Would web surveillance of protection work?

In our paper for the Evenett and Baldwin book on 'murky protectionism', Andrew Stoler and I outline a surveillance mechanism for the G20 that we think will dissuade governments from making regulations that would harm world trade (further, see the graph at left.)

The mechanism we propose has not been used previously to expose protectionism but it is certainly in use in other contexts to bring policies under the spotlight of public scrutiny.

For example, I referred a couple of weeks ago to recovery.gov which the Obama administration is using to report on 'stimulus' spending. Now there's an open surveillance website that is tracking and examining projects that are candidates for some of the 'pork'

"StimulusWatch.org was built to help the new administration keep its pledge to invest stimulus money smartly, and to hold public officials to account for the taxpayer money they spend. We do this by allowing you, citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed 'shovel-ready' projects in your city, to find, discuss and rate those projects." Extract from Stimulus Watch: Keeping an Eye on Economic Recovery Spending

 Read more…

Earlier Entries

You'll find a complete list of entries here. You could also search by keywords.