This publication addresses the complex questions of improving accountability, responsiveness and legal frameworks in the public sector, particularly in developing countries. The topics covered include: the role of the State and the future of public services faced with the problems of transition and development; the institutional implications of changing policy management; the role and scope of public administration in Central and Eastern European countries; recent changes in Asian public service in a context of privatisation; a Latin American view of urban transportation as a socio-economic policy; what form of administration for what State. The annexes include the Resolution adopted by the General Assembly (UN) on Public Administration and Development; Highlights of the General Assembly Resumed Session on Public Administration and Development; and the historical background of the IIAS and the UN.

This work contains reports of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences. The scientific programme emphasizes a comparative approach and incorporates significant theoretical and conceptual developments. Six workshops are reported upon including the reconstruction of government functions, decentralization, redesigning for responsiveness, accountability and risk-taking, special interests and client relationships, reaffirmation of values, and mobilizing learning. A panel on administrative reform in China forms a unique contribution. Readers include professionals, scholars and students of public administration.

In this book comparative analysis is given of the way governments and social security systems reacted to the challenges facing established social security systems - and also social security systems to be established - in the context of the end of the XXth century: globalization and the changes it has brought in the perception and possibilities of establishing or maintaining the welfare state. The selection of countries is due to both scientific criteria - it has been decided to start with western industrialized countries - and non scientific ones: the availability of specialists in selected countries. It is clear therefore that, even if restricted to western industrialized countries, the sample of countries which are studied here are not representative of all the main systems of social security. Countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands are clearly missing for those readers who are looking for a broad description of existing systems. Looking at the different chapters of this book, a rather diverse and broad overview of problems and solutions are given, adapting social security systems to the environment of the XXIst century.

Health care in the United States at the end of the 20th century occupies a completely different place in the economy, in the public consciousness, and in its impact on government, than it did at the beginning of the century, or even in the early years of the Clinton Administration. Health care is now a multi-billion dollar industry; one that consumes more than 15 percent of the nation's GNP. Citizens now regard health care as essential to the quality of their lives, and a steady stream of new medications and procedures point to ways to extend the lives of our aging population and restore those injured on or off the job. At the same time, the changing patterns of health care have stirred a national debate over the growth of managed care and the role that government can play in providing solid health care standards--a medical safety net--within tightening budgetary restraints. This book explores the role of the federal government in health care policy development from the years of the Founding Fathers to the present.

Kronenfeld reviews the key features of the American health care system, its infrastructure, and federal legislative process and outcomes in the health care arena. The current situation in health care is examined, with particular attention given to the attempt at major reform in the first Clinton administration, and to the modest changes that were ultimately passed. She closes with an examination of the future of health care and the role of government, emphasizing how current health care issues and concerns may set the stage for a changed federal role in funding and delivery of health care services in the next century. This comprehensive examination of the role of government in the health care system will be of great interest to students and researchers of public policy and the social aspects of American health care.

This is a complete and up-to-date revision of the classic text for public administration, implementing the rule of law as a fundamental issue in American democracy in pursuit of the common interest. It presents public administration as a tension between the necessary exercise of power and the search for responsiveness to achieve maximum accountability from public servants. The authors have initiated a new approach to the study of public administration by focusing on middle- and lower-level managers. These are positions that most public servants will occupy for the bulk of their professional careers. The book recognizes that most of the administration is in field offices, in state and local government, and in cooperation with the private and nonprofit sectors. It then focuses on power and its potential for influencing the behavior of the bureaucracy to perform its goal-oriented and balancing functions in a pluralistic open system. This leads to the relationship between theories about administration and the actual practice and how best results (imperative of accountability) are achieved in the increasingly globalized environment.

A textbook covering the national Public Personnel Management 2 syllabus for South African technikons, The text's presentation of integrated cases and use of self-evaluation questions reinforces its learning outcomes. Like the first-year text, this book reflects contemporary thinking and practice in the public personnel management field.

We all negotiate every day, professionally and socially, yet few of us have had any training in how to do so more effectively. For professionals in health, social care and children's services, an ability to negotiate successfully is vital. Commissioning, contracting and negotiating new partnerships for delivering better services are now part of everyday life. Arguing that in the health and social services a different, less aggressive approach is required to that advocated by negotiators in the commercial sectors, Keith Fletcher explains how to prepare for and deal with negotiation situations more confidently so that settlements can be reached which satisfy all parties.

Written in particular for practitioners and students of health services planning and management, this text focuses on a critical area for management - enhancing the decision making process. It introduces computer-based decision support systems, showing how such systems can enhance decision making in the health service by promoting careful analysis, considered judgement and the ability to explain the basis on which decisions are made. Case studies of the development and use of these systems are provided.

Stephen L. Carter tells what's wrong with our confirmation process, explains how it got that way, and suggests what we can do to fix it. Using the most recent confirmation battles as examples, Carter argues that our confirmation process will continue to be bloody until we develop a more balanced attitude toward public service and the Supreme Court by coming to recognize that human beings have flaws, commit sins, and can be redeemed.

Public service provision is one of the most important issues debated in the UK today and is likely to continue. This essential text identifies major financial and organisation management issues confronting the public services and explains how they can be addressed in practical terms. Written in an accessible manner by a team of experts, this is a book for new and existing managers, students and lecturers in the public service. The aim of this book is to identify major finance and organisational management issues confronting the public services and to explain how they can be addressed in practical terms by managers of those services. Details of the impact of recent political developments are looked at as well as cultural change, crisis, and quality management. Developments in the NHS, central and local government are also covered.

Throughout the 1990s public demand for a fundamental shift in the relationship between government and its citizens has intensified. In response, a "new governance" model has emerged, emphasizing decreased federal control in favor of intergovernmental collaboration and increased involvement of state, local, and private agencies.

As the authors of this volume show, one of the best examples of "new governance" can be found in the National and State Rural Development Councils (NRDC and SRDC), created in 1990 as the result of President Bush's Rural Development Initiative and now called the Rural Development Partnership. This effort was part of a move within policymaking circles to redefine a rural America that was no longer synonymous with family farming and that required innovative new solutions for economic revival. By 1994 twenty-nine states had created and ten other states were in the process of forming such councils.

In this first detailed analysis of the NRDC and SRDCs, the authors examine the successes and failures of the original eight councils in Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington; as well as eight other councils subsequently created in Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Vermont, New York, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.

Combining empirical analysis with current theories about networks and inter-organizational relations, this volume should appeal to academics and practitioners interested in rural development policy, public administration, public policy and management, and intergovernmental relations.

The book closes the gap between politicians' rhetoric, public expectations and the day-to-day dilemmas facing managers wanting to improve the quality of public services. It offers a mixture of conceptual clarification and practical awareness of the environment in which public service managers have to work. This is no 'missionary' or 'how to' book that peddles instant solutions. Instead, a variety of approaches to quality definition, implementation and measurement are critically examined. Lessons and experience from practice and research in the public and private sectors give a solid background for readers to develop their own views. Lucy Gaster disentangles the important aspects of quality, challenges assumptions, and shows that there are no simple solutions. At the same time she provides a framework to enable public service managers to develop and integrate ideas about quality in ways which are relevant to their own day-to-day practice. This framework shows that real choices are available to managers. Values and participation, combined with a real commitment to the ideal of 'public service', are at the heart of the approach adopted in this book. It will appeal to all those wanting a more objective and informed approach to providing quality services.

Puts forward a theoretical framework for understanding consumerism in health care and its relation to professionalism. This book explains why consumers and professionals may intuitively perceive some standards as lower or higher than others and goes on to discuss many examples of professional good and bad practice.

Policing, environmental protection, and tax administration have much more in common than practitioners in these areas often recognize. Their cultures and traditions have, for the past few decades, incorporated a classic enforcement mentality, based on the underlying assumption that a ruthless and efficient investigative and enforcement capability would produce compliance through the mechanisms of deterrence. In these fields, and perhaps in many other enforcement or compliance oriented professions, Sparrow believes the traditional enforcement approach is under stress. There are too many violators, too many laws to be enforced, and not enough resources to get the job done.

In this book, Sparrow draws out remarkable parallels in the ways these professions are adapting to meet their current challenges, as they reject their traditional reliance on retrospective, case-by-case, after-the-fact enforcement. Rather than perpetuating their dependence on processes, procedures, and coverage, these professions are each developing new capacities for analyzing important patterns of noncompliance, prioritizing risks, and designing intelligent interventions using a much broader range of tools. Sparrow extracts the essence of the transformations underway, explores the critical implications for information management, and lays out the issues that need resolution before the emerging compliance strategies can reach maturity. This book is required reading for all those concerned with either the theory or the practice of the compliance side of government.

For 20 years, British governments of both the left and right have tried to improve the management of the NHS. But the distinctive contribution of the Thatcher governments of the 1980s has defined this very much in terms of controlling health professionals: doctors, nurses and others. This volume offers an explanation of why this approach was adopted. It examines in detail the various methods of control employed and assesses the consequences for the future of professional work and organization in the NHS. The book should be interest to a wide range of health professionals including doctors, nurses, health authority members and managers and should also be useful for students of social policy and health studies.

The " Handbook of Public Services Management brings together twenty leading contributors to cover all the key issues affecting public services management. It is organized in a practical way to help students and professionals approach strategic issues.

This work suggests that the 1980s were an especially tumultuous decade for the bureaucracies of Great Britain, the United States and Canada. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney came to office convinced that the bureaucracies of their countries were massively flawed: in addition to exerting too much influence over policy, they were inefficient, resistant to change and responsible for many economic woes. Savoie, a writer, scholar and a senior administrator in the Canadian government, considers the war of reform waged by the leaders of these major industrialised countries. Reagan declared that he had come to Washington "to drain the swamp" of bureaucracy; he set up the Grace Commission to investigate the operation of the US government. Thatcher and Mulroney were equally committed to reform and initiated wide-ranging changes. By the end of the decade, the changes were dramatic. Many government operations had been privatised in all three countries, and new management techniques had been introduced. In Great Britain, one observer judged that the changes were historically as important as the collapse of Keynesian economics. This book asks: is government now better in these three countries, and was the political leadership right in focusing on management of the bureaucracy as the villain? Professor Savoie suggests that the reforms overlooked problems now urgently requiring attention and, at the same time, attempted to address non-existent problems. His viewpoint combines theory and practice, and should appeal to scholars, students and practitioners. His research is based, in part, on interviews with 62 officials, almost all in the executive branch, of the governments of Great Britain, the United States and Canada.

Sir Henry Taylor's classic treatise "The Statesman," originally published in 1836, is the first modern book to be devoted to the subject of public administration. It has been read and studied by generations for its keen insights into the relationship between public administrators and elected officials in a democracy. It has also been appreciated for its wit. The present volume is the first twentieth-century edition to be based on the revised and expanded text that Taylor published in 1878 as part of his Collected Works. It is also the first edition to be fully annotated.

The lengthy editors' introduction to this volume emphasizes the relevance of Taylor's thought to the fundamental issues of public administration in the contemporary United States. The editors demonstrate the superiority of Taylor's understanding of the relationship between politics and administration to the widely accepted model of that relation that derives from the thought of Woodrow Wilson. Above all, they argue, Taylor's insights merit our attention because they indicate how a properly organized civil service can be a locus of statesmanship in a democracy, fulfilling the intentions of the authors of the American Constitution in a contemporary context that differs significantly from what the Founders themselves anticipated.

Designed as a text for upper-level undergraduate-and graduate-level courses in public administration, public management, public policy, organizational behavior, this book looks at how people work effectively in public organizations. Written entirely by experienced practitioners, the text is unique in that it addresses throughout both the practical concerns of the working administrator and those of the theorist. By using their own on-the-job experiences as illustrative samples, the contributors clearly demonstrate how theory can improve practice and how practice can be used to generate theories.

Following an introductory chapter by the editor on the role of practitioners in the intellectual development of public administration, the text is divided into four sections. Part One, on the individual in public organizations, covers the ways in which managers learn and teach, presents an alternative contemplative paradigm of organizational behavior, and explores the role of the heroic individual in public administration. Part Two focuses on other people and public organizations, examining such issues as organizational learning, internal evaluation in organizations, organizational pathologies, and controlling conflict. Turning to the question of structure and public organizations, the contributors address ways in which organizational structure can be influenced, describe a learning model of organization, identify archetypes in organizations, and analyze the structure of power in public organizations. The final section looks at the management and leadership skills necessary to be successful in public administration.

This text is a must for all aspiring or serving policy supervisors. It sincerely deals with a problem that has perplexed police union representatives and could go a long way toward easing labor/management confrontations regarding marginal police performance. "Robert B. Kliesmet, General President, International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO"

"Burnout in Blue: Managing The Marginal Police Performer" is an important contribution to professional law enforcement. Today, as never before, the volume of crime and the limited resources allocated to provide police services places tremendous demands on our law enforcemtn agecies. This already difficult situation is compounded further by police employees who perform at a marginal level, thus diminishing the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. The information provided in this book is well researched, insightful, and practical in terms of its application to productive and successful police operations. It is must reading' for every police supervisor and manager. "Jerald R. Vaugh, Executive Director, International Association of Chiefs of Police"

"Burnout in Blue" confronts the problem of poor police performance and shows police supervisors how to identify and deal effectively with marginal, unresponsive subordinates. Few if any books in the field offer such concrete, practical guidelines for improved police performance.

Examining the political and economic forces that have shaped the civil service system from the Pendleton Act of 1883 through today, the authors explain why, despite efforts to overhaul the federal bureaucracy (most recently by Vice President Al Gore), significant change remains a formidable challenge. Although politicians criticize the unwieldiness of the bureaucracy, this volume shows how they have been largely responsible for its design. The authors examine the development of federal employee interest groups and their negotiations with the president and Congress over hiring policies, salaries and conditions for terminating employment. Using transaction cost analysis and public choice theory, this book aims to provide a new understanding of the growth of the federal bureaucracy and the political and economic obstacles to reforming it.