The increasing use of transnational standard-setting bodies to address quality uncertainties and coordination issues across the global economy raises questions about how these bodies establish and maintain their legitimacy and accountability outside the sovereignty of democratic states. Based on a discussion of the legitimacy challenge posed by global governance, we provide an overview of mechanisms by which such bodies can defend their legitimacy claims and examine the actual mechanisms used by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). While the IASB staked (...) its initial credibility on technical competence and independence, it has increasingly emphasized due process norms in its claim for support. Our analysis evaluates the IASB due process against the cultural benchmarks established by domestic standard-setters in the USA and UK and against a normative model of procedural legitimacy. These comparisons help us to understand the modifications that were made in the hope of due process adding legitimacy to accounting standard-setting beyond the state. They also reveal the broader political context of competing legitimacy criteria that confronts transnational standard-setters. (shrink)

This paper analyses the intertwinement of legal philosophy and political theory in the British intellectual framework between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with specific regard to Harold Laski's works. I will try to illustrate the transition from 19th-century utilitarianism to H. L. A. Hart and Isaiah Berlin as evolving through important debates which include Laski's contribution. I will argue that a discussion of “juridical” obligation, i.e., the conditions of legal validity, may lie implicitly in these concerns that Laski (...) and other early 20th-century British authors had about “political” obligation—viz., about the nature of the state and its claim to obedience. By approaching Laski's theories and their genealogy through a legal-philosophical perspective, I will contend that this debate about political obligation anticipates to a considerable extent some of the most renowned conceptions of obligation in 20th-century British legal theory. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es proporcionar algunas claves históricas y conceptuales para comprender la historia del socialismo británico libertarian y su relación con la concepción fiduciaria del poder político y del poder económico. Las expresiones de este socialismo no son homogéneas, convivieron con otras ideas rivales llegando en ocasiones a mezclarse con ellas; y fueron formuladas siempre como respuestas concretas ante los problemas que planteaba cada momento histórico. Desde el socialismo republicano de algunos seguidores de Robert Owen hasta los (...) desafíos que planteó la New Left, las teorías fiduciarias encontraron hueco para abrirse paso en los escritos de estos socialistas libertarian. The objective of this paper is to provide some historical and conceptual keys to understand the history of libertarian British socialism, and its relationship with the fiduciary conception of political power and economic power. The expressions of this libertarian socialism are not homogeneous, they coexisted with other rival conceptions, sometimes mixing with them. Those articulations were always formulated as concrete responses to the problems laid out by different historical moments. From the republican socialism of some Robert Owen’s followers to the challenges exposed by the New Left, fiduciary theory found room to break through in the writings of these libertarian socialists. (shrink)

Gandhi's critique of the modern state was central to his political thinking. It served as a pivotal hinge between Gandhi's anticolonialism and his theory of politics and was given striking institutional form in his vision of decentralized peasant democracy. This essay explores the origins and implications of Gandhian antistatism by situating it within a genealogy of early twentieth-century political pluralism, specifically British and Indian pluralist criticism of state sovereignty and centralization. This essay traces that critique from the imperial sociology of (...) Henry Sumner Maine, through the political theory of Harold Laski and G. D. H. Cole, to Radhakamal Mukerjee's reworking of these strands into a normative–universal model of Eastern pluralism. The essay concludes with a consideration of Gandhi's ideal of a stateless, nonviolent polity as a culmination and overturning of the pluralist tradition and as integral to his distinctive understanding of political freedom, rule, and action. (shrink)

This article is a critical analysis of the pluralist legacy in modern political discourse. The article argues that this legacy imposes conceptual constraints on empirical and normative inquiry into current forms of human belonging and interaction, a predicament most evident today in the field of global political theory. It is argued that this is due to a lasting preoccupation in the pluralist legacy with the vexed question of unity in plurality. The article analyzes the pluralist legacy historically and conceptually, by (...) tracing influential varieties of group theory in modern political discourse, from early British pluralism to mid-century interest group theory, to theories of participatory democracy and group identity, to recent theories of global politics. This review hopes to show how the question of unity in plurality has informed theorizing within as well as across different contexts, and where this leaves us today. To conclude, the article offers some suggestions as to what might be needed in order to move beyond the pluralist legacy, arguing that this would involve a wholesale change of perspectives on the question of unity in plurality, for the benefit of empirical and normative inquiry into current conditions in world politics. (shrink)

This article is a critical analysis of the pluralist legacy in modern political discourse. The article argues that this legacy imposes conceptual constraints on empirical and normative inquiry into current forms of human belonging and interaction, a predicament most evident today in the field of global political theory. It is argued that this is due to a lasting preoccupation in the pluralist legacy with the vexed question of unity in plurality. The article analyzes the pluralist legacy historically and conceptually, by (...) tracing influential varieties of group theory in modern political discourse, from early British pluralism to mid-century interest group theory, to theories of participatory democracy and group identity, to recent theories of global politics. This review hopes to show how the question of unity in plurality has informed theorizing within as well as across different contexts, and where this leaves us today. To conclude, the article offers some suggestions as to what might be needed in order to move beyond the pluralist legacy, arguing that this would involve a wholesale change of perspectives on the question of unity in plurality, for the benefit of empirical and normative inquiry into current conditions in world politics. (shrink)

This article is a critical analysis of the pluralist legacy in modern political discourse. The article argues that this legacy imposes conceptual constraints on empirical and normative inquiry into current forms of human belonging and interaction, a predicament most evident today in the field of global political theory. It is argued that this is due to a lasting preoccupation in the pluralist legacy with the vexed question of unity in plurality. The article analyzes the pluralist legacy historically and conceptually, by (...) tracing influential varieties of group theory in modern political discourse, from early British pluralism to mid-century interest group theory, to theories of participatory democracy and group identity, to recent theories of global politics. This review hopes to show how the question of unity in plurality has informed theorizing within as well as across different contexts, and where this leaves us today. To conclude, the article offers some suggestions as to what might be needed in order to move beyond the pluralist legacy, arguing that this would involve a wholesale change of perspectives on the question of unity in plurality, for the benefit of empirical and normative inquiry into current conditions in world politics. (shrink)

Authors endure considerable hardship carrying out biomedical research, from generating ideas to completing their manuscripts and submitting their findings and data to a journal. When researchers submit to journals, they entrust their findings and ideas to editors and peer reviewers who are expected to respect the confidentiality of peer review. Inherent trust in peer review is built on the ethical conduct of authors, editors and reviewers, and on the respect of this confidentiality. If such confidentiality is breached by unethical reviewers (...) who might steal or plagiarize the authors’ ideas, researchers will lose trust in peer review and may resist submitting their findings to that journal. Science loses as a result, scientific and medical advances slow down, knowledge may become scarce, and it is unlikely that increasing bias in the literature will be detected or eliminated. In such a climate, society will ultimately be deprived from scientific and medical advances. Despite a rise in documented cases of abused peer review, there is still a relative lack of qualitative and quantitative studies on reviewer-related misconduct, most likely because evidence is difficult to come by. Our paper presents an assessment of editors’ and reviewers’ responsibilities in preserving the confidentiality of manuscripts during the peer review process, in response to a 2016 case of intellectual property theft by a reviewer. Our main objectives are to propose additional measures that would offer protection of authors’ intellectual ideas from predatory reviewers, and increase researchers’ awareness of the responsible reviewing of journal articles and reporting of biomedical research. (shrink)