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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Central government > General
The follow-up volume to the same editors' New Labour in Government provides a systematic assessment of Blair's first term and the continuities and changes into his second. Bringing together specially-commissioned chapters by leading authorities in a tightly-edited format , it places particular emphasis on the evolution of New Labour's political performance, policy and statecraft set in its historical, ideological and organizational context.
The nation's federal, state, and local public service is in deep trouble. Not even the most talented, dedicated, well- compensated, well-trained, and well-led public servants can serve the public well if they must operate under perverse personnel and procurement regulations that punish innovation and promote inefficiency. Many attempts have been made to determine administrative problems in the public service and come up with viable solutions. Two of the most important--the 1990 report of the National Commission on the Public Service, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, and the 1993 report of the National Commission on the State and Local Public Service, led by former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter--recommended " deregulating the public service." Deregulating the public service essentially means altering or abolishing personnel and procurement regulations that deplete government workers' creativity, reduce their productivity, and make a career in public service unattractive to many talented, energetic, and public-spirited citizens. But will it work? With the benefit of a historical perspective on the development of American public service from the days of the progressives to the present, the contributors to this book argue that deregulating the public service is a necessary but insufficient condition for much of the needed improvement in governmental administration. Avoiding simple solutions and quick fixes for long-standing ills, they recommend new and large-scale experiments with deregulating the public service at all levels of government. In addition to editor John DiIulio, the contributors are Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the FederalReserve, now at Princeton University; former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter; Gerald J. Garvey, Princeton; John P. Burke, University of Vermont; Melvin J. Dubnick, Rutgers; Constance Horner, former director of the Federal Office of Personnel Management, now at Brookings; Mark Alan Hughes, Harvard; Steven Kelman, Harvard; Donald F. Kettl, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Mark H. Moore, Harvard; Richard P. Nathan, State University of New York at Albany; Neal R. Peirce, The National Review; and James Q. Wilson, UCLA.
Has the presidentialization of British electoral politics now penetrated other institutional and governmental relationships? This book argues it has in respect of the prime ministerial advisory system. The prime minister has become a president in the eyes of the electorate but remains a prime minister according to the constitution. To bridge this gap between their political and constitutional positions prime ministers have been forced to stretch the constitutional rules about advice, and presidentialize their advisory systems.
Argues that autonomous agencies are not the result of a systematic design, but are produced by the interactions of political and bureaucratic forces. The case studies illustrate how political struggles between politicians and bureaucrats can create a muddle of agencies that lack coherence and are subject to conflicting levels of political control.
In this work, comprehensive comparative information on five Central European countries has been collected by teams of researchers from both within the region and from the West. Following an introduction to the economic environment in each country, it provides an overview of the privatization process, including an account of the legal framework of ownership, institutions for state regulation, an overview of privatization programmes and the initial transformation of enterprises. A key feature of the book is the authors' access to hitherto unavailable information and their ability to present a vast amount of material in an easily available format. Aimed at policy makers and business people, the work should provide a strong foundation for future research.
Debates about tax policy arise every year in Washington, and legislative changes occur almost as often. In just the past decade, corporate tax burdens were dramatically reduced and then subsequently increased. But who really bears the burden of taxation? Finding a satisfactory way to address this question remains one of the biggest challenges for economists. While much research has explored this issue using annual data on household incomes and expenditures, this book considers the multiple effects of taxes on individuals over their entire lifetimes. Since annual incomes typically vary from year to year, and change systematically over the course of a lifetime, annual income is not necessarily a good indicator of a person's relative well-being. Instead, Dianne Rogers and Don Fullerton categorize individuals into lifetime income groups, and re-estimate the pattern of earnings over the lifetime of each group. They utilize a general equilibrium model that encompasses household demands, work effort, and savings, and they calculate the distribution of each current tax. Because their model includes all major U.S. federal, state, and local taxes, it can be used to simulate the effects of changes in any of those taxes on investment, productivity, resource allocation, and the distribution of burdens. Don Fullerton is professor of economics at the University of Virginia and visiting professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon, School of Urban and Public Affairs. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Analysis from 1985 to 1987. Diane Lim Rogers is assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University.
This book examines the economic theories and policies that underline the governance of the European Union. Through exploring the history of European economic governance and how this framework has evolved over time, it contextualises theoretical influences, policy debates surrounding the European Union and its instruments of governance, including the European Semester, Six Pack, Two Pack, and Fiscal Compact. Forthcoming reforms to fiscal rules and the economic policy architecture of the European Union are also discussed, with a particular focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This book aims to give readers a broad understanding of the framework and dynamics that define European economic governance. It will be relevant to researchers and policymakers interested in the European political economy.
This book provides a general overview of accountability, a key concept in modern democratic governance. Richard Mulgan draws on examples and analyses from the United States and the United Kingdom as well as other 'Westminster' countries. Major topics discussed include the contrast between accountability in the public and private sectors, the effects of public management reforms on accountability, accountability for collective actions, accountability in networks and the limits of accountability.
This book analyzes why Left Parties enter national government, what they do when they get there and what effect this has on them. Alongside two comparative chapters, this book features detailed case-studies of European Left Parties in government.
The shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 propelled the memory of the slain president to a revered status. Naturally enough, the public came to terms with the tragedy in Dallas by investing the chief executive's life with Lincolnesque significance--a moral importance transcending politics. Traditionally, historians have accentuated either the positive "Camelot" or the negative "counter-Camelot" view of JFK. Measured appreciation became adulation and criticism evolved into vilification. Bringing together leading Kennedy scholars with a group of younger historians, Mark J. White demonstrates that both versions of JFK are unsatisfying caricatures, lacking subtlety and nuance. Using recently declassified documents, Kennedy examines many of the key issues surrounding the president's time in the White House: Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin issue, the space race, relations with de Gaulle, and trade policy. Rejecting the idolatry and bitterness evident in so many previous works on JFK, the volume presents a compelling reappraisal of the Kennedy presidency.
America's governing system is unique in the extent to which scientists and other outside experts participate in the policy process. No other nation uses these experts so extensively, not merely for advice on the allocation of resources to science but also in broad policy issues. This wide-ranging study traces the rise of scientists in the policy process and shows how outside experts interrelate with politicians and administrators to produce a unique and dynamic policy process. It also shows how the very openness of American government creates the potential for unusual conflicts of interest. Bruce Smith focuses on the experience of agency and presidential-level advisory systems over the past several decades. He chronicles the special complexities and challenges resulting from the Federal Advisory Committee Act--the "open meeting" law--to provide a better understanding of the role of advisory committees and offers valuable lessons to guide their future use. He looks at science advice in the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and then examines how science advisory mechanisms have worked at the White House. Rather than simply providing a description of structures and institutions, Smith shows the advisory systems in action--how advisory systems work or fail to work in practice. He analyzes how the advisers influence the policymaking process and affect the life of the agencies they serve. Smith concludes with an assessment of the relationship between science advice and American democracy. He explains that the widespread use of outside advisers clearly reflects America's preference forpluralism. By scrutinizing agency plans, goals, and operations, advisers and advisory committees serve a variety of functions and attempt to strike a balance between openness and citizen access to government and the need for discipline and sophisticated expertise in policymaking. At the root of the advisory process is a paradox: scientists are called on because of their special expertise, but they are useful only if they learn to play by the rules of the political game. The challenge to the nation is to reconcile the integrity of science with the norms of democracy.
Koven examines how political philosophy shapes public policy. In particular, he emphasizes the influence of ideology on one policy area--budgeting in the public sector. That political beliefs greatly affect the type of policy implemented appears obvious, as would the benefit of rational--not ideological--policymaking. Yet, the question of whether policy is developed by politically biased appointees or by neutral administrators is not so easily answered. Koven asserts that government policy determined by philosophical factors directly contradicts the view that public policy should be developed by policy experts via rational analysis. He concludes that through the recognition and control of confounding influences, objective policy can--and should--be formulated.
In 21st century Britain, a 'perfect storm' seems to have engulfed many of its institutions. This book is the first wholesale consideration of the crisis of legitimacy that has taken root in Britain's key institutions and explores the crisis across them to determine if a set of shared underlying pathologies exist to create this collective crisis.
In their tenth co-authored study, Brennan and Hahn propose both a new method of biographical study for students of political communication and a new way of evaluating candidates for presidential office. The authors argue that given the biases inherent in the print and broadcast media, the only way to obtain accurate assessment about presidential candidates is to analyze information from the primary sources--the candidates themselves. They show how careful listening and rigorous analysis can enable the reader to extract reliable clues to presidential competence from the speeches, debates, press conferences, and advertising spots of the candidates. Challenging traditional rhetorical criticism in which biography is used to help evaluate speeches, Brennan and Hahn demonstrate that speeches can be effectively used to arrive at reliable evaluations of speakers. In order to establish the need for a new approach, the authors begin with a critique of the major extant methods of political analysis (biography, psychobiography, political biography and rhetorical biography). They then respond to that need by focusing on methods of analyzing information directly from political speeches and other utterances, identifying five major arenas for evaluating candidates: personality orientation, leadership ideal, ideology, epistemology, and axiology. Each of the arenas is divided into theory and application sections, providing the reader with both the methods in practice and an understanding of why they work. The final chapter examines the relationship of the media to political analysis. A comprehensive bibliography completes the work.
"Redesigning the Work of Human Services" explores alternative organizational designs for the delivery of human services--designs that emphasize collaborative governance and partnerships among public and private agencies, local control and responsibility for results, and the use of innovative information, planning, and community capacity-building technologies. This book redefines the debate about whether human services should be privatized or not. The author suggests that the basic task of human services--to enable families to socialize the young--is one that can neither be fulfilled effectively by the state nor by private agencies. Rather, carefully crafted public-private partnerships, when combined with new accountability mechanisms and the sophisticated use of emerging information technologies, are likely to offer more in the way of effective, efficient, and appropriate human services. Because this work is solidly grounded in the literature on both human and business services, the author's suggestions for major redesign are comprehensive and intelligently qualified.
In Chinese Capitalisms , experts examine the rise of capitalism on China and Taiwan, analyzing impacts exerted by global capitalism, Chinese civilization, and remnants of socialist practice. In focusing on these, they also address longstanding issues such as Weber's China Thesis, state-business relationships, and China's civil society, among others.
This book takes a quantitative look at ICT-generated event data to highlight current trends and issues in Nigeria at the local, state and national levels. Without emphasizing a specific policy or agenda, it provides context and perspective on the relative spatial-temporal distribution of conflict factors in Nigeria. The analysis of violence at state and local levels reveals a fractal pattern of overlapping ecosystems of conflict risk that must be understood for effective, conflict-sensitive approaches to development and direct conflict mitigation efforts. Moving beyond analyses that use a broad religious, ethnic or historical lens, this book focuses on the country's 774 local government areas and incorporates over 10,000 incidents coded by location, date and indicator to identify patterns in conflict risk between 2009 and 2013. It is the first book to track conflict in Nigeria during this period, which covers the Amnesty Agreement in the Niger Delta and the birth of Boko Haram in the North. It also includes conflict risk heat maps of each state and trend-lines of violence. The authors conclude with a discussion of the nuanced factors that lead to escalating violence, such as resource competition and trends in terrorism during this critical point in Nigeria's history. Violence in Nigeria is designed as a reference for researchers and practitioners working in security, peacebuilding and development, including policy makers, intelligence experts, diplomats, national defense and homeland security experts. Advanced-level students studying public policy, international relations or computer science will also find this book useful as a secondary textbook or reference.
This is a revision and update of Gertzog's successful 1984 study of women in the United States Congress. Now, 10 years later, the congressional roster is far different: Women have made major in-roads in numbers and prominence in the House of Representatives. Based upon interviews with 45 members of the 103rd Congress, this study examines the rise in the number of women elected, the circumstances leading to their success, and their integration into the workings of the institution, in both legislative and political terms.
Advances In Digital Government presents a collection of in-depth articles that addresses a representative cross-section of the matrix of issues involved in implementing digital government systems. These articles constitute a survey of both the technical and policy dimensions related to the design, planning and deployment of digital government systems. The research and development projects within the technical dimension represent a wide range of governmental functions, including the provisioning of health and human services, management of energy information, multi-agency integration, and criminal justice applications. The technical issues dealt with in these projects include database and ontology integration, distributed architectures, scalability, and security and privacy. The human factors research emphasizes compliance with access standards for the disabled and the policy articles contain both conceptual models for developing digital government systems as well as real management experiences and results in deploying them. Advances In Digital Government presents digital government issues from the perspectives of different communities and societies. This geographic and social diversity illuminates a unique array of policy and social perspectives, exposing practitioners to new and useful ways of thinking about digital government.
This study of contemporary South Africa focuses thematically on the major political contestants, interest-groups and power-brokers in that country. The contributors, several of whom have first-hand experience of the South African problem, attempt to provide from varied perspectives - ranging from the Afrikaner establishment to the exiled liberation movements - an introduction to aspects of contemporary South African politics and an insight into its many forms of resistance.
The International Directory of Government is the definitive guide to people in power in every part of the world. All the top decision-makers are included in this one-volume publication, which brings together government institutions, agencies and personnel from the largest nations (China, India, Russia, etc.) to the smallest overseas dependencies (Guadeloupe, Guernsey and Christmas Island, etc). Institutional entries contain the names and titles of principal officials, postal, e-mail and internet addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and other relevant details. Key features: - comprehensive lists of government ministers and ministries - coverage of state-related agencies and other institutions arranged by subject heading - details of important state, provincial and regional administrations, including information on US states, Russian republics, and the states and territories of India. |
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