While more than a million e-mails clog the inboxes of Congress each day, some legislators can't even find their own websites without the help of their staffers. In fact, laptops aren't even allowed on the floor of the House or Senate.
But, as Dennis W. Johnson demonstrates in Congress Online, there are some savvy legislators who are taking advantage of new media to expand their power and influence-and the Congressional communications revolution is just beginning. Born out of a Pew Charitable Trusts research project of the same name, Congress Online is the definitive guide to electronic politics, pointing the way to a system that could forge a new and more immediate connection between legislators and the American people.

At a time when Latin America is experiencing societal unrest from human rights violations, corruption and weak institutions Government and Governance of Security offers an insightful understanding for the modern steering of crime policies. Using Chile as a case study, the book delivers an untold account of the trade-offs between political, judicial and policing institutions put in practice to confront organised crime since the country's redemocratisation. In an effort to encompass the academic fields of political science, public policy and criminology, Carlos Solar challenges the current orthodoxies for understanding security and the promotion of the rule of law in developing states. His research aptly illuminates the practicalities of present-day governance and investigates how networks of institutions are formed and sustained across time and, subsequently, how these actors deal with issues of policy consensus and cooperation. To unveil the uniqueness of this on-the-ground action, the analysis is based on an extensive revision of public documents, legislation, media accounts and interviews conducted by the author with the key policy makers and officials dealing with crimes including drug-trafficking, money laundering and human smuggling. Government and Governance of Security will be of interest to scholars of Latin American studies, security and governance and development.

This book, first published in 1987, is a study of the political processes that underlie the determination of taxation - and much else - in the centuries-old government of Britain. Governments inherit a large legacy of policies, and it is the inertia force of past commitments that determine much of what a government does. This is especially true of taxation, and this book explores the forces at work on the policies of taxation. It also helps us understand what might be the future of taxation.

A military is the most significant tool of a nation's foreign policy, and (hopefully) the tool of last resort. Yet the control a civilian leader has over the military is, in many respects, an encumbered and fractured control. The military's organizational culture, role in society, size, and considerable autonomy are potential obstacles to true civilian control over the military even in peacetime. A brief but historically informed text intended for students of the presidency or national security, Governing the Military addresses the gamut of challenges a new U.S. President faces as commander-in-chief.

In the Post-Cold War era, US nuclear foreign policies towards India witnessed a major turnaround as a demand for 'cap, reduce, eliminate' under the Clinton administration was replaced by the implementation of the historic 'civil nuclear deal' in 2008 by Bush, a policy which continued under Obama's administration. This book addresses the change in US nuclear foreign policy by focusing on three core categories of identity, inequality, and great power narratives. Building upon the theoretical paradigm of critical constructivism, the concept of the 'state' is problematised by focusing on identity-related questions arguing that the 'state' becomes a constructed entity standing as valid only within relations of identity and difference. Focusing on postcolonial principles, Pate argues that imperialism as an organising principle of identity/difference enables us to understand how difference was maintained in unequal terms through US nuclear foreign policy. This manifested in five great power narratives constructed around peace and justice; India-Pakistan deterrence; democracy; economic progress; and scientific development. Identities of 'race', 'political economy', and 'gender', in terms of 'radical otherness' and 'otherness' were recurrently utilised through these narratives to maintain a difference enabling the respective administrations to maintain 'US' identity as a progressive and developed western nation, intrinsically justifying the US role as an arbiter of the global nuclear order. A useful work for scholars researching identity construction and US foreign and security policies, US-India bilateral nuclear relations, South Asian nuclear politics, critical security, and postcolonial studies.

How has the Ukrainian state sought to build national identity over the past decade, and with what results? The premise of the book is that assertions about the role of the state in identity politics should be treated as questions to be debated theoretically and studied empirically instead of assumptions made casually and left unexamined. Each essay begins with a common set of questions. Is it true that overcoming Ukraine's current cleavages is a prerequisite for holding the country together or for reforming it? How have the legacies of history constrained the state's nation-building project? What obstructing cleavages exist, and what sorts of national identity might provide a solid foundation for building an overarching Ukrainian national identity? Statistical analysis of mass attitudes, case studies on culture, education, the military, and foreign policy provide a detailed look at efforts to promote national identity, with surprising conclusions. Taken together the essays provide an overdue evaluation of the role of the state in nation building.

Land Administration overviews recent advances in building formal property systems throughout the world and examines the land administration infrastructure required to support such systems. It gives particular attention to the survey, registration, valuation and land use control functions, and provides an extended discussion of the associated information management challenges.

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.

In The Cost of Winning, Michael H. Cosgrove describes how the United States used economic policies to contain the Soviet Union during the post-World War n era and how those policies turned a vibrant American economy into one of broken promises and declining power. Cosgrove defines and examines the five economic building blocks used to contain the Soviets in America's Golden Age: the Marshall Plan, free trade, federal income tax policy, the American defense umbrella, and plentiful and cheap oil from the Middle East. He explains how policies supporting these building blocks allowed U.S. taxpayers to both contain the Soviets and enjoy a rapidly rising standard of living. America's economic superstate began to crumble, however, with President Nixon's August 1971 decision to abandon the gold quasi-standard and Saudi Arabia's 1973 decision to cut oil shipments to America. Lean years for the American economy set in. When the American economy could no longer deliver the American dream, entitlements were increased in an attempt to fill the gap between expectations and what the private sector could provide. Since the early 1970s, real purchasing power has been steadily eroding for approximately 75 million private sector workers. The American dream that a good education would lead to a decent job and a rising standard of living in a safe neighborhood has been dashed. Violent crime in America increases while expenditures on public safety rapidly increase. Will America be the first world power to reverse its relative decline? Cosgrove maintains that Congress must initiate the upward process by restructuring itself. Rather than meeting in Washington, D.C., Congress should meet a maximum three to four months per year at a different site each year to achieve "American revitalization." Cosgrove's solutions to the problems of crime include law enforcement through use of bounty hunters to identify and capture alleged criminals, and to establish a fixed penalty system for violent crimes to make costs of committing crime clearer to everyone. Certain to be controversial, this intriguing examination of the state of affairs in the United States, and the author's recommended policies will be compelling reading for sociologists, policymakers, economists, and scholars with an interest in applied public policy for the long haul.

Tensions between central authorities and subnational units over centralization and fiscal autonomy are on top of the political agenda in many developing federal countries. This book examines historical changes in the balance between the resources that presidents and governors control and the policy responsibilities they have to deliver. It focuses on Argentina and Brazil, the most decentralized federal countries in Latin America, with the most powerful sub-national governments in the region. Using formal modelling, statistical tools, and comparative historical analyses, it examines substantive shifts in the allocation of resources and the distribution of administrative functions and explains under which conditions these changes occur. In doing so, it presents theoretical and comparative implications for the study of fiscal federalism and the functioning of developing federal democracies. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of federalism, intergovernmental relations, decentralization, and sub-national politics and more broadly to those studying comparative politics, democratization, political elites, public policy and economics.

The literature on regional planning deals mainly with the economic development of depressed areas and urban planning. Few works treat regional planning by businesses and fewer still explore its employment by the military. Regional Planning corrects this imbalance by providing a unique introduction to the study of region types and their use for planning and operational purposes. Written in clear, accessible language and utilizing over 70 illustrations, Dr. Branch describes the many types of regions, their use by various fields of study for different purposes, and their utilization by civil governments, businesses, and the military services. In addition, examples of current practices in regional planning are discusses as well as future potential.

Labour migration has become one of the hot topics in Europe, especially since 2000 with the shift from restriction to managed migration. This book provides an authoritative account of policy change over labour migration in Europe during this new era of governance. It has important implications for debates about the contemporary governance of labour migration in Europe, and questions about the impact of an emergent EU migration regime in the context of a globalising labour market. The key findings offer a deeper understanding of the linkages between those engaged in policymaking and the kinds of communities that produce usable knowledge. It will therefore be essential reading for academics, practitioners and students of migration and national policy processes in the EU. It will be an invaluable resource for individuals and organisations active in the immigration policy community, including policymakers themselves, but also the wider network of NGOs, think tanks and interest groups. -- .

How do Russian leaders balance the need to decentralize governance in a socially and politically complex country with the need to guarantee political control of the state? Since the early 2000s Russian federal authorities have arranged a system of political control on regional elites and their leaders, providing a "police control" of special bodies subordinated by the federal center on policy implementation in the regions. Different mechanisms of fiscal federalism and investment policy have been used to ensure regional elites' loyalty and a politically centralized but administratively decentralized system has been created. Asking clear, direct, and theoretically informed questions about the relationship between federalism, decentralization and authoritarianism, this book explores the political survival of authoritarian leaders, the determinants of policy formulation, and theories of federalism and decentralization, to reach a new understanding of territorial governance in contemporary Russia. As such, it is an important work for students and researchers in Russian studies and regional and federal studies.

Though 9/11 tightened borders against hard threats, why were soft threats able to create havoc in the cracks? How could these threats become multilateral while policy remedies could not? What is preventing collective action against common threats when unilateral policies continue failing? Consisting of eight border-defying case studies (elite networking, languages, political refugees, diasporic dynamics, drug organizations, migration, and cross-border comparisons), the volume finds the state retreating, multi-centric governance opportunities blooming, and illegal flows breaking borders faster than state policy prescriptions--all explained by turbulence theory (Rosenau 1997) rather than traditional theories (realism and liberalism). The studies explored by the contributors of this volume lead to the conclusion that the state is not, and should not be, the only viable actor in successful border governance.

This book traces the trajectory of the Indian Parliament from its formation to present day. The essays presented here explore parliamentary democracy through the formative years and highlight the Parliament's function as a representative and accountable institution, its procedures and responsibility, its connection with the other arms of the state, its relationship with grassroots democracy and the press, and its critical role in framing foreign policy and national security. The volume frames major debates surrounding the Parliament through historical, conceptual and contemporary political perspectives. It also looks at how politics in practice is being continuously changed and challenged by new social media and further views the transformation of India's apex legislative institution in terms of democratizing processes, constitutional values and changing mores. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian politics, history, comparative politics, political science and modern India.

Secrecy historically has been seen as the act of someone who has something sinful to hide. Thomas Jefferson once counseled his young grandson that "when tempted to do anything in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public. If not, be sure it is wrong." Engaging in secrecy is not always wrong, however, either in our personal lives or in the life of our government. Secrecy has it place. Often it is necessary. When the framers of the Constitution gathered together in the summer of 1787, their deliberations were shrouded in secrecy. The doors to Pennsylvania's State House were locked shut. Armed sentinels stood guard inside and out, and each of the fifty-five delegates was sworn to secrecy by the Convention's presiding officer, George Washington. The American people were allowed no role in the shaping of their country's new national charter, nor were they even allowed to know of the alternatives their representatives were considering. Yet if their deliberations had been open to the public, if strict secrecy had not been enforced, it is far from certain that the Constitution would have been adopted. Indeed, the Constitution's principle architect, James Madison, had little doubt that the secrecy surrounding the Convention's work was necessary "to save both the Convention and the Community from a thousand of erroneous and perhaps mischievous reports. Secrecy in the U.S. Government is not about secrets. It is instead about the role that secrecy has played in American governance for more than 240 years, beginning with the earliest days of the First Continental Congress in 1774, to the president's executive privilege of withholding information from Congress and the American people, to World War II's Manhattan Project, to today's highly complex and often controversial procedures for protecting national security and other sensitive information. It is a story of the tension between the ideal of openness in government and the real world need for secrecy, and the political accommodations that have been made over the years for each.

Foucault saw the notion of parrhesia (truth-telling) as the most important factor for how governments could and should communicate with their people and vice versa. This important collection compiles and analyses Foucault's views on parrhesia to shed new light on his ideas on the importance of truth-telling in democracies.

This is the first comprehensive examination of the evolution of executive governance in Israel. The book describes and analyzes the political and bureaucratic structures and processes which have led to the predominance of the executive in policy-making and governance. It also analyzes recent political and administrative reforms and their consequences on the Knesset, political parties, governing coalitions, and non-elected public authorities.

The survival and success of public organizations depends on employee satisfaction and motivation to improve performance. New Strategies for Public Pay addresses one of the strongest motivators?compensation. The book outlines proven strategies, many of which are successfully used in private industry, that are also well-suited for government organizations. Specific programs are described and analyzed by experts from government, academia, think tanks, labor unions, and private business, running the gamut from merit pay to competency-based pay to gainsharing.

New Strategies for Public Pay introduces a range of alternative pay systems that show public sector managers how they can:

? Set standards that match the unique needs of individual organizations

? Stimulate desired new behaviors necessary to overcome the fear of change and business as usual mentality

? Energize employees and provide a fresh incentive for continuing improved performance

The decision whether or not to revolutionize pay systems is fundamental. The way compensation is addressed and managed can either hinder or help accomplish an organization's mission. New Strategies for Public Pay offers a useful framework for planning compensation programs that are in line with the times and that will help create more efficient, flexible, and responsive public organizations.

Under the ethnic affairs management regime established by the People's Republic of China, every Chinese citizen is classified within one of 56 state-recognised 'nationalities'. Government policy assumes that these nationalities differ from one another primarily in their levels of economic development, and asserts that ethnic divisions and identities fade with the gradual achievement of economic and social equality. As a result, economic development policy in minority nationality areas has often constituted a replica of the model which has already proven successful in China's Han-Chinese dominated east. Research conducted across five locations in China's Northwest paints a far more complex picture, however. This book considers for the first time how identity informs the nature of economic participation among ethnic minority entrepreneurs in China's remote Northwest. Through interviews with entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, including Tibetan, Han and Muslim Chinese, this book highlights how ethnic-and other-identities inform the nature of economic participation. Furthermore, it explores the broader implications of this de-facto economic segregation for China's ongoing social harmony and political stability. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how economic participation, even when successful in achieving its economic outcomes, may actually serve to reinforce and strengthen minority national identity-perhaps even at the expense of national Chinese identity. This book will be useful for students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Ethnic Studies and Economics.

Communication defines political representation. At the core of the representational relationship lies the interaction between principal and agent; the quality of this relationship is predicated upon the accessibility of effective channels of communication between the constituent and representative. Over the past decade, congressional websites have become the primary way constituents communicate with their members and a prominent place for members to communicate with constituents. Yet, as we move toward the third decade of the 21st century, little work has systematically analyzed this forum as a distinct representational space. In this book, Jocelyn Evans and Jessica Hayden offer a fresh, timely, and mixed-methods approach for understanding how the emergence of virtual offices has changed the representational relationship between constituents and members of Congress. Utilizing strong theoretical foundations, a broad historical perspective, elite interviews, and rich original datasets, Evans and Hayden present evidence that virtual offices operate as a distinct representational space, and they demonstrate that their use has resulted in unprecedented and ill-understood changes in representational behavior. Congressional Communication in the Digital Age contributes to the scholarship on representation theory and its application to the contemporary Congress. It is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in American politics, political communication, and legislative politics.

This title was first published in 2001. This sustained and rigorous theoretical treatment of the choices made by politicians regarding quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos) makes compelling reading for both practitioners and academics alike.

This title was first published in 2001. With the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the legitimacy of one-party, and often one-person rule in other parts of the world has been fundamentally challenged. It appears that for the first time parliamentary democracy has become the universally accepted model to adopt or to be perfected. Newer democracies have started to build the institutions and capacity necessary to sustain democracy, while established democracies continue to refine their democracy, sometimes introducing full-scale reforms. This book examines whether elements of the perfect democracy can be identified and how democratic structures and practices can be improved.