This collection provides a critical and international analysis of the public sector through theoretical debates, empirical issues and regional studies. It begins by reassessing the public choice theoretical paradigm, the implications of New Public Management, the current crisis of democracy and ways of mediating market pressures. It then investigates recent developments in ethics, service provision, industrial relations and the nature of work, before examining critical issues in countries and regions from both the developed and developing world, and reflecting on the way forward.

This book compares contemporary civil service systems across East and Southeast Asia, a dynamic region of greater diversity in local administrative tradition, imported models of modern administration, and the character of prevailing political institutions. Featuring chapters on Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, this book provides a detailed analysis of key aspects of the civil service system, including centralization, recruitment, classification, openness of positions, performance assessment, promotion, training, and senior civil service. It distinguishes four modes of public employment, namely, bureaucratization, professionalization, politicization, and marketization, to develop a conceptual framework for comparing the civil service system at the operational level. The region's contemporary civil service systems appear to be hybrid systems that combine, at varying degree, these modes of public employment, responding to administrative reform pressures. The patterns of public employment across East and Southeast Asia reflect local administrative traditions, imported Western models of administration, and the relative timing of democratization and bureaucratization. With contributions from leading local experts across the region, this book will be invaluable to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in Asian public administration, especially civil service systems.

State and Local Public Finance provides a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of state and local government public finance practices and issues, using the basic tools of economics. This fifth edition maintains its focus on key local services such as education, health care, and transportation and brings in new coverage of land use and housing, applications from behavioral economics, and more international comparisons. This textbook provides an examination and analysis of public finance practices and problems in a federal fiscal system, focusing on the fiscal behavior and policies of state and local governments. Modern economic theory is applied to examine the way key institutions are used to produce and finance services and to provide evaluation of alternative policies. This stalwart text will continue to be invaluable reading for those who study public finance, local government finance, urban economics, public policy, and public administration.

Public enterprises remain of fundamental importance in advanced economies, and this volume characterises them as hybrids, influenced by markets and ministries.

This book contains a concise, simple, yet precise discussion of externalities, public goods and insurance. Rooted in the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics and in noncooperative equilibrium, it employs elementary calculus. The book presents established theory in novel ways, and offers the tools for the application of the social welfare criteria of efficiency and equity to environmental economics, networks, bargaining, political economy, and the pricing of public goods and public utilities.This innovative, user-friendly textbook will be of use over a broad range of disciplines. The applications found here include international global-warming issues (North vs. South model), and bargaining over externalities (Coase's theorem). This text also introduces the Wicksell-Lindahl model in its original form, which depicts the parliamentary negotiation between representative parties and provides an effective introduction to political economy. Later, these ideas are applied to the pricing of an excludable public good, revealing the theoretical connection between public utility pricing and the pricing of excludable public goods. The text integrates three forms of discourse: verbal, graphical, and formal. Elementary calculus is frequently used, allowing for clarity and precision; qualities that are often missing in conventional textbooks. The main text considers a finite number of consumers and appendices cover the continuum mathematical model, which is implicit in the references to the 'marginal consumer' found in traditional texts. The analysis found in Public Microeconomics is simple and operational, conducive to computationally easy examples and exercises. This textbook is ideally suited to graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in economics, political science, policy and philosophy. Contents: Preface Foreword to Students 1. Introduction 2. Private Goods Without Externalities 3. Externalities 4. Public Goods 5. Public Utilities 6. Uncertainty and Asymmetrical Information Index

This book explores how the theories and practices of public management have evolved. It covers themes such as political, judicial, and cultural environments. It reviews the influential theoretical developments that represent the intellectual heritage of public administration from Woodrow Wilson and the classics to current schools such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and the drive for reinventing government. The author identifies and explains critical managerial functions such as decisionmaking, communication, leadership, performance evaluation, and the constant search for reform and improvement in public organizations. This comprehensive, in-depth exploration emphasizes the operational and practical consequences of the subject.

This new book in the Exploring Corporate Strategy Series brings together a selection of 17 chapters which provide readers with material on a range of important strategic issues of particular relevance to the public sector. The chapters cover most of the major strategic themes from Exploring Corporate Strategy which is also reflected in the chapter sequence.

Delineating implications for administrative ethics from other fields such as sociology, psychology, and philosophy, this reference provides a comprehensive review of administrative ethics in the public sector. Detailing the context within which contemporary ethics training has developed, the book examines the effectiveness of ethics training, legal and organizational devices for encouraging desired conduct, and other topics of particular relevance to the political and social contexts of public administration. Written by over 25 leading scholars in public administration ethics, the book creates a taxonomy for administrative ethics using the categories of modern philosophy.

The authors of this comprehensive book provide a detailed rationale and original theory for the study of leadership and institutional factors, including entrepreneurship, in the growth and development of cities and regions. They demonstrate why leadership, institutions and entrepreneurship can - and indeed do - play a crucial enhancing role as key elements in the process of regional endogenous growth. The so-called 'new growth theory' emphasizes endogenous processes. While some of the literature refers to leadership and institutional factors, there has been little analysis of the explicit roles these factors play in the growth and development of cities and regions. This book remedies that gap, beginning with a brief overview of the evolution of the 'new growth theory' in regional economic development, in which the emphasis is on endogenous factors. The book then discusses leadership and institutional factors in that context, creating a new path for understanding regional economic development processes. Multiple case studies from different parts of the world illustrate the theoretical concepts. Students and scholars in regional development, planning and public policy will find this volume invaluable.

The Intelligent Nation proposes a systemic and radical transformation of the organisation, management, ownership and performance of the services of the state by capitalising on the potential offered by contemporary information capability and fulfilling the rights and obligations both to and of citizens. In this book, John Beckford shows how, by adopting the principles of an Intelligent Organisation, the state can thrive and meet the needs of its citizens. He proposes a complete rethink of the state as the enabler or provider of public services. In particular, he points to the failure of the public sector to significantly emulate the massive gains in productivity and customer focus experienced in both manufacturing and services (e.g. finance, retailing, insurance). Governance and all public services must be redesigned to align to the contemporary needs of the citizen and exploit the power of information to enable a transformation of their effectiveness, redefine efficiency and support human-based services in crucial areas. Each chapter provides the key learning points, a discussion of the problem in theory and practice, integrated case studies, and discussion points. Written in an accessible style, the book provides thought-provoking supplemental reading for masters and undergraduate students reading organisation theory, organisation development, political science, public administration, healthcare, information systems and business and management science.

First Published in 1998. This is Volume IV of eighteen of a series on the Sociology of Public Policy, Welfare and Social Work. Stemming from an original study on social mobility, this book looks at Britain's higher civil servants from 1870 to 1955 who are mainly sourced from the expensively-educated middle classes.

The LSE Companion to Health Policy covers a wide range of conceptual and practical issues from a number of different perspectives introducing the reader to, and summarising, the vast literature that analyzes the complexities of health policy. The Companion also assesses the current state of the art. Health policy is a wide-ranging subject covering many academic disciplines, but what most studies in health policy have in common is an interest in applying theory to improve practice. This Companion brings academic rigor to bear evidence on a range of central areas within health policy. It covers key issues on the quality, access and inequalities in health and health care; supply and health markets; insurance and expenditures; pharmaceuticals and new technologies; ageing and long-term care; and behavior and health production. This unique Companion on health policy contains the most important features for health system reform at a time of funding constraints and will therefore hold great appeal for policy analysts and makers, students, academics and management professionals. Contributors: S. Allin, R.G. Bevan, R. Butterfield, C. Campbell, A. Comas-Herrera, Z. Cooper, J. Costa-Font, M. Di Cesare, H.A. Elgazzar, J.-L. Fernandez, A. Gibbs, C. Henderson, C. Hernandez-Quevedo, L. Kossarova, C. Masseria, A. McGuire, P. Mladovsky, A. Morton, M. Murphy, I. Papanicolas, M. Raikou, C. Rudisill, V. Serra-Sastre, C. Stavropoulou, N. Varol, J.M. Wiener, R. Wittenberg, V. Zigante

This critical book focuses on two dominant reform agendas - managerialism and politicisation - to examine the condition of Anglophone countries after 40 years of reform to public sector management and governance. Comparing four countries using the Westminster system - Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom - John Halligan explores the changes resulting from distinctive reform agendas, exposing performance shortfalls and unintended consequences, such as bureaucratisation. Offering a broad overview of the implementation and outcomes of key administrative developments, Halligan unpacks those traditions and conventions of governance in Anglophone countries that have been disrupted by unrestrained political executives, producing dramatic imbalances in management and governance systems. Judicious and incisive, this book will be crucial reading to postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students of public policy seeking an in-depth understanding of both historic and contemporary reforms to public management and governance. Halligan's comparative approach to public management systems will also benefit government practitioners and specialists working closely with governments.

This book offers a new insight into leadership in the public sector:
It describes public leadership as a form of collective leadership in which leaders from a range of public, private and voluntary organizations share a common aim in improving the life of communities. It examines the current focus on public service reform and highlights the impact that performance targets have had on leadership.
The importance of the role of the individual leader is acknowledged, but it argues that this role is not to provide the answers but to ask intelligent questions in tackling wicked issues that undermine well being. The book explores the experience of reform across the sector and sets some tough challenges for government, public institutions and their leaders.
It will be of benefit to all who are interested in what the future holds for public services and prompts a different way of thinking about leadership.

Examining various methods of debt management used in the US., Handbook of Debt Management, provides a comprehensive analysis of securities offered for sale by municipalities, states, and the federal government. The book covers laws regarding municipal bonds, the economic choice between debt and taxes and the tax-exempt status of municipal bond owners, capital budgeting, including state and local government practices, developing governmental and intergovernmental debt policies, pay-as-you-go with debt financing for capital projects, US Internal Revenue Service regulations on arbitrage in state and local government debt proceeds investment, US treasury auctions, and more.

This collection examines the leadership training of public administration in 19 countries and provides information on where, what, and how the training occurs as well as the up-to-date cultural, political, economic background for each. Factors affecting perceived importance, quality and robustness of top civil servant training are examined.

This book compares local self-government in Europe. It examines local institutional structures, autonomy, and capacities in six selected countries - France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, and the United Kingdom - each of which represents a typical model of European local government. Within Europe, an overall trend towards more local government capacities and autonomy can be identified, but there are also some counter tendencies to this trend and major differences regarding local politico-administrative settings, functional responsibilities, and resources. The book demonstrates that a certain degree of local financial autonomy and fiscal discretion is necessary for effective service provision. Furthermore, a robust local organization, viable territorial structures, a professional public service, strong local leadership, and well-functioning tools of democratic participation are key aspects for local governments to effectively fulfill their tasks and ensure political accountability. The book will appeal to students and scholars of Public Administration and Public Management, as well as practitioners and policy-makers at different levels of government, in public enterprises, and in NGOs.

Baumol's Cost Disease is the inevitable escalation of the real costs that occur in labour-intensive industries like the arts, health care and education. The labour costs in these industries tend to increase at the same rate as other industries, but their scope for utilizing labour-saving technical progress is either small or non-existent.The book opens with an introduction by Ruth Towse in which there is an overview of William Baumol's work. In this discussion Ruth Towse examines Baumol's work in the context of the development of the economics of the arts. The volume is then divided into parts and begins by introducing William Baumol's work through several autobiographical essays. This is followed by some of his early contributions to cultural economics and the cost disease. William Baumol's leading macroeconomic work on the 'unbalanced growth model' is also included and the debate about it at its inception. In parts three and four some of the more empirical papers on the arts are presented as well as essays on policy implications for the arts. Following this are chapters on the theatre and publishing as well as historical studies of the arts and the implications of the cost disease for libraries, health care and education. This book contains William Baumol's contribution to cultural economics and spans over 30 years of writing on the subject, much of which is not widely available. It provides a real insight into the development of Baumol's analysis and his perception of the problems of the arts and other labour-intensive sectors.

Is there a way for people on both sides of a dispute to come out ahead? Yes, says Stuart Nagel, and he calls his method super-optimizing decision making. Instead of expecting both sides to come out ahead of their worst initial expectations, Nagel's super-optimum solutions approach (SOS) allows both to come out ahead of their "best" initial expectations, and to do so simultaneously. Nagel offers readers in all fields of the public sector, with diverse interests and experiences, a clear, well-illustrated introduction to the basic concepts and principles of super-optimized decision making. Emphasizing rule-making and broader policy controversies rather than individual cases of adjudication, and with less reliance on mathematics and statistics than other books on decision-making techniques, Nagel's approach is basically commonsensical and easily grasped. Decision makers in the public sector will find the book fascinating and of special importance in their daily activities. Private-sector executives will find that its approaches can indeed be adapted to their own special concerns.

How does social spending relate to economic growth and which countries have got this right and wrong? Peter Lindert examines the experience of countries across the globe to reveal what has worked, what needs changing, and who the winners and losers are under different systems. He traces the development of public education, health care, pensions, and welfare provision, and addresses key questions around intergenerational inequality and fiscal redistribution, the returns to investment in human capital, how to deal with an aging population, whether migration is a cost or a benefit, and how social spending differs in autocracies and democracies. The book shows that what we need to do above all is to invest more in the young from cradle to career, and shift the burden of paying for social insurance away from the workplace and to society as a whole.

This is a timely, important book for fiscal policy-makers and budget practitioners. It assesses why some advanced democracies were prepared for the global financial crisis and others were not, and how some countries responded in ways that exacerbated fiscal instability. Its dozen country cases offer highly relevant lessons for mitigating cyclical disturbances that frequently beset national budgets and for managing public finances during turbulent times. The key takeaway message is that government capacity and budget policies matter and should dispel the notion that all countries are helpless when crisis strikes.' - Allen Schick, University of Maryland, USThe global financial crisis of 2007-09 constituted the biggest shock to the economies of the OECD nations since the Second World War, testing budgetary systems and causing most of their governments to move into intense crisis mode. Policy responses by governments and international authorities included massive interventions to stabilize markets and economies, and significant adjustments to fiscal policy regimes. How governments reacted to the crisis, which was manifested differently in each jurisdiction, had significant political implications for sitting governments and led to reforms of fiscal policy and budgetary regimes, which have since continued to wrestle with slow economic growth and strained public finances. This singular shock provides the editors and authors of this book with an intriguing opportunity to examine how different OECD budgetary systems performed. The contributions frame and assess how governments responded to the challenge and how their budget systems evolved in the aftermath, with a focus on strategy, decision-making and balancing competing demands. Chapters cover the EU, North America and Asia, including comparison between countries that fared well, those who were moderately affected and those countries massively affected by the global financial crisis. This timely book will appeal to students and academics seeking an international understanding and analysis of the effects and consequences of the global financial crisis. Contributors: M.G. Arghyrou, R. Boyle, S. Davidsen, T. Degen, D.M. Fantone, D.A. Good, M. Horie, L. Jensen, E. A. Lindquist, M. Mulreany, P.T. Pereira, P.L. Posner, J. de Vries, J. Wanna, L. Wemans, E. Zapico-Goni

What are the political forces which drive the process of change in the health service? How do these forces impact on existing structures of power, policy and organisation? In addressing these questions, Brian Salter applies an original theory of political change to key areas of NHS activity. He shows how the escalating demand for health care combined with recent radical policy initiatives has posed different problems for politicians, doctors, bureaucrats and managers. Out of the accommodations reached, a new shape has emerged for the NHS.

The population of ancient Rome at its peak exceeded that of any previous western city, or any that came after it until the Industrial Revolution. The requirements for its running--to keep inhabitants fed and provided with water, drainage and entertainment, to enable the people to move about freely and in relative safety, to facilitate a reasonable harmony with their neighbours--meant that a pragmatic system of administrative law was needed. This book describes the legal aspects of urbanism, of the functioning of Rome as a city. O. F. Robinson begins by introducing the purely physical aspect of Rome--its population and boundaries. An overview of town planning is followed by an in-depth treatment of building controls, public works, streets and traffic. The Tiber, the main river in Rome, was central to life in the City. Its bridges and sewers, its employment as a transport system, its relationship to the water supply, and its other uses are discussed in detail. This provides the background for an analysis of public health and safety. Additionally, the book focuses on services such as food distribution, entertainment such as the theatre and gladiatorial games, and the forces of law and order. Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration is a comprehensive survey of the running of a great city without modern technology. It will be of considerable interest to Roman lawyers, historians and archaeologists, as well as those concerned with current local government.

Europe is in a troubled state. The macroeconomic situation looks grim, national governments are close to dysfunction, and Europeans are facing austerity and relative decline. The one bright spot on the horizon is the potential for positive action at the level of the city and urban regions. In this book, the editors have assembled a collection of original contributions by scholars from Europe, North America and Asia who offer insights as to how local authorities in Europe might be able to chart a course for their city or urban region during this period of extraordinary difficulty. The volume begins with an Introduction, followed by a set of three papers in Part Two examining European urban competitiveness from the standpoints of measurement and policy. This section also provides a case study of the cities of one country - Italy - from which the reader can gain an understanding of the current position of European cities as well as what might be possible going forward. Experience has shown that perhaps the most crucial element in competitiveness enhancement is good and effective governance. To that end, Part Three examines structural aspects of urban government, including polycentric regions, wide metropolitan cooperation, the role of social actors and territorial aggregation. Part Four treats issues of innovation from two perspectives and provides a case study from Eindhoven, while also covering social issues such as demographics, participation, social exclusion and mobility. This set of scholarly reflections will be of considerable benefit to urban practitioners, researchers and students of public policy. Contributors: P. Canonico, C. Donolo, G. Hirsch, M.P. Iacono, D. Ietri, J.-L. Klein, P.K. Kresl, W.F. Lever, E. Mastropietro, D.J. Maurrasse, R. Mercurio, S. Micelli, S. Mollica, P. Ni, A.H.J. Otgaar, J. Shen, J. Sobrino, D.-G. Tremblay, L. van den Berg