What is Personnel Administration ?
Employees form the core and the backbone of any organization and public organizations are no different. According to authors William Mosher and J. Donald Kingsley, the key to better governance lies in effective personnel management. For effective personnel administration there are certain criteria that need to be fulfilled like: Highly qualified workforce of civil servants […]
The COSO Framework for Internal Control
Internal frauds are a big part of the operational risk faced by any organization. This is truer of multinational companies who have business interests in various countries across the globe. This is because there are thousands of people in important positions making business decisions on behalf of the company. Hence, ensuring that all these employees […]
Robert A Cooke Model of Organization Culture
Individuals from different backgrounds and varied interests come together on a common platform called organization to achieve targets as well as earn bread and butter for themselves. Individuals work in unison towards a common goal. The behaviour of the employees to a large extent depends on the culture of the workplace. How people interact amongst […]
Cultural Dimensions of Leadership
Introduction Leadership in organizations is dictated and determined according to a variety of reasons and factors including personality, cultural, and country and regional aspects. Among the various factors, the cultural dimension of leadership is often not highlighted as it is taken as a given. However, with globalization and the advent of tighter integration and interconnectedness, […]
The Behavioural Approach and its application in Management field
The Behavioural Approach came into existence during early twentieth century as a response to the then much discussed about Psychoanalytic theory. Since, Psychoanalytic theory lacked scientific approach and could not be subjected to experimental techniques for making predictions. On the other hand, behaviourists reckoned that different behavioural predispositions can be explained scientifically. Behavioural approaches have […]
It is commonly understood that the political economy in any country actualizes itself through the dynamics of the three principal organs, the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Before we launch into a full-fledged discussion about the interactions between these components, it is useful to define the terms first. The executive in any nation state is that component of the system that is responsible for actualizing the decisions taken for administrative and political purposes. The government is the executive, which is tasked with implementing the decisions taken in the interests of the people.
In democracies, the party in power is part of the executive. The legislature is that arm of the system that is concerned with passing laws and acting as a representative of the people. In democracies, the legislature is very important as it is elected by the people and hence, the moral and legal right to act on their behalf. The third organ of the system is the judiciary, which acts as the arbiter of whether the executive and the legislature are acting in the interests of the nation. As can be seen from this discussion, the three arms of the nation state complement and supplement each other and the term “constitutional checks and balances” refers to the duties of these arms that are primarily to uphold the constitution.
The dynamics between the three arms of the nation state is what determines the conduct of the nation. For instance, in the United States, it is common for the legislature to act as a check on the executive and the judiciary to be the final court of appeal. In recent months, the Health Care Reform law that was ratified by the Congress and the Senate was contested legally and the Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional. Similarly, in the other large democracy, India, the three arms of the system often act to uphold the interests of the nation. However, in recent years, the judiciary in India has often taken upon itself the task that the executive must perform and this has been commented upon by many experts who interpreted this as a failure of the executive and the legislature.
In other words, the key aspect here is that each of the components of the political economy of the nation state has to do their assigned work and not impinge on each other’s territory. Of course, it can be argued that in the absence of either the legislature or the executive performing their duties, the judiciary has to step in as otherwise there can be chaos in the country.
As mentioned earlier, the arms of the nation state are all finally tasked with protecting and upholding the constitutional rights of the citizens and hence, the constitution is supreme as far as their actions are concerned. However, there have been many violations of the constitutional rights in countries around the world; the mature democracies ensure that ultimately the goal of upholding the constitution is paramount. For instance, the current turmoil in the Eurozone is because each of the member countries is interpreting the common currency union in its own way and hence, each country is unable to agree with the others. What exacerbates the situation is that because they have a common currency and they have a European Parliament as well and at the same time have individual constitutions, it becomes difficult for them to get on well with the other countries.
Finally, it is in the interest of the democracies to have each of the arms functioning well and without infringing on the duties of the other. As can be seen in the way the examples cited here all have to do with how each arm of the democracy does its job, the conclusion is that for healthy democracies to flourish, there have to be checks and balances between these three arms and at the same time they have to work together to uphold the constitution.
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What is Compassionate Capitalism and Why We Need it in These Times of Planetary Crisis ?
February 12, 2025
