IPA 2018 - Indian Journal of Public Administration: Special Issue on Independent Regulatory Authorities (IRAs) in Indian and/or Comparative Perspective(s)

Special Issue on Independent Regulatory Authorities (IRAs) in Indian and/or Comparative Perspective(s)
(Volume 64, No 3, July-September 2018)
IRAs are agencies of modern democratic governments, parts of the executive wings with a certain degree of statutory or constitutional autonomy, reporting to the legislature. Like the general executive, they are accountable to the legislature and subject to judicial review. Examples in the Indian context are the Election Commission of India, Union and State Public Service Commissions, the Reserve Bank of India, the Bar Council of India, the Cmptroller and Auditor General of India, the Medical Council of India (proposed to be amended as the Medical Commission of India), various such agencies in the educational sector, Securities and Exchange Board of India, Competition Commission of India, Central and State Electricity Regulatory Commissions , Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, Real Estate Regulatory Authorities in each State, and similar regulatory authorities being contemplated in various other sectors of Central and State economies and activities.
Why IRAs? The purpose could the desire to temper majoritarian democracy by liberalism, republicanism, constitutionalism, and federalism as in the case of the Constitution of the USA 1787) whose theory was classically explicated in The Federalist (1787) by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. The move towards IRAs may also be prompted by the desire to contain conflict of interest, functional and fiscal overload and dysfunctionalities in the government as it happened in the wake of the crisis of the welfare state and collapse of communism and state capitalism between 1970s to 1980s and the onset of globalisation with a rush and the rise of the neoliberal state. The IRAs became imperative in the context of the transition from government to governance and the quest of mutual autonomies of the state, the civil society, and the market, and the challenge to ensure accountable , transparent, efficient, and clean network governance and non-partisan administration and management of economic production, social reproduction, and ecological preservation. As the east Asian financial crisis of 1990s and the Great Economic Recession in North America and Europe and Japan in 2007-2009 and after suggest the neoliberal state is not a panacea for all the ills of economic production, social reproduction, and environmental and ecological destruction it came forward to resolve in the trail of the great industrial and post-industrial transformations.
Papers are invited in 3000 to 5000 words with Abstracts in 250 words and 4 to 5 Keywords typed in double space with brief citations embedded in the text and Notes and/or full References at the end by 31 March 2018 to the Editor at ijpa2012-AT-gmail.com