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.

Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road, turned that plan into reality. Public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws didn't disappear, but they got quieter: meek suggestions barely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The bears, on the other hand, were increasingly visible. Grafton's freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city, in an effort to get off the grid. And with a large and growing local bear population, conflict became inevitable. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is both a screwball comedy and the story of a radically American commitment to freedom. Full of colorful characters, puns and jokes, and one large social experiment, it is a quintessentially American story, a bearing of our national soul.

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 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.

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.

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.

Cities are complex, sprawling, diverse places. They are organized, but disorganized managed, but unmanaged orderly, but disorderly. Modern metropolitan cities reproduce themselves and we are familiar with the common icons that are replicated in every part of the globe, but how should we understand cities? For the past five years, Professor Czarniawska has been leading a research project on globalization and the management of cities. Rather than seeing the city as a conurbation, or a location of economic activity, or in terms of governance and administration, Czarniawska explores the city as an action net. An action net of this sort includes various organizations - municipal, state, private, and voluntary-and non-organized individuals. Such an approach was designed to avoid the fallacy of viewing the big city as one big organization. The city is thus conceived as a particularly complex and disorderly action net a seamless web of interorganizational networks, where the city administration proper constitutes just one point of entry and by no means provides a map of the entire terrain. The research focuses on three European capitals: Warsaw, Stockholm, and Rome. This book is intende

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.

Community visioning and strategic planning programs have become increasingly important in recent years as local governments in rural areas have searched for innovative ways to revitalize their local economies or manage population growth. A panel of experts describes local government programs in ten states. They also evaluate the effectiveness in reaching the vision and objective set forth in these programs. The authors examine the main components of each program and offer insights into factors contributing to its success. Major attention is paid to the need for social capital, benchmarking, and continuing support following the initial efforts. The discussion in the book includes recommendations for starting a community strategic visioning exercise.

We hear the term "sustainability" everywhere today. In the context of city management, the term often refers to environmental concerns, both locally and globally. Managing the Sustainable City examines not only how cities can prepare to weather the local effects of climate change, but also how urban centers can sustain themselves through other modern management challenges, including budgeting and finance, human resource management, public safety, and infrastructure. This clearly written and engaging new textbook provides a comprehensive overview of urban administration today, exploring the unique demographics of cities, local government political structures, intergovernmental relations, and the full range of service delivery areas for which cities are ever more responsible. Throughout the book, two important components of city management today-the use of technology and measuring performance for accountability-are highlighted, along with NASPAA accreditation standards and competencies. Particular attention is paid to incorporating Urban Administration standards to provide students using the text will have a thorough understanding of: The ethics of local government management The roles and relationships among local and elected/appointed government officials, as well as what makes local institutions different from other institutions Strategies for engaging citizens in local governance The complexities of intergovernmental and network relationships to develop skills in collaborative governance How to manage local government financial resources as well as human resources Public service values such as accountability, transparency, efficiency, effectiveness, ethical behavior, and equity and emphasized throughout the text, and discussion questions, exercises, and "career pathways" highlighting successful public servants in a variety of city management roles are included in each chapter. Managing the Sustainable City is an ideal textbook for students of public administration, public policy, and public affairs interested in learning how cities can be sustainable-in their management, their policies, and their interactions with their citizens-as well as in preparing for and managing the impacts of climate change.

Unlike most competing texts that are densely written and heavily theoretical, with little flavor of political life, this book is a readable, jargon-free introduction to real-life local politics for today's students. While it encompasses local government and politics in cities and towns across America, "Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots" gives special attention to the politics of suburbia, where many students live, and encourages them to become engaged in their own communities. The book is also distinguished by its strong emphasis on nuts-and-bolts practical politics. It provides focused discussion of institutions, roles, and personalities as well as the dynamic environment of local politics (demographics, immigration, globalization, etc.) and major policy issues (budgets, land use, transportation, education, etc.). Other texts treat communities as abstractions and readers as passive observers. "Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots" is designed to inspire civic engagement as well as understanding. It features "In Your Community" research projects for students in every chapter along with informative tables, clear charts, essential terms, and guides to useful websites.

"Russell's data is moving and powerful, and I would expect this book to become an essential referent for gay rights activists in the future."
--"SIGNS"

When, in 1992, the citizens of Colorado ratified Amendment 2, effectively stripping lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals of protection from discrimination under the state's constitution, the vote divided the state and left the gay population disspirited and angry. Their psychological predicament offered an opportunity to examine the precise intersection at which the individual meets social oppression.

Voted Out is the first to document the psychological impact of anti-gay legislation on the gay community, illustrating the range of reactions, from depression, anger, and anxiety to a sense of empowerment and a desire to mobilize, which such legislation can engender. It also offers a detailed account of an innovative team approach to the qualitative coding and analysis process. Blending traditional quantitative methods with more innovative qualitative analyses, it provides a valuable opportunity to compare quantitative and qualitative data focused on the same issue within one volume.

The volume specifically addresses researchers' use of the results of their research beyond publication and the ways in which research undertaken to examine a social issue can be returned to the community.

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws. They countered the states' insistences that states were merely trying to maintain the domestic peace with the equal-rights promises they found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were pastors, editors, lawyers, politicians, ship captains, and countless ordinary men and women, and they fought in the press, the courts, the state legislatures, and Congress, through petitioning, lobbying, party politics, and elections. Long stymied by hostile white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, the movement's ideals became increasingly mainstream in the 1850s, particularly among supporters of the new Republican party. When Congress began rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, Republicans installed this vision of racial equality in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. These were the landmark achievements of the first civil rights movement. Kate Masur's magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois "black laws" helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day.

The Territorial Imperative explores a growing area of interest in comparative political economy - the interaction of politics and economics at the mesolevel of the polity. Noting the ubiquity of regional economic disparities within advanced industrial democracies, Jeffrey Anderson undertakes a sophisticated analysis of the complex political conflicts that are generated by declining regional economies, and involve myriad actors across multiple levels of the polity. In this study of political responses to regional crisis, the principal theoretical focus centers on the impact of constitutional orders as bona fide political institutions. On the basis of a carefully constructed comparison of four declining industrial regions within a broader cross-national comparison of unitary Britain and federal Germany, Anderson concludes that constitutional orders as institutions do in fact matter. In short, the territorial distribution of power, encapsulated in the federal-unitary distinction, is shown to exercise a strong political logic of influence on the distribution of interests and resources among subnational and national actors and on the strategies of cooperation and conflict available to them. In the course of the study, Anderson brings together in a creative manner theories of intergovernmental and center-periphery relations, corporatism, pluralism, and the state. His book provides new insights into more than just mesolevel politics; indeed, the explicit focus on the political economy of regions calls into question aspects of the conventional wisdom on British and German politics, based for the most part on national-level studies. Viewed in the context of widespread optimism surrounding thefuture of regions in a post-1992 Europe, Anderson's findings also underscore the need for caution when assessing the horizons of action for subnational interests in advanced industrial democracies. Offering an innovative theoretical approach grounded in comparative empirical research, The Territorial Imperative will be welcomed by political economists, scholars and students of comparative politics, sociology, and public policy, political geographers, and economists and historians interested in Western Europe.

Politics in Place focuses on political life in a typical Australian agricultural town. It examines the maintenance of a local political power structure through an analysis of the town's social processes and associated ideologies. Dr Gray argues that local government does affect peoples' lives and discusses why it is that some people can use their local political system to their advantage while others remain unempowered. Politics in Place does not rely on the identification of an elite group, nor does it merely describe static features of social stratification. Rather, it examines the historically-based processes that have created the constraints which limit prospects for local people. The book should be of interest to anyone wishing to gain an insight into the workings of politics at local level, as well as students and scholars of political sociology, Australian studies, and public administration.

The book explores the regional governing of metropolitan America in a comprehensive and systematic fashion. It reviews the financial system of state and local government at the broadest possible level--the national level--and explores the relationships between the federal government, the 50 state governments, and the 86,000 local governments that constitute the United States system. It assesses and identifies the fundamentally different purposes, organizational designs, and powers of the several forms and types of local government--counties, municipalities (both cities and towns), and special districts.Although defined for statistical purposes by the federal government, metropolitan areas can be used to begin to understand how metropolitan regions in the United States are responding to the governance needs of their areas. The book compares and contrasts variations in the governing structures of metropolitan systems in the United States. It introduces the Metropolitan Power Diffusion Index (MPDI), a scale that measures the distribution of local government power for each metropolitan area in the United States. The scale also is used to assess changes in the diffusion of power over the later quarter of the 20th century. The book overviews the classic debate that has raged for the last 50 years over how metropolitan areas in the United States ought to be organized. One view, which I call the "region as organic whole," sees the metropolitan region as formally organized to explicitly serve the purposes of the region as it competes with other metropolitan regions throughout the world in pursuit of economic development. The second view, which I call the "polycentric region," views the metropolitan region as a diverse set of personal choices in which citizens choose to reside in places that match their personal preferences. Global competitiveness results from creating an environment that encourages private enterprise and entrepreneurship. The book explores, in detail, cooperative strategies that have been developed to govern the metropolitan areas of the United States. It identifies and presents four types of approaches. Those types are: coordinating regionalism; administrative regionalism; fiscal regionalism; and structural regionalism. Each of these strategies can be found to one degree or another in each of the metropolitan regions in the United States. Finally, the book explores problems or issues that arise as a result of the structuring of government systems in metropolitan areas. It pays particular attention to the issues of regional economic performance, racial segregation and fiscal equity between local government jurisdictions.

In this book the author seeks to rebut the somewhat fatalistic argument that socio-economic prosperity in the cities can only be achieved by the application of global market-led policies. He argues that urban society and policy makers do have sufficient freedom of action to make local decisions on the economic and social development of deprived neighbourhoods. Drawing on evidence from six major European cities, he demonstrates that their 'Integrated Area Development' strategies, which rely on grassroots democracy and the empowerment of local communities, can deliver a social, economic, and cultural renaissance which meets the needs of the local population more effectively than the market-forces creed.

Reviving local democracy offers a vivid and persuasive critical examination of New Labour's programme for the modernisation of local government, providing a balanced view of the democracy and participation debate. Since 1997, the Blair government has sought to mobilise popular participation through local referenda, new political structures, electoral reform, and the creation of powerful new elected mayors. Through these mechanisms it is hoped that the lack of public interest and persistently low election turnouts will be overcome. The book draws on a wide range of new survey data to relate the crisis of local politics and governance to wider changes in the political culture. The author goes on to evaluate the government's proposals to reverse decline, asking whether this programme of reform is likely to succeed. With the aid of a series of recent surveys of both public and councillor opinion, and the successful blending of historical and empirical analysis, she offers an assessment of the realities which the democratic renewal project will have to confront in its implementation. The book is topical and timely, and highly accessible, and will appeal to students, those involved in local government, and anyone concerned to see local government become more representative, responsive, and open to popular participation.

This book provides a detailed analytic history of direct legislation -- the initiative and referendum -- in California from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the present day. California was one of the first states to implement mechanisms for direct legislation, and these mechanisms have been used with growing frequency as the entire process has become professionalized (from signature-gathering through fund-raising to legal challenge and defense). The author studies this important political device in terms of voter interest and behavior, its role in public issues, and how it has affected the state's politics and government.

The book first analyzes how and why direct legislation came to California, seeing it as a typical example of the disconnected nature of progressive era reforms. It then studies selectively, from among the 300 propositions that have been on California ballots, those propositions that have been most relevant to the major issues of their time, have generated the highest levels of voter interest and participation, and have shaped the development of state politics and government.

The author pays particular attention to the explosion of direct legislation, in frequency and consequence, since the Proposition 13 "property tax revolution" of 1978. He also describes how California's contemporary direct legislation experience -- from tax rebellion to harsher criminal justice to controversial ethnic issues -- has had national ramifications. The book concludes with a careful analysis of the current state of the initiative and referendum in California: voter attitudes toward the process, its role as a "fourth branch" of government, and arguments for and againstchanges in the procedure.

Based on extensive research in campaign documents, manuscript collections, the contemporary press, and other primary sources, the book also makes extensive use of voting data, public opinion polls, and official filings of campaign expenditures. All in all, it is the most comprehensive study ever made of a political process that is used today in twenty-seven states.

This anthology will be appropriate for administrative ethics classes and professional thinking in public administration at both the masters and doctoral levels. It is a collection of administrative ethics articles published in journals of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) from 1941 (the earliest publication) through 1983 (the year that the first ASPA Code of Ethics was established). The articles are organized by themes of enduring importance to the field in order to provide graduate students with ready access to the classic works on ethics in public administration. Reading this collection will enhance student's knowledge and skills to think and act ethically and contribute to their ability to view current practices in light of traditional perspectives. The ASPA Classics volume serves to bridge the practice of public policy and administration with the empirical research base that has accrued and the models for practice that may be deduced from the research

Most capital markets that have been established in developing economies like Africa have struggled to make progress over two decades down the line. Development of African Capital Markets explores why these markets have remained underdeveloped and discusses a possible development theory that can be used in designing and implementing legal and institutional reforms to reinvigorate capital markets in African and other developing countries.

Boniface Chimpango analyses the weaknesses of capital markets in developing countries, and argues that legal and institutional framework for capital markets in developing countries should be tailored to the unique informal rules prevalent in each country rather than being transplanted from developed countries.

This book will be of interest to scholars, students and policy makers in the fields of economic development, African Studies, law, development and regulatory policy.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. In Search of a Capital Market Development Theory

3. North’s Framework of Economic Change

4. North’s Framework and Capital Market Development Theory

5. Building Capital Markets: A Practical Perspective

6. Regulation of Capital Markets in Developed Economies and Selected African Countries - A Comparative Analysis.

7. The Mechanics of Institutional Change and Capital Market Development Reform.

8. Possible Implementation of North’s Framework through Institutional and Legal Reform