How are metropolitan regions governed? What makes some regions more effective than others in managing policies that cross local jurisdictional boundaries? Political coordination among municipal governments is necessary to attract investment, rapid and efficient public transit systems, and to sustain cultural infrastructure in metropolitan regions. In this era of fragmented authority, local governments alone rarely possess the capacity to address these policy issues alone. This book explores the sources and barriers to cooperation and metropolitan policy making. It combines different streams of scholarship on regional governance to explain how and why metropolitan partnerships emerge and flourish in some places and fail to in others. It systematically tests this theory in the Frankfurt and Rhein-Neckar regions of Germany and the Toronto and Waterloo regions in Canada. Discovering that existing theories of metropolitan collective action based on institutions and opportunities are inconsistent, the author proposes a new theory of "civic capital", which argues that civic engagement and leadership at the regional scale can be important catalysts to metropolitan cooperation. The extent to which the actors hold a shared image of the metropolis and engage at that scale strongly influences the degree to which local authorities will be willing and able to coordinate policies for the collective development of the region. Metropolitan Governance and Policy will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative urban and metropolitan governance and sociology.

This topical book examines and debates the challenges posed - on a local, European, and global level - by the imperative to balance a fiscal need for smaller public expenditure with a social need for strong governance and protection of the most vulnerable in UK society. Leading academics in the field of local governance contribute to a diverse set of analyses on the impact of the financial crisis. From Recession to Renewal offers academic debate and challenging questions on common assumptions, such as the role of government and the juxtaposing needs of fiscal cut backs and increasing social needs for services. The book includes case studies/practical examples from a range of public services. Lessons from the front-line of service delivery are analyzed. It provides a history and ideological context for the financial crisis and debates the doctrine of government and governance.

This book, first published in 2005, explores the location and dynamics of power within the state, focusing on a recent wave of decentralizing reforms that have swept across both developed and developing countries in recent years. Variation in the timing of reform across countries only vaguely relates to the genesis of an international consensus pushed by big lenders and development banks or the reemergence of democracy in decentralizing countries. The book develops a theory linking decentralization's adoption to the electoral concerns of political parties: decentralization represents a desirable strategy for parties whose support at subnational levels appears more secure than their prospects in national elections. It examines this argument against experiences in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and speculates on how recent political changes may affect decentralization's shape and extent in coming years.

Local Disaster Management explores what resilience means for local communities and local governments on the front line of responding to disasters and emergencies. Disaster management is often seen as a major international issue undertaken by global actors such as the UN, Red Cross and Red Crescent. Yet fundamentally, all disasters are local. Every disaster, regardless of its type, affects individuals, families and communities before they escalate to encompassing one or many communities or nations. This volume therefore explores fundamental issues of disaster and emergency management at the local level. What is resilience? What does resilience mean for a local government seeking to lessen the impact of disasters on their community? How do local governments adapt through their experiences of disasters and how do they recover from catastrophic experiences? This book explores these issues with chapters from top scholars in the field, draws out lessons for local government officials and disaster managers seeking to build community resilience, prepare their communities for a changing environment, and facilitate recovery after disasters strike. Local Disaster Management provides invaluable insight for local governments charged with managing the inescapable effects of climate change and the increasing frequency and severity of disasters, as well as for scholars of local governance, disaster resilience, government policy, and disaster management. The chapters were originally published as a special issue in Local Government Studies.

Wilson examines how economic and political decentralization is affecting the development policymaking environment at the state level. The book first empirically examines the changing economic geography of the country and the specific effects on the economic structure of states. Following this, three case studies are presented. These constitute an investigation of the intergovernmental context of public policymaking and the historical role of state government in development. Economic development and technology policy generally involve targeted assistance to particular elements of the economy. Telecommunications policy represents a regulatory role for states in the most significant infrastructure of the information age. Education and training, long principal responsibilities of state government, represent a form of social infrastructure and are perhaps the most vital for ensuring the long-term viability of a states's economy. Each of these policy areas present different state development roles, and the ability of a state to adapt its policies appropriately will determine--according to this author--its future prosperity.

This text will be of interest to scholars, students, and policymakers in regional planning, state and local government, public administration, and public policy.

After the 2016 election, the Republican Party seized control not just of the White House and Congress but of many state governments. To be precise, the GOP seized control of both legislative chambers in 32 states and governor offices in 33 states-a majority the party hadn't held since 1928. What happened? In In the Red, journalist Meaghan Winter argues that over the last couple decades, the Democratic Party has made a very risky strategic choice to abandon state and local races in order to win federal races, while the GOP poured money into winning state governor seats and state congresses. For Republicans, it paid off. For Democrats--and the American public--the fallout has been catastrophic. Abortion access is more restricted than it has been in decades; gun control legislation has become even harder to pass; and ID laws are undermining voting rights. In states across the country, activists on the ground are fighting massive Republican power alone, liberal and progressive candidates are running campaigns with no support, and American citizens are suffering. If the Democratic Party establishment changes its strategy--and soon--there is hope. Meaghan Winter's book reminds us of the importance of robust local politics and the role that states can play in checking presidential power.

The relationship between citizens and local decision makers is a long standing policy pre-occupation and has often been the subject of debate by politicians across parties. Recent governments have sought to empower, activate and give responsibility to some citizens, while other groups have been abandoned or ignored. Drawing on extensive up-to-date empirical work by leading researchers in the field, "Changing local governance, changing citizens" aims to explain what debates about local governance mean for local people. Questions addressed include: what new demands are being made on citizens and why? Which citizens are affected and how have they responded? What difference do changing forms of local governance make to people's lives? The book explores governance and citizenship in relation to multiculturalism, economic migration, community cohesion, housing markets, neighbourhoods, faith organisations, behaviour change and e-democracy in order to establish a differentiated, contemporary view of the ways that citizens are constituted at the local level today. "Changing local governance, changing citizens" provides a pertinent and robustly empirical contribution to current debates amongst policy makers, academics, practitioners and local communities about how to respond to this changing policy framework. It will be of interest to post-graduate students and academic researchers in politics, public and social policy, sociology, local government and urban studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners.

Early results on election night suggested that Democrats had failed to make significant gains in the 2018 midterms. After all the votes were counted, a blue wave crashed on American electoral politics as Democrats won the House the Representatives and made significant gains at the state and local levels. In this book, Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik bring together respected journalists and academics from across the political spectrum to examine every facet of the 2018 election, and what its outcome portends for our national politics and the coming 2020 presidential election. In frank, accessible prose, each author offers insight that goes beyond the headlines, and dives into the underlying forces and shifts that drove the election from its earliest developments to its eventual conclusion, long after the polls closed. Contributions by Matt Barreto, David Byler, Rhodes Cook, James Hohmann, Theodore Johnson, Kyle Kondik, Diana Owen, Madelaine Pisani, Josh Putnam, Larry Sabato, Emily Cahn Singer, Sean Trende, Michael Toner, and Karen Trainer.

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 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 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.

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

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 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 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 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 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.