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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Central government > Central government policies
Ministers, Minders and Mandarins brings together the leading
academics in this specialty to rigorously assess the impact and
consequences of political advisers in parliamentary democracies.
The ten contemporary and original case studies focus on issues of
tension, trust and tradition, and are written in an accessible and
engaging style. Using new empirical findings and theory from a
range of public policy canons, the authors analyze advisers'
functions, their differing levels of accountability and issues of
diversity between governments. Cases include research on the
tensions in the UK, the possible unease in Swedish government
offices and the role of trust in Greece. Established operations in
Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand are compared to relative
latecomers to advisory roles, such as Germany, the Netherlands and
Denmark. A key comparative work in the field, this book encourages
further research into the varied roles of political advisers.
Offering an excellent introduction to the complex role political
advisers play, this book will be of great interest to upper
undergraduate and postgraduate students studying political science
and policy administration, as well as researchers and scholars in
public policy. Contributors include: A. Blick, P.M. Christiansen,
B. Connaughton J. Craft, C. Eichbaum, T. Gouglas, H. Houlberg
Salomonsen, T. Hustedt, M. Maley, P. Munk Christiansen, B.
Niklasson, P. Ohberg, R. Shaw, C. van den Berg
Policy design efforts are often hampered by an inadequate
understanding of how policy tools and actions promote effective
policies. This book addresses this gap by proposing a causal theory
of the linkages between policy actions and policy effects. Adopting
a mechanistic perspective, it identifies the causal processes that
activate policy effects and help achieve policy goals. Bringing
together established and emerging scholars in the field, Making
Policies Work introduces new concepts of first- and second- order
policy mechanisms developed from epistemological and theoretical
perspectives, and considers how they can be activated through
design. Theoretical concepts are explored through empirical cases
from different policy arenas and contemporary policy issues such as
partnerships in healthcare, food waste prevention, retirement
savings, EU regulations and public sector reform. Graduate students
in public policy, public administration and political science will
find the powerful analytical tools offered in this book useful in
exploring the theoretical elements of effective policy design.
Policymakers and practitioners in governmental and non-governmental
organisations interested in the practical applications will also
benefit from reading this timely book. Contributors include: S.
Busetti, G. Capano, M.E. Compton, B. Dente, C.A. Dunlop, M.T.
Galanti, S. Giest, M. Guidi, M. Howlett, E. Lindquist, E. Ongaro,
C.M. Radaelli, M. Ramesh, P. 't Hart, A. Virani, R.K. Weaver, A.
Wellstead
Providing context-specific regional and national perspectives, this
novel Handbook sets out to disentangle the considerable
intellectual ambiguities that surround Asian public administration
and Asia's diverse applications of Western administrative models.
Building a holistic understanding of public administration systems
across East, Southeast and South Asia, chapters explore the various
historical formations, contemporary changes, and impacts of local
contexts. It also covers social accountability, performance and
human resource management, and the role of local governments. An
international range of leading scholars track the gradual embrace
of market-driven reforms in Asian public policy and administration,
including privatisation, agencification, outcome-based performance,
and customer choice. With its cross-regional and cross-national
comparisons finding divergences in these reforms, the Handbook's
most significant revelation highlights the impacts of national
political contexts and actors on bureaucracy. Illustrating a clear
overarching picture of the divergences in Asian public
administration, the comparative focus of this Handbook will prove
invaluable to students and scholars of Asian politics, public
policy and administration. It will also be a useful point of
reference to Asian policy makers and bureaucrats dealing with
national administrative reforms who are looking to innovate the
public sector.
The existence of health inequities across racial, ethnic, gender,
and class lines in the United States has been well documented. Less
well understood have been the attempts of major institutions,
health programs, and other public policy domains to eliminate these
inequities. This issue, a collaboration with the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research
Program, brings together respected historians, political
scientists, economists, sociologists, and legal scholars to focus
on the politics and challenges of achieving health equity in the
United States. Articles in this issue address the historical,
legal, and political contexts of health equity in the United
States. Contributors examine the role of the courts in shaping
health equity; document the importance of political discourse in
framing health equity and establishing agendas for action; look
closely at particular policies to reveal current challenges and the
potential to achieve health equity in the future; and examine
policies in both health and nonhealth domains, including state
Medicaid programs, the use of mobile technology, and education and
immigration policies. The issue concludes with a commentary on the
future of health equity under the Trump administration and an
analysis of how an ACA repeal would impact health equity.
Contributors. Alan B. Cohen, Keon L. Gilbert, Daniel Q. Gillion,
Colleen M. Grogan, Mark A. Hall, Jedediah N. Horwitt, Tiffany D.
Joseph, Alana M.W. LeBron, Julia F. Lynch, Jamila D. Michener,
Vanessa Cruz Nichols, Francisco Pedraza, Isabel M. Perera, Rashawn
Ray, Jennifer D. Roberts, Sara Rosenbaum, Sara Schmucker, Abigail
A. Sewell, Deborah Stone, Keith Wailoo
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On War Volume II
(Hardcover)
Carl Von Clausewitz; Translated by Colonel J. J. Graham; Introduction by Colonel F M Maude
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R761
Discovery Miles 7 610
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Government interest in wellbeing as an explicit goal of public
policy has increased significantly in recent years. This has led to
new developments in measuring wellbeing and initiatives aimed
specifically at enhancing wellbeing, that reflect new thinking on
'what matters' and challenge established notions of societal
progress. The Politics and Policy of Wellbeing provides the first
theoretically grounded and empirically informed account of the rise
and significance of wellbeing in contemporary politics and policy.
Drawing on theories of agenda-setting and policy change, Ian Bache
and Louise Reardon consider whether wellbeing can be described as
'an idea whose time has come'. The book reflects on developments
across the globe and provides a detailed comparative analysis of
two political arenas: the UK and the EU. Offering the first
reflection grounded in evidence of the potential for wellbeing to
be paradigm changing, the authors identify the challenge of
bringing wellbeing into policy as a 'wicked problem' that
policymakers are only now beginning to grapple with. This
pioneering account of wellbeing from a political science
perspective is a unique and valuable contribution to the field. The
authors' theoretical and empirical conclusions are of great
interest to scholars of politics and wellbeing alike.
Many democratic theorists have viewed the recent innovations
adopted throughout Latin America in a positive light. This
evaluation has engendered the idea that all innovations are
democratic and all democratic innovations are able to foster
citizenship. Presenting a realistic analysis of both the positive
and negative aspects of innovation, this book argues that these
innovations ought to be examined at the intersection between design
and the political system. The Two Faces of Institutional Innovation
offers a new perspective on developments such as participatory
budgeting, the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the Federal
Electoral Institute (IFE) in Mexico and comites de vigilancia in
Bolivia, and evaluates the extent to which, in reality, citizens
were involved in decision-making, distributive policies and citizen
education. Further chapters also examine the expansion of
innovation to the field of judicial institutions - one of the key
areas in which innovation took place in Latin America, showing that
the role of legal corporations in democracy cannot be compared with
the role of engaged citizens. Contemporary and astute, this book
will captivate students and scholars researching in the areas of
innovation policy and regulatory governance. Its analysis of the
positive and negative aspects of democratic innovation will also
benefit democratic theorists and policy-makers alike.
Despite 15 years of reform efforts, the incarceration rate in the
United States remains at an unprecedented high level. This book
provides the first comprehensive survey of these reforms and
explains why they have proven to be ineffective. After many decades
of stability, the imprisonment rate in the United States quintupled
between 1973 and 2003. Since then, nearly all states have adopted
multiple reforms intended to reduce imprisonment, but the U.S.
imprisonment rate has only decreased by a paltry two percent. Why
are American sentencing reforms since 2000 been largely
ineffective? Are tough mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent
drug offenders the primary reason our prisons are always full? This
book offers a fascinating assessment of the wave of sentencing
reforms adopted by dozens of states as well as changes at the
federal level since 2000, identifying common themes among seemingly
disparate changes in sentencing policy and highlighting recent
reform efforts that have been more successful and may point the way
forward for the nation as a whole. In The Failed Promise of
Sentencing Reform, author Michael O'Hear exposes the myths that
American prison sentencing reforms enacted in the 21st century have
failed to have the expected effect because U.S. prisons are filled
to capacity with nonviolent drug offenders as a result of the "war
on drugs," and because of new laws that took away the discretion of
judges and corrections officials. O'Hear then makes a convincing
case for the real reason sentencing reforms have come up short:
because they exclude violent and sexual offenders, and because they
rely on the discretion of officials who still have every incentive
to be highly risk-averse. He also highlights how overlooking the
well-being of offenders and their families in our consideration of
sentencing reform has undermined efforts to effect real change.
Clearly identifies the real reasons that the wave of post-2000
sentencing reform has had minimal impact on reducing national
imprisonment rates Explains why reforms must target the excessive
sentences imposed on violent and sexual offenders, even though the
members of these offender groups are considered "justifiably
punished" by long prison terms in the public eye Enables readers to
understand why increased consideration for the well-being of
offenders and their families is likely a prerequisite to the
acceptance of more fundamental changes to the U.S. sentencing
system
Following the positive impact of microfinance on poverty reduction,
women empowerment, and microenterprise development in some
countries in Asia and Africa, a huge amount of time has been
devoted by researchers to understanding how this concept can be
used as a catalyst for transforming and sustaining the economies of
developing and emerging countries. Though there are a few books on
the role of microfinance in reducing poverty in developing
countries across world, there is no specific book that explores the
role of microfinance in transforming and sustaining economies of
developing and emerging countries. Transforming Economies Through
Microfinance in Developing Nations seeks to explore how the
provision of microfinance to individuals and groups can contribute
to the economic transformation and sustainability of the economies
of developing and emerging countries. Covering key topics such as
climate change, entrepreneurship, and rural development, this
reference work is ideal for government officials, entrepreneurs,
policymakers, researchers, academicians, practitioners, scholars,
instructors, and students.
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Leading Cities
(Hardcover)
Leonora Grcheva, Elizabeth Rapoport, Michele Acuto
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R1,058
Discovery Miles 10 580
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Ships in 12 - 19 working days
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The public space of democracies is constructed in a context that is
marked by the digital transformation of the economy and society.
This construction is carried out primarily through deliberation.
Deliberation informs and guides both individual and collective
action. To shed light on the concept of deliberation, it is
important to consider the rationality of choice; but what type of
rationality is this? References to economic reason are at once
widespread, crucial and controversial. This book therefore deals
with arguments used by individuals based on the notions of
preferential choice and rational behavior, and also criticizes
them. These arguments are examined in the context of the major
themes of public debate that help to construct the contemporary
public space: "populism", social insurance, social responsibility
and environmental issues. Economic Reason and Political Reason
underlines the importance of the pragmatist shift of the 2000s and
revisits, through the lens of this new approach, the great
utilitarian and Rawlsian normative constructs that dominated
normative political economics at the end of the 20th century.
Alternative approaches, based on the concept of deliberative
democracy, are proposed and discussed.
The Dilemmas of Ethnic Policy: A Global Perspective argues that
ethnic conflict increases or decreases in relation to changes in
the social structure and the location and distribution of political
power. Ethnic grievances derive from lack of access to valued
resources, and elites play a crucial role in allocating those
resources. This book examines the experiences of five countries
with a history of ethnic conflict: former
Yugoslavia/Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and the
United States. It finds that in many cases, solutions adopted to
mitigate ethnic conflict have unintended consequences. Often,
supposed solutions confuse cause and effect and in fact worsen
ethnic conflict. Attempts to address identity issues by pandering
to them often led to further ethnic demands. This book argues that,
based on the experiences of the countries under examination, the
best course is to adopt policies that encourage alliances between
and among ethnic groups.
Just days after September 11, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg was appointed
to administer the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, a unique,
unprecedented fund established by Congress to compensate families
who lost a loved one on 9/11 and survivors who were physically
injured in the attacks. Those who participated in the Fund were
required to waive their right to sue the airlines involved in the
attacks, as well as other potentially responsible entities. When
the program was launched, many families criticized it as a brazen,
tight-fisted attempt to protect the airlines from lawsuits. The
Fund was also attacked as attempting to put insulting dollar values
on the lives of lost loved ones. The families were in pain. And
they were angry. Over the course of the next three years, Feinberg
spent almost all of his time meeting with the families, convincing
them of the generosity and compassion of the program, and
calculating appropriate awards for each and every claim. The Fund
proved to be a dramatic success with over 97% of eligible families
participating. It also provided important lessons for Feinberg, who
became the filter, the arbitrator, and the target of family
suffering. Feinberg learned about the enduring power of family
grief, love, fear, faith, frustration, and courage. Most
importantly, he learned that no check, no matter how large, could
make the families and victims of 9/11 whole again.
Getting Past Capitalism begins with a critique of the impacts of
capitalism on human society and the environment. It looks in new
ways at what capitalism is and at how it is reproduced. That
investigation opens the door to fresh ways of looking at how to
challenge it. Cynthia Kaufman looks at some fundamental questions
about how capitalism comes to look like a system that is
unbeatable, and how people come to have desires that work to
reinforce capitalism. Kaufman uses this analysis to develop ideas
about how to challenge capitalism. She argues that rather than
looking for the fulcrum point in a system that will make it able to
be overthrown, we should try to understand what kinds of practices
open more spaces for stopping the reproduction of capitalist
processes, and what kinds of structures need to be developed to
make capitalism a less important part of our world. Getting Past
Capitalism includes a critique of capitalism and presentation of
alternatives to capitalism, many of which already exist. It
explores strategies for developing and strengthening those
alternatives.
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