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Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

In comparison to other countries, power generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is poor. The demand for power has surged in recent times and continues to increase at a fast rate. The public–private partnership (PPP) model has been identified as an option to address the challenges in the power sector. The purpose of this research paper is to critically explore the reasons for entering into PPP power projects in Ghana by the public and private parties.

Questionnaires were used to elicit responses from respondents using a two-round Delphi survey. From 60 respondents contacted in round one, 48 responses were obtained, and these 48 respondents further took part in round two. Mean score ranking was used to rank the reasons for entering into PPP power projects, while analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run to test significant difference in perceptions among the respondents.

From round 2 of the Delphi survey, the significant reasons for public sector entering into PPP power projects were as follows: achieving improved value for money, access to additional capital, increased certainty of projects and greater efficiency of project delivery services. For private sector, most significant reasons were as follows: obtaining of investment support, improvement in private sector’s international image and synergy with public sector. From ANOVA analysis, there were significant different perceptions among some of factors on the respondent profile variables and the reasons for entering into PPP power projects, while other factors did not have significant different perception.

Significant reasons for both public and private sectors identified would be incorporated by the government when PPP policy guidelines and laws are reviewed. This will aid in the effective implementation of PPP for power projects.

Rights constitute a familiar feature of the liberal discourse of judging. This chapter seeks to recast this discourse away from the language of rights by considering two cases where liberals often invoke it: abortion and same-sex marriage. I argue that the presence of rights in American constitutional discourse exacerbates the counter-majoritarian nature of judicial review. We do better to recast the language of judging from an emphasis on protecting rights to an emphasis on making sure that the demos acts on publicly justifiable reasons. In doing so, I proffer a novel analysis of liberal theory's extant commitment to public reason, one that conceptualizes public reason as representing the scope of state power.

Post-Enlightenment liberalism faces a paradox: The liberal principle of legitimacy demands states justify their constitutional order in terms citizens can accept, but there is no uncontroversial comprehensive conception of justice on which to form the requisite consensus. Rawls resolves the paradox by embracing a pragmatism that abandons the concept of truth in the political forum to secure consensus and legitimacy. Philosophers have challenged the idea of justice without truth as incoherent, and social critics have attacked it as naïve. This chapter defends Rawls’s pragmatism against such critics and argues that the future of liberal constitutionalism may depend on its success.

John Rawls’ theory of justice has had a direct impact on public administration, especially work in new public administration. His theory has influenced the obligations of public administrators, the scope of citizen participation in public administration, and the equitable distribution of public services. It has also contributed to the development of administrative ethics. In addition, it suggests ways in which a mediating model of public reason might be developed for public administrators working on deeply divisive social and economic issues.

Much of the philosophical debate between religionists and secularists has focused on whether to permit people to invoke publicly religious arguments to justify their position on laws and policies. There is a question related to this debate whose answer is often regarded by both liberals and religionists as intuitive and straightfoward: May religionists offer secular justifications in the public square to support or oppose laws and policies without sincerely accepting such reasons as consistent with their respective religion? Some religionists and especially some prominent liberals tend to answer in the negative, disdaining the thought of embracing an alternative that seems duplicitious. I argue that such negative responses tend to neglect the value of insincerity in public justifications.

The purpose of this paper is to present, on the one hand, the findings of a survey conducted during 2012 in Iceland and, on the other hand, the results of interviews held in 2015 concerning why it was felt that the authorities withheld information either about subjects of general public interest or about public expenditures.

A survey questionnaire was sent in March 2012 to almost 2,000 Icelanders randomly selected from the National Registry. The response rate was almost 67 per cent. As to the interviews held in 2015, these were with individuals who were known to understand well the government’s actions, both as to provision of information to the public and the opposite, suppression of information. The interviewees were chosen purposively. The survey was modelled on other research and resources concerning open public information and other research that had examined trust towards public authorities and the influence of freedom of information acts on government information practices.

The research revealed that both participants in the questionnaire survey and the six interviewees in the later study felt that information was kept secret for a variety of reasons. Most felt that information was kept under wraps by the government, both about subjects of general public interest or about public expenditures, and that both transparency and traceability were less than sufficient in the public administration of Iceland.

The results could be of value to public authorities who want to improve the provision of information and practices according to the freedom of information act. They could also bring diverse and valuable opportunities to the profession of records managers as to documentation and registration, as well as others who practice information management.

The survey adds valuable information and fulfils a need for a better understanding of why public authorities suppress the provision of information in Iceland. Although the research cited was limited to Iceland, the findings may be of value also to public authorities and researchers in the Western World, Australia and New Zealand to give a few examples where the culture and the practice of government may not be that different, as well as in other countries. The two studies can, therefore, lay the foundation for further research into the field.

Intellectual humility and religious conviction are often posed as antagonistic binaries; the former associated with science, reason, inclusive universality, and liberal secularism, the latter with superstition, dogma, exclusive particularity, and rigid traditionalism. Despite popular images of white American evangelicals as the embodied antithesis of intellectual humility, responsiveness to facts, and openness to the other, this article demonstrates how evangelicals can and do practice intellectual humility in public life while simultaneously holding fast to particularistic religious convictions. Drawing on textual analysis and multi-site ethnographic data, it demonstrates how observed evangelical practices of transposable and segmented reflexivity map onto pluralist, domain-specific conceptualizations of intellectual humility in the philosophical and psychological literature. It further argues that the effective practice of intellectual humility in the interests of ethical democracy does not require religious actors to abandon particularistic religious reasons for universal secular ones. Rather, particularistic religious convictions can motivate effective practices of intellectual humility and thereby support democratic pluralism, inclusivity, and solidarity across difference. More broadly, it aims to challenge, or at least complicate, the widespread notion that increasing strength of religious conviction always moves in lockstep with increasing dogmatism, tribalism, and intellectual unreasonableness.

How ought religion and democratic politics relate to each other in a spirit of intellectual humility? This chapter suggests four potential understandings of the relationship: hindrance, resource, evaluation, and source. Each of these understandings seems to take for granted a form of Enlightenment rationality (whether in support or opposition), and the final section of the chapter develops a synthesis of Durkheim and Dewey to consider a different way through which religion and deliberative democracy can coexist, one more sensitive to the role of emotion, ritual, and contingency and thereby more open to the problem of epistemic arrogance and the necessity for intellectual humility.

The purpose of this paper is to criticise ad hoc approaches to ethics in research and development in technology as descriptive and non‐ethical, and based upon a narrow conception of rationality.

The approach deploys a theory of normativity that can incorporate values and a broad conception of rationality, in order to account for the relevance of issues for the addressees of normative injunctions.

A normative approach is possible and required in order to implement ethics in research and development in technology.

The approach draws together themes from current alternative approaches that each fail to deploy the full resources of the normative approach, and so fail to fully account for ethics. This approach identifies and moves beyond present limited approaches.