In 1973, Betsy Ann Plank became the first woman to chair the Public Relations Society of America in its twenty-five-year history. It was a tumultuous time to assume the national association's leadership. Civil society seemed to be fraying at the edges, and trust in institutions and businesses had plummeted in the aftermath of Watergate. Yet Plank was ready to take on the task at hand. Throughout the span of her sixty-three-year career, she broke new ground on numerous occasions through her bold leadership and tireless service to others. Plank rose to the highest level of the field's national association at a time when its leadership and membership were predominantly male. This book explores how she managed to navigate the very real barriers of gender-based discrimination that existed in public relations at least through the 1970s, and how she ultimately became devoted to public relations education.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been widely derided as a failed state, unable to meet the basic needs of its citizens. But while state infrastructure continues to decay, many essential services continue to be provided at the local level, often through grassroots initiatives. So while, for example, state funding for education is almost non-existent, average school enrolment remains well above average for Sub-Saharan Africa. This book addresses this paradox, bringing together key scholars working on public services in the DRC to elucidate the evolving nature of governance in developing countries. Its contributions encompass a wide range of public services, including education, justice, transport, and health. Taking stock of what functions and why, it contributes to the debate on public services in the context of 'real' or 'hybrid' governance beyond the state: does the state still have a function, or is it no longer useful and relevant? Crucially, how does international aid help or complicate this picture? Rich in empirical detail, the contributors provide a valuable work for students and scholars interested in the role played by non-state actors in organizing statehood - a role too often neglected in debates on post-conflict reconstruction.

The 'Little Heresies' seminars - this is the second published collection of the talks given at them - provide an important public platform to debate the future of public services. Now more than ever it seems vital to challenge the 'received wisdom', 'zombie thinking' and old, tired and outdated habits and practices that continue to infest important aspects of our public services. For, as the authors demonstrate, what appear to be well-intentioned policies not only create perverse incentives but frequently cause lasting damage to the social fabric. Private sector management methods, underpinned by neoliberal thinking, were introduced into UK public services by Margaret Thatcher. Many other countries have adopted the same approach. And successive governments continue to be duped into believing, against plenty of evidence to the contrary, that New Public Management, as it is now called, works. It doesn't. In this second publication from the Little Heresies series, nine heretics, all leading thinkers and practitioners in their professional fields, explain the disastrous effects of wrong thinking and ineffective practice in areas like standardisation, professionalisation and measurement in public services, socalled evidence-based policy-making, money creation and, looking more widely, in the troubled waters of philanthropy and the third/charitable sector.