National security information sharing between the executive branch and Congress is examined in a recent law review article by Heidi Kitrosser. The author suggests that legitimate executive branch secrecy concerns can be addressed by limiting disclosure of certain information to selected congressional committees or other subsets of Congressional membership, which she calls “information funnels.” See “Congressional Oversight of National Security Activities: Improving Information Funnels” by Heidi Kitrosser, Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 29, 2007.
Intelligence oversight in democratic societies is the subject of a new book from the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. For more information and selected excerpts from the book, see “Democratic Control of Intelligence Services : Containing Rogue Elephants” by Hans Born and Marina Caparini, July 2007.
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.