What is Good Government? The Philosophy of Office, Institutions, and Administration

What is good government? The concept of 'good government' aims to set an ideal for how governments - and their constituent agents - should act, be structured, and held accountable. It promises a fundamental norm to guide the design of its offices and institutions and the administrative state. It is a concept central to contemporary development practice, public administration, and political science, but has largely been neglected in contemporary political philosophy. This, therefore, is the first edited volume specifically dedicated to the philosophy of good government. Bringing together some of today's foremost political philosophers, it explores the complex relationship between good government and other concepts fundamental to politics: justice, legitimacy, and the common good. Placing in conversation classical, modern, and contemporary perspectives, this volume explores themes such as the role of virtue, education, and ritual in governance; political realism and the role of accountability institutions; the virtues and vices of the administrative state; official discretion and public control of state institutions; public trust and the fiduciary conception of public office; and the importance of explanation, reasonableness, and representation in administrative decision-making.

1 - Guarding the Guardians: Plato and Constitutionalism for the Good of the Ruled
2 - Confucian Perspectives on Good Governance and Regime Type: Historical Choices and Their Contemporary Legacy
3 - Democracy and the Operational Integrity of Government
4 - Office Accountability: The Open Texture of Public Institutional Normativity
5 - The Case for Administrative Co-Determination
6 - Relational Discretion and Good Governance
7 - State, Republic, and Good Government
8 - Good Self-Governance
9 - The Administrative State, Inside Out
10 - Collective Rights and the Obligations of Good Government
11 - Fiduciary Governance: Power Without Despotism
12 - Political Trust, Public Justification, and Judicial Office
13 - Explanation and Power: Governing Well with Algorithms
14 - Reasonableness as a Quality of Good Government
15 - Making Government Work: The Recursivity Response

Nikolas Kirby is Reader in Politics and International Relations at the University of Glasgow. He was previously Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, and before that Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Director of the Building Integrity Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. His work has been published in journals including Philosophy and Public Affairs, Journal of Politics, and British Journal of Political Science, and is the co-editor, with Giacomo Floris, of How Can We Be Equals? (OUP, 2024).