This book offers an overview of the legal, political, and broad intergovernmental environment in which relations between local and state units of government take place, the historical roots of the conflict among them, and an analysis of contemporary problems concerning local authority, local revenues, state interventions and takeovers, and the restructuring of local governments. The author pays special attention to local governmental autonomy and the goals and activities of local officials as they seek to secure resources, fend off regulations and interventions, and fight for survival as independent units. Now, in a thoroughly revised second edition, this book examines marijuana use, minimum wages, the establishment of sanctuary cities, and the regulation of ride-sharing companies. Looking at the intergovernmental struggle from the bottom up, and in the process examining a variety of political activities and policies at the state level, Berman finds considerable reason to be concerned about the viability and future of meaningful local government. This book improves our understanding of the relationship between state and local governments. It provides a thoughtful look at the past, present, and possibly the future of local home rule.

This book is a study of centre-local interaction, based upon the experience of the people of an English county, during a very turbulent period in their history. The work revolves around: the relationship between centre and locality, and the partisan use of local institutions and sentiment for 'national' ends. Dr Coleby combines administrative and political history, and establishes with unusual rigour and clarity the nature of the late-seventeenth-century English polity. Whilst there have been many county studies of the early Stuart and Civil War periods, few accounts hitherto have looked at the situation both before and after the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Dr Coleby argues for the continuity of governmental concerns throughout the later seventeenth century, and challenges received wisdom about the relative local efficiency of Interregnum and Restoration regimes.

This book is about the role that ideas, institutions, and actors play in structuring how we govern cities and, more specifically, what projects or paths are taken. Global changes require that we rethink governance and urban policy, and that we do so through the dual lens of theory and practice.

Border regions are often considered to be the neglected margins. In this book, Paul Nugent argues that through a comparison of the Senegambia and the trans-Volta (Ghana/Togo), we can see that the geographical margins have shaped notional centres at least as much as the reverse. Through a study of three centuries of history, this book demonstrates that states were forged through an extended process of converting a topography of settled states and slaving frontiers into colonial borders. It argues that post-colonial states and larger social contracts have been configured very differently as a consequence. It underscores the impact on regional dynamics and the phenomenon of peripheral urbanism. Nugent also addresses the manner in which a variegated sense of community has been forged amongst Mandinka, Jola, Ewe and Agotime populations who have both shaped and been shaped by the border. This is an exercise in reciprocal comparison and shuttles between scales, from the local and the particular to the national and the regional.

This book provides a balanced assessment of China's communist rule, its viability as well as its prospect of democracy.

The People's Congresses and Governance in China presents a complex but convincing analysis of the transformation of governance in China. As the first systemic and theoretical study of China's provincial legislatures, it draws our attention to one of the most promising growth points in China's changing constitutional order. Through in depth and first hand research, the author provides a comprehensive explanation about why the provincial legislatures have acquired institutional maturation and expanded power in the context of Chinese transitional political economy. The book portrays an innovative pattern of legislative development, sums up pragmatic local strategies for market creation, and identifies multiple dynamics for promoting accountability and democracy. Based upon the case study of provincial legislatures, Ming Xia reveals the formation of a new mode of governance in China's national politics: the network structure featuring institutional arrangements and the mohe (co-operation through competition) pattern of interaction abided by the major power players.

This volume will be of interest to parliamentary scholars and parliamentarians who are concerned with the role of parliaments in transitional politics and economies of both post-communist and developing countries. It will also appeal to students and researchers of Chinese politics, governance and Asian studies.

Egypt's army portrays itself as a faithful guardian "saving the nation." Yet saving the nation has meant militarizing it. Zeinab Abul-Magd examines both the visible and often invisible efforts by Egypt's semiautonomous military to hegemonize the country's politics, economy, and society over the past six decades. The Egyptian army has adapted to and benefited from crucial moments of change. It weathered the transition to socialism in the 1960s, market consumerism in the 1980s, and neoliberalism from the 1990s onward, all while enhancing its political supremacy and expanding a mammoth business empire. Most recently, the military has fought back two popular uprisings, retained full power in the wake of the Arab Spring, and increased its wealth. While adjusting to these shifts, military officers have successfully transformed urban milieus into ever-expanding military camps. These spaces now host a permanent armed presence that exercises continuous surveillance over everyday life. Egypt's military business enterprises have tapped into the consumer habits of the rich and poor alike, reaping unaccountable profits and optimizing social command. Using both a political economy approach and a Foucauldian perspective, Militarizing the Nation traces the genealogy of the Egyptian military for those eager to know how such a controversial power gains and maintains control.

A host of promising public sector reform efforts are underway throughout the world. In governments challenged by budget deficits and declining public trust, these reform efforts seek to improve policy decisions and public management. Along the way, program efficiency and effectiveness help rebuild public confidence in government. Whether through regular measurement of program inputs, activities, and outcomes, or through episodic one-shot studies, performance monitoring plays a central role in the most important current reform efforts. Monitoring Performance in the Public Sector, now available in paperback, is based on experiences derived from comparative analysis in different countries. It explains why there is interest in perfor!mance monitoring in a given setting, why it has failed or created uncertainties, and identifies criteria for improving its design and use.

One of the challenges this book offers is the need to consider dimensions of performance beyond the traditional ones of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. With an increasingly diverse, interdependent, and uncertain public sector environment, for some stakeholders meeting objectives fixed some time ago may not be as important as the capacity to adapt to current and future change. In this vein, the contributors address a number of themes: the criti!cal importance of organizational support for performance monitoring and making it consistent with the organizational culture, the need for active and effective leadership in defining criteria and implementing practical performance monitoring, the value of linking ongoing measurement with more than the traditional, strictly quantitative aspects of public sector performance.

As we gain experience with performance monitoring and its uses, such systems should become more cost effective over time. This book will be of deep interest to public managers, government officials, economists, and organization theorists, and useful in courses on public administration..

Table of Contents

I: Performance Monitoring: An Overview; 1: Effective Performance Monitoring: A Necessary Condition for Public Sector Reform; II: Designing and Implementing Effective Performance Monitoring; 2: Establishing Performance Monitoring: The Role of the Central Unit; 3: Performance Monitoring for Budget Management: A New Role of the Budget Center; 4: Public Sector Reform Strategy: A Giant Leap or a Small Step?; 5: Performance-Monitoring Systems: A Basis for Decisions?; 6: Accountability for Program Performance: A Key to Effective Performance Monitoring and Reporting; III: Comparing Performance Monitoring in Policy Areas; 7: The Performance-Monitoring System in the Korean Government, With Special Reference to Health Care; 8: A System for Monitoring and Control of Health Services: The Case of Mexico; 9: Measuring Police Performance; 10: Monitoring the Efficiency, Quality, and Effectiveness of Policy Advice to Government 1; 11: Performance Monitoring: Implications for the Future

Despite the destabilizing potential of governing of a vast territory and a large multicultural population, the centralized government of the People's Republic of China has held together for decades, resisting efforts at local autonomy. By analyzing Beijing's strategies for maintaining control even in the reformist post-Mao era, Centrifugal Empire reveals the unique thinking behind China's approach to local governance, its historical roots, and its deflection of divergent interests. Centrifugal Empire examines the logic, mode, and instrument of local governance established by the People's Republic, and then compares the current system to the practices of its dynastic predecessors. The result is an expansive portrait of Chinese leaders' attitudes toward regional autonomy and local challenges, one concerned with territory-specific preoccupations and manifesting in constant searches for an optimal design of control. Jae Ho Chung reveals how current communist instruments of local governance echo imperial institutions, while exposing the Leninist regime's savvy adaptation to contemporary issues and its need for more sophisticated inter-local networks to keep its unitary rule intact. He casts the challenges to China's central-local relations as perennial, since the dilution of the system's "socialist" or "Communist" character will only accentuate its fundamentally Chinese-or centrifugal-nature.

Most contemporary public managers will work in some type of collaborative or networked arrangement at some time in their professional careers. More and more work in public administration and policy is now being done in collaborative formats, and while there are many studies, articles, and cases describing successful endeavors, a good deal of confusion persists about what, exactly, makes them work. What are the best practices? This book focuses on the processes, protocols, and incentives needed for successful collaborative endeavors. Moving beyond new public governance theories and the limits of new public management, Chandler uniquely focuses on the facilitative skills and tools that members and facilitators need for success in collaborative work. Written by an author with both academic and practical experience in organizing, developing, leading, and facilitating public-private collaboratives, this book has both an academic thrust and an action focus, drawing on case studies from the fields of health and human services to highlight important theoretical and/or practice points. Making Collaboratives Work is required reading for undergraduate and graduate public-administration students of collaborative management, nonprofit administration, organizational theory and practice, communications, public policy, and leadership. The book is also ideally suited to public administrators and nonprofit managers asked to work in public-private partnerships and collaboratives to solve complex problems.

This book introduces students to the complex landscape of state-local intergovernmental relations today. Each chapter illustrates conflict and cooperation for policy problems including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental regulation, marijuana regulation, and government management capacity. The contributors, leading experts in the field, help students enhance their understanding of the importance of state-local relations in the U.S. federal system, argue for better analysis of the consequences of state-local relations for the quality of policy outcomes, and introduce them to public service career opportunities in state and local government.

This book is an in-depth empirical study of four Asian and African attempts to create democratic, decentralised local governments in the late 1980s and 1990s. The case studies of Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Karnataka (India) and Bangladesh focus upon the enhancement of participation; accountability between people, politicians and bureaucrats; and, most importantly, on whether governmental performance actually improved in comparison with previous forms of administration. The book is systematically comparative, and based upon extensive popular surveys and local field work. It makes an important contribution to current debates in the development literature on whether 'good governance' and decentralisation can provide more responsive and effective services for the mass of the population - the poor and disadvantaged who live in the rural areas.

This is a major survey of how towns were governed in late Stuart and early Hanoverian England. A new kind of politics emerged out of England's Civil War: partisan politics. This happened first in the corporations governing the towns, and not at Parliament as is usually argued. Based on an examination of the records of scores of corporations, this book explains how war unleashed a cycle of purge and counter-purge which continued for decades. It also explains how a society that feared a system of politics based on division found the means to absorb it peacefully. As conflict sharpened in communities everywhere, local competitors turned to the court of King's Bench to resolve their differences. In doing so, they prompted the court to develop a new body of law that protected local governments from the divisive impulses within them.

From 1891 to 1941, Santiago - Chile's capital and its largest and most important city - experienced rapid urbanization, industrialization, and administrative expansion along with a massive internal migration that had significant social and economic consequences for the city. This book is the first study to focus on this important period in Santiago's history. Drawing on a wide range of original research, the book describes the growth of the city, both demographically and physically, and highlights the role of the local administration in this process. Histories of urban politics are relatively rare for both Chile in particular and Latin America in general, and this study seeks to fill these gaps. Some of the topics covered include the impact of Chile's complex multi-party system on local administration, the role of corruption in the management of city affairs, the relationship between the municipality and powerful foreign interests, the emergence of economic nationalism, and the pioneering part played by women both as voters and as elected officials in the capital's governance.

This book is about village governance in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on government archives from Huailu county, Ilebei province, this book explores the operational realities of local practices as well as institutionally imposed social control, land taxation, and self government at the village level. Its analysis of peasant behaviors bridges the gap between the rational choice and moral economy models by taking into account both material and symbolic dimensions of power and interest in the peasant community. The author's interpretation of village/state relations before 1900 transcends the state and society dichotomy and accentuates the interplay between formal and informal institutions and practices. His account of state making after 1900 underscores the continuity of endogenous arrangements in the course of institutional formalization and the interpenetration between official discourse and popular notions in the new process of political legitimization.

Regions are difficult to govern - coordinating policies across local jurisdictional boundaries in the absence of a formal regional government gives rise to enormous challenges. Yet some degree of coordination is almost always essential for local governments to effectively fulfill their responsibilities to their citizens. State and local governments have, over time, awkwardly, and with much experimenting, developed common approaches to regional governance. In this revolutionary new book, authors David Miller and Jen Nelles offer a new way to conceptualize those common approaches: Regional Intergovernmental Organizations (RIGOs) that bring together local governments to coordinate policies across jurisdictional boundaries. RIGOs are not governments themselves, but as Miller and Nelles demonstrate, they do have a measure of political authority that allows them to quietly and sometimes almost invisibly work to further regional interests and mitigate cross-boundary irritations. Providing a new conceptual framework for understanding how regional decision-making has emerged in the U.S., this book will provoke a new and rich era of discussion about American regionalism in theory and practice. Discovering American Regionalism will be a future classic in the study of intergovernmental relations, regionalism, and cross-boundary collaboration.

The "dean of Boston historians" (New York Times Book Review) brings to life the colorful story of Boston's Irish: Honey Fitz, the Kennedys, James Michael Curley, and other political heroes and scoundrels.

According to the distinguished historian Thomas H. O'Connor, Irish political dominance in Boston grew out of generations of bitter conflict between Yankees and Irish Catholic immigrants. O'Connor charts the course of the Irish's growing political influence in Boston against the background of this clash between two different cultures. Beginning with the Irish-born organizers of the 1870s and 1880s, O'Connor profiles Boston's charismatic leaders, from Boston-born populists like James Michael Curley at the turn of the century to Irish Catholic mayors in the 1950s and 1960s who created the "new Boston" to the resurgent neighborhood populists of the 1970s and 1980s.

This compelling work offers important insights into the unique experience of the Irish community in Boston, and it provides a lively portrait of the men and women who made their way through the long and tortuous maze of Boston politics.

Showing how "chaos candidate" Donald Trump scored critical victories in Florida in an election cycle that defied conventional political wisdom, this volume offers surprising insights into the 2016 Republican primary and presidential election. Using historical and current election results, campaign spending numbers, United States Census data, and individual surveys, contributors find that Trump won rural and suburban voters that the Clinton campaign had ignored. They discover that early voting was less decisive than has been assumed; that the immigration issue may not have been as important to Hispanic voters as analysts believed; and that African American voter turnout was down significantly from 2012 despite the racially divisive nature of Trump's campaign. Essays also include a breakdown of how the unpredictable voting patterns in Central Florida's I-4 Corridor often determine which candidate takes the state. Florida's clout should not be dismissed. The state awards more electoral votes than most, and its victor has gone on to claim the presidency in the last six elections. This volume forecasts the future of the most politically volatile state in the union and reveals emerging trends in the national political landscape.

Local officials are responsible for a number of important tasks that have a significant impact on the quality of life of most Americans. Arguably, the policy choices made by local governments in the United States more directly impact individual well-being than do the choices made at any other level of government. From zoning decisions to the creation of parks and the maintenance of sidewalks and trails, local governments are largely responsible for direct services to the public and can provide the necessary tools and skills to create an attractive and vibrant community. And yet one area of significant importance for both individuals and for the country as a whole, local sustainability, is a relatively new policy area for many American municipalities. For example, how many local governments are adopting sustainability policies and plans? How are those initiatives performing? Without an honest and robust examination of both the effectiveness and the efficiency of local sustainability policies, the success of the entire sustainability movement in the United States is uncertain. This book provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of what constitutes local sustainability and why it matters. Focusing closely on environmental initiatives, economic development issues, and social equity concerns, each chapter offers both an account of the sustainability policies being adopted and a close exploration of the performance measurement activities of cities in that policy area. Readers are introduced to the metrics that American cities are using to measure the performance of their sustainability efforts, as well as benchmarks and comparison statistics that may be used to develop and evaluate the performance assessment efforts in their own sustainability programs. Students of public administration, urban planning, and political science - as well as public officials - will find this book useful to understand the complexity of sustainability and local government.

The problems faced by urban Australia became more prevalent in the years prior to publication of this 1995 book. They sprang from the public cost of urban growth, the negative environmental impact of cities, the importance of global competitiveness, tensions between the three tiers of government and declining standards of living in our cities. This book, written by a team of leading authors, offers an exploration of key issues in the debates about our cities. Incisive and up-to-date, it will be an important contribution to discussion about urban planning and policy. Edited by Patrick Troy, Professor of Urban Research at the Australian National University, Australian Cities describes the options and limitations of Australian urban planning practice. It will be read by students and academics in urban studies, political science, sociology, town planning and public policy as well as policy-makers and professionals.

In traditional Chinese cities, a lively street culture was an important part of popular culture, and street life was central to the daily lives of city dwellers, especially the lower classes. By examining street culture in Chengdu, an under-studied inland city, during the transformative decades between 1870 and 1930, this book explores the relationship between urban commoners and public space, the role that community and neighborhood played in public life, how the reform movement and Republican revolution changed everyday life, and how popular culture and local politics interacted. local newspapers, personal records, folk literature and field investigation - the author argues that life in public spaces was radically transformed in Chengdu in the early 20th century, and that this resulted in the reconstruction of urban public space, the recreation of people's public roles, and the redefinition of the relations between ordinary people, local elites and the state. The author thus opens a new way of understanding Chinese urban society and culture during these transformative years.

Who governs? And why? How do they govern? These remain vital questions in the politics of our small cities and towns. In this new book, author Daniel Bliss takes issue with those who believe that small towns and cities are fatally vulnerable to the pressures of a global economy. Based on in-depth analyses of small town America, this book demonstrates how political agency can address and solve real problems affecting US towns, including capital flight, industrial closures, and job losses. Bliss illustrates how small localities exercise choices - such as nurturing local businesses and developing infrastructure rather than engaging in a "race to the bottom," heavily mortgaging tax revenues to attract large box retailers and small box call centers while passively watching more productive firms and better-paying jobs slip away. Taking careful account of comparative literature as well as variations in city governments, their planning agencies, and their relations with state authorities, this book explores the ways in which local politicians and public planning bodies can mobilize local constituencies to weather global challenges and common structural problems such as unfavorable demographics, skill shortages and out-migration. Economic Development and Governance in Small Town America holds out the promise of meaningful democratic change even in unfavorable political and economic circumstances.

The problems faced by urban Australia have become more pressing in recent years. Decisions made by past governments on housing regulations, planning procedures and public transport have shaped today's urban Australia. Now, with urban sprawl leading to inherent car dependence and placing increasing demand on government services, the decision-making process - in all three tiers of government - is under trial and has sometimes been found inadequate or unresponsive. The negative environmental impact of cities, the need for global competitiveness, and declining standards in the quality of city life have added to the urgency of the debate. Edited by Patrick Troy, Professor of Urban Research at the Australian National University, Australian Cities describes the options and limitations of Australian urban planning practice. It is a book of interest to students and academics in urban studies, political science, sociology, town planning and public policy, as well as policy-makers and professionals.

Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi examines gender and antebellum politics, and argues that the demands of masculinity and honour within states' antiparty political culture made secession possible. The non-institutional context of all political rhetoric caused Mississippi voters to condemn the Republicans' anti-Southern program as a personal insult, and linked men's understanding of masculinity with electoral politics, the actual mechanism for secession.

European cities are on the rise, and are taking advantage of the opportunities of the European integration and globalization processes. But they also face economic changes, social inequalities, poverty and a new set of constraints. Taking examples through the European Union, European Cities explores the impact of the transformation of the nation states on cities and the change of local societies and local governments. It argues that new modes of urban governance are emerging, and that cities are becoming collective actors within European governance.

European Cities shows why and how the bulk of European cities still appear to be original forms of compromise, aggregation, representation of diverse interests, and culture. Different modes of governance are gradually being structured in most middle size European cities despite processes of social exclusion segregation accompanied by the increased mobility of some citizens. Are Europeans going to invent a new form of institutionalized and territorialized capitalism, of which medium-sized European cities will be one of the pillars and one of the actors ? Failing that, the effects of changing scales could be expressed as profound transformations of the European urban model.

European cities are on the rise, taking advantage of the opportunities of the European integration and globalization processes. But they also face economic changes, social inequalities, poverty, and a new set of constraints. Taking examples through the European Union, the new book shows the impact of the transformation of the nation states on cities and the change of local societies and local governments. It argues that new modes of urban governance are emerging and that cities are becoming collective actors within the European governance.