Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Persuasive E-mail (Rough Draft) Towards Greater Governmental Transparency

Persuasive Email
Mr. Davis,

My name is Austin Hammer, and I am writing to you as a consequence of decreased civic engagement, as well as a lack of government transparency. At both a national and state level civic engagement is decreasing and the potential impacts could be devastating, and governmental transparency is a major factor.

Civic engagement is the cornerstone of modern democracy as well as a balance of federalism and the maintenance of a civil society. However, despite its necessity it has been decreasing over the past couple decades due to a couple of reasons. One of these is the lack of governmental transparency.

Transparency in government is an effective accountability mechanism. Based on its limited nature in the current political climate, these mechanisms have been far less  powerful. However, in many nations examples can be found where transparency spurs civic engagement, and this engagement generates more governmental as responsibility in affairs. 

States are laboratories for legislation, where if effective, policies can be transcribed into a format that is valuable at a national level. As a result of the harms and significance previously mentioned, we demand that a policy be designed where more transparency is shown in all governmental affairs, and that access to statistics and figures becomes easier for individuals to access. The benefits from a policy like this are great, and it can only benefit the economic interaction between the government and the free market.

We ask you to consider this in the next deliberation of regional political issues,

Sincerely, 
Austin Hammer

1 comment:

  1. I would first like to say that I agree with everything you stated. Also, a great phrase to use would be "political efficacy" when talking civic engagement. My problem was, though, that this was very broad. Basically you said, "Please make government more transparent." That is a very difficult thing to follow up on.

    I like who you sent this too, though. The great thing about Federalism is that it does allow for each state to test out policies that may be carried to the national government. Go State Representatives!

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