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Matters Of Preference: Tracing The Line Between Citizens, Democratic States, And International Law, Mark A. Chinen
Matters Of Preference: Tracing The Line Between Citizens, Democratic States, And International Law, Mark A. Chinen
Mark A. Chinen
In this Article, we assess the role the aggregation of citizen preferences into the foreign policy choices of a democratic country might play in the legitimization of international law. After addressing some of the theoretical and empirical issues associated with such an approach, we use an anticipated reaction model developed by Michael Bailey to show that even in large democracies there are mechanisms through which citizen preferences can be and are reflected in the policy choices of their representatives. Incumbents and candidates for office take policy positions in hopes of maximizing their future election chances. Although policymakers each have their …
Secrecy And Democratic Decisions, Mark A. Chinen
Secrecy And Democratic Decisions, Mark A. Chinen
Mark A. Chinen
Secrecy to protect intelligence sources and methods appears often in the nation’s discourse about controversial national security matters. Often it is asked whether such secrecy is consistent with the nation’s democratic principles and processes. I argue such principles and processes provide a framework through which we try to answer questions about secrecy and indeed legitimate them, but are often too broad to provide definitive guidance in specific cases. At the same time, the sources and methods argument itself is overbroad because of the nature of the sources and methods themselves; the tentative nature of intelligence assessments derived from those sources …