Righting Wrongs

This international comparative study of the Ombudsman institution began life in March 1994 when Philip Giddings and Roy Gregory formed the idea of producing a successor to Gerald Caiden's International Handbook of the Ombudsman [1983]. In the decade and a half since Caiden's volume was produced, there has been a considerable expansion of the number and variety of Ombudsman institutions. With the generous assistance of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences [IIAS] we were able to assemble a team of experts, containing academics and practitioners, public lawyers, political scientists and administrators, drawn from a wide range of states and reflecting many different systems, cultures and experiences. Most members of the team were able to meet at three IIAS-sponsored consultations held in Brussels in 1996, 1997 and 1998 at which we debated and refined our strategy and methodology and reflected upon our findings. From these meetings an agreed framework was drawn up for the reports to be included in this volume and those reports, together with thematic chapters on issues such as human rights and the new public management, form the heart of this book.