymandering refers to the practice of altering voting districts in order to achieve electoral results favorable to one person or party, usually the incumbent politician or party creating the new voting regions.1 This term, dating back to 1812, is an established method for incumbent politicians to improve their heresthetical “defense,” by manipulating the dimensions of the political landscape.2 This tactic is extremely common in the United States and a prime example of politicians acting as manipulators. This essay will argue that politicians are manipulators, as evidenced by the gerrymandering of voting districts to improve odds of maintaining power, and opposition attempts to counteract this electoral

Voters are often rewarded with patronage jobs. However, patronage can result in poorer service to the

Singer’s premise that educated and ethical citizens are the solution to a repressive government is a strong, yet controversial claim. However, I believe that the reality of this statement relies on human nature, something that can be unpredictable. Many governments have covered up their actions in order to blind the public to the corruption and evil that has taken part in, as well as to retain their power over their people. Singer argues that a

The political game is a dog eat dog world, there are several factors that determined weather a politician will be successful or not. Having alliances, enemies, and deals is all part of it. In the book “Hardball: How Politics is Played” written by Chris Mathews explains what it takes to get ahead in politics and how to avoid disasters techniques previously used by others.

Goldman believes that the solution to a fundamentally corrupt system is education. The struggle must not be left up to electoral politics, being that “correct ideas must precede correct actions.”8 She argues that when people are educated properly and arrive at a knowledge of the true principles of governing unanimous social relations, they will put them into practice by themselves without the ballot

The authors of this book are Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein. Mann is the senior fellow in Governance Studies and W. Averell Harriman Chair at The Brookings Institution. He has worked as the director of the American Political Science Association. As for Ornstein, he is a political scientist that is the resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He also writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call.

“In a meritocratic democracy, people are selected for positions based on their personal merit, independent of their group memberships, affiliations, wealth, and connections. This is very far from the situation in the 21st century, including in the United States and other Western societies where personal merit is only one of many factors, and often not the most important one, determining the rise of people in the status hierarchy.” (Moghaddam) Currently, the American government does not show meritocracy because there are politicians who raise money for their campaigns using corrupt methods. As a result, these officials are not qualified for the job because they do not truly represent the issues that concern regular citizens. A shift towards

For five years, Mr. Larry Lavender served as the chief of staff for Representative Spencer Bachus on the House Financial Services Committee. In 2012, Lavender was recruited by a law firm representing JPMorgan, a banking and financial institution, and left the committee. Although this move disbanded his professional link to Bachus, the two still maintained a personal relationship, and Lavender also communicated with former colleagues without seeking “any official favors or actions” (Revolving Door). Because of the relationship between Lavender and Bachus and through efforts made behind the scenes, JPMorgan avoided testifying against one of their clients in the House of Representatives. This sequence of events illustrates what is referred to as the “revolving door”, which is a system that “shuffles former federal employees into jobs as lobbyists, consultants and strategists” . In this system, former public office holders become lobbyists because they already have relationships with people they have worked with or for in the past. Within the practice, there has been evidence of corruption through the manipulation of bans and the undermining use of professional interactions. The spinning of the revolving door prompts government officials to make laws that “reflect the preferences of ‘industry lobbies’ rather than the ‘will of the people’” As the revolving door continues to spin more

Over the course of history, politicians have perpetually remain associated with the acts of greed, lying, and mischief. Portrayed in films, sung about and even written in novels. Even with the governments stern conditioning to keep the public believing in everyone remaining equal and treated fairly in court, facts presented over time have proven to show that politicians possess an upper hand. Elected officials and government workers are leading lives that one would call above the average citizen. Overlooking crime at the right moment if known to be an employee of high status. Many serious cases get a simple sentence, while everyday Americans can face far worse. The tangible get out of jail free card comes with a lifetime supply of justifications

One of the most egregious examples of the tension between federal employment discrimination law and psychological science is the federal common law doctrine known as the same-actor inference. When originally elaborated by the Fourth Circuit in Proud v. Stone, the same-actor doctrine applied only when an “employee was hired and fired by the same person within a relatively short time span.” In the two decades since, the doctrine has widened and broadened in scope. It now subsumes many employment contexts well beyond hiring and firing, to scenarios in which the “same person” entails different groups of decision makers, and the “short time span” has been elastically extended over seven years. Per the same-actor doctrine, when a supervisor first

Griffiths also uses two, deeply contrasting ideas to highlight his personal political or social stance, as the characters of Eddie Waters and the agent, Challenor, are juxtaposed to one another. Water’s idea that one should “work through laughter, not for it”, implies a deep social purpose to comedy, whereas Challenor tells the comedians not “to be deep…we’re servants that’s all. They demand, we supply”. The fact that this play itself is a means of utilising comedy to convey deeper ideas, means the audience are more likely to vie with Waters, since he is encouraging the former ideal. The audience can see this as Griffith’s undying “honest belief in human perfectibility” coming through, as Chanellor becomes similar to a character in one of

In the case that politicians do not live up to the ideals and criteria they were chosen for, a merit of democracy is that it allows the citizenry to punish these officials – not necessarily through extreme forms like impeachment, but perhaps by simply electing someone else in the forthcoming election. While, as previously addressed, not all participants in the election process vote based on truthful information, some citizens do. It must be remembered that not only those in authority

Even if agents mobilize around CVE, implementation still may not occur. After the mobilization stage, agents need to determine what the actual programs will encompass and what service providers will implement these programs. I argue that implementation may fail to occur due to coordination problems that arise within the planning stage based on the way decisions are made. For implementation purposes, the structure of the principal-multi-agent relationship matters.