Self-organised user groups of social and health care services are playing an increasingly significant part within systems of local governance. Based on detailed empirical work looking at the user and 'official' perspective, this report includes studies of user groups and officials in two policy areas - mental health and disability. The authors examine both the strategies user groups adopt to seek their objectives, and explore conceptual issues relating to notions of consumerism and citizenship. Unequal partners thus contributes to our understanding of the role of user self-organisation in empowering people as consumers, and in enabling excluded people to become 'active' citizens. The authors discuss the way in which self-organisation may be supported without being controlled by officials in statutory agencies, highlighting the need to understand and distinguish between user self-organisation and user involvement. The report concludes that if policy makers are genuinely committed to greater user involvement in design, planning and delivery of services, then user self-organisation needs to be both encouraged and supported materially, without being 'captured' or incorporated into management. The research points to the significance of 'user groups' in challenging the exclusion of disabled citizens from all aspects of social, economic, political and cultural life. Unequal partners is essential reading for health and social care policy makers and practitioners, lobby and pressure groups, students and academics in health and social policy and local government studies, and users.

This anthology, "Defining Public Administration," is designed to assist beginning and intermediate level students of public policy, and to stir the imaginations of readers concerned with public policy and administration. The forty-five articles included in the text are all reprinted from the "International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration," and these accessible, interesting articles have been assembled to offer a sample of the riches to be found within the larger work. The articles provide definitions of the vocabulary of public policy and administration as it is used throughout the world-from the smallest towns, to the largest national bureaucracies. "Defining Public Administration" is organized into twelve parts. Each part focuses on a domain pertinent to the study of public administration, including overviews, policy making, intergovernmental relations, bureaucracy, organization behavior, public management, strategic management, performance management, human resource management, financial management, auditing and accountability, and ethics.

Woven through this text is the unifying theme that American politics represents "conflict and compromise," in direct opposition to the increasingly commonly held view that all politics are dirty and all politicians are crooks. By presenting a balance of essential factual content with a broad assessment of system dynamics and their policy effects, the authors provide an accessible yet sophisticated overview of American politics.Features: Coherent theme of "conflict versus compromise" in the American political system Consistent examination of American history for institutional development Emphasis on the positive role of citizenship in shaping good government Each chapter is accompanied by primary source readings Concise 12 chapter format Our computerized test bank is available for PC based Windows operating systems. Over 1000 test items (including multiple choice, true-false, short answer and essay questions) are offered via the ESATEST 2000 system. This system includes numerous options for creating and editing tests, options for creating multiple versions of a single test, and allows professors to administer tests via LAN or Web-based testing centers. A simple, user-friendly interface, along with animated program guides add to the program's ease of use.

Democracy and delivery - Urban policy in South Africa tells the story of urban policy and its formulation in South Africa. As such, it provides an important resource for present and future urban policy processes. In a series of essays written by leading academics and practitioners, Democracy and delivery documents and assesses the formulation, evolution and implementation of urban policy in South African during the first ten years of democracy in rigorous detail. The contributors describe the creation of democratic local governments from the time of the 1976 Soweto uprising and the intense township struggles of the 1980s, the construction of 'developmental' planning and financial frameworks, and the delivery of housing and services by the new democratic order. They examine the policy formulation processes and what underlay these, debate the role of research and the influence of international development agencies and assess successes and failures in policy implementation. Looking to the future, the contributors make suggestions based on experience with implementation and changing political priorities.

This book argues for a radical new approach to thinking about art and creativity in Africa, challenging outdated normative discourses about Africa’s creative heritage.

Africanism, which is driven by a traumatic response to colonialism in Africa, has an almost unshakable stranglehold on the content, stylistics, and meaning of art in Africa. Post-African aesthetics insists on the need to move beyond this counter-colonial self-consciousness and considerably change, re-work and enlarge the ground, principles and mission of artistic imagination and creativity in Africa. This book critiques and dismantles the tropes of Africanism and Afrocentrism, providing the criteria and methodology for a Post-African art theory or Post-African aesthetics. Grounded initially in essays by Denis Ekpo, the father of Post-Africanism, the book then explores a range of applications and interpretations of Post-African theory to the art forms and creative practices in Africa.

With particular reference to South Africa, this book will be of interest to researchers across the disciplines of Art, Literature, Media Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and African Studies.

Table of Contents

Preface: Pfunzo Sidogi 1: Africa Mis-Travelling to Modernity: From Modern African Art to African Modernism Denis Ekpo 2: Manifesto for Post-African Art Denis Ekpo 3: The New African Movement and the Artists it Inspired: The Early Post-Africanists Pfunzo Sidogi 4: Africanity, Litigation Aesthetics, and Openness to BeingChielozona Eze 5: Post-Africanism as Fluid, Feminist and Agentic Alterity Runette Kruger 6: The Ruses of the Afrophilia Condition Thabang Molatelo Monoa

Recently, budgetary restraints and institutional gridlock have limited the role of the national government in domestic policymaking. Subnational governments have responded by assuming primary responsibility for a number of key problems, including economic development, educational improvement, environmental regulation, and health and welfare innovations. The United States has some 80,000 subnational governments from nation-sized states to mosquito abatement districts. A concise introduction to state-local relations, this volume of nine original essays includes an overview of the structure of state-local arrangements, central policy issues in state-local relations, and the likely future of state-local relations.

America has rediscovered its states and their governments. After decades of dominance by the federal government, the balance of power is returning, often dramatically, to state governments. A devolution of authority began during the Reagan years, but recent Republican victories in Washington and in the states promise to accelerate the rate at which state governments assume greater responsibility for governing the nation. Inherent in that development is the sense that state governments, long perceived as the weakest link in American politics, are now perhaps the strongest.Here, David Hedge provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of how states have evolved over the past several decades both on the demand side (citizen participation, elections, parties, interest groups) and the supply side (governors, legislatures, the courts) of state government. In addition to describing the kinds of changes that are occurring at the state level, Hedge looks at the impact of those developments on the quality of statehouse democracy and the ability of the states to govern effectively. The major theme of the text is that state governments in the nineties are better able to govern than ever before but suffer the same kinds of problems--inordinate interest group influence, partisanship, political stalemate--that we have seen at the federal level."Governance and the Changing American States" offers students an important and timely framework for viewing and assessing these changes in state government in the context of recent research on the impact of changing state politics and governing.

This is the first systematic, longitudinal study of the organization and operations of Chinese government at the county level. Highlighting the relationships between county officials and the administrative and production units above and below them, the authors open a window on the vast bureaucratic middle ground between Beijing policymaking and community-level politics.

This comprehensive volume is the first systematic effort to explore the ways in which recognised states and international organisations interact with secessionist 'de facto states', while maintaining the position that they are not regarded as independent sovereign actors in the international system. It is generally accepted by policy makers and scholars that some interaction with de facto states is vital, if only to promote a resolution of the underlying conflict that led to their decision to break away, and yet this policy of 'engagement without recognition' is not without complications and controversy. This book analyses the range of issues and problems that such interaction inevitably raises. The authors highlight fundamental questions of sovereignty, conflict management and resolution, settlement processes, foreign policy and statehood. This book will be of interest to policy makers, students and researchers of international relations. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnopolitics.

Examines the reconstruction of institutional power relationships that had to be negotiated among the courts, the parties, the President, the Congress, and the states in order to accommodate the expansion of national administrative capacities around the turn of the twentieth century.

Get ready to run for--and win--that local election! In the land of opportunity, just about anyone who qualifies as an elector can seek public office. Some do it on a whim, some are urged to run, and some want to use their time and talents to make a difference in their local community. If you want to know how to prepare for a run, which steps to take beforehand, and how the process goes from announcement to campaigning to election day to the swearing-in ceremony--this book has you covered. Find out what it's like to run for local office as a first-time candidate Explore the introspection required and the study necessary to make such a run effective Deal with marketing, fundraising, interacting with the public, and dealing with opponents Encourage and help others to make a run for local office Though only one person ultimately wins a seat, nobody does it without a wide network of support. Running For Local Office For Dummies is your ticket to navigating every step on the road to winning that election.

Conflict, Improvisation, Governance presents a carefully crafted and edited collection of first hand accounts of diverse public sector and non-profit urban practitioners facing the practical challenges of "doing democracy" in the global/local context of the interconnected major European city of Amsterdam and its region. The book examines street level democratic processes through the experiences of planning and city governance practitioners in community development, youth work, public service delivery, urban public administration, immigration and multi-cultural social policy. These profiles and case studies show widely shared challenges in global and local urban environments, and new, "bottom-up," democratic and improvisational strategies that community members and public officials alike can use to make more inclusive, democratic cities.

Written by two of the most respected observers of New York City, this book is a comprehensive guide to city politics.

How have immigration and diversity shaped urban life and local governance? The Routledge Handbook to the Governance of Migration and Diversity in Cities focuses on the ways migration and diversity have transformed cities, and how cities have responded to the challenges and opportunities offered. Strengthening the relevance of the city as a crucial category for the study of migration policy and migration flows, the book is divided into five parts: * Migration, history and urban life * Local politics and political participation * Local policies of migration and diversity * Superdiverse cities * Divided cities and border cities. Grounded in the European debate on "the local turn" in the study of migration policy, as contrasted to the more traditional focus on the nation-state, the handbook also brings together contributions from North America, South America, Asia and the Middle East and contributors from a wide range of disciplines. It is a valuable resource for students and scholars working in political science, policy studies, history, sociology, urban studies and geography.

Once a group of young people (reformed street robbers) had a vision. To transform their poor divided community. But the vision was tarnished by harsh reality, violent feuds and factional strife, corrupt and ineffective leaders, and youths involved in networks of criminality.
LTarnished Vision is the story of the rise and fall of a utopian community project told against a background of crime and delinquency in a troubled neighbourhood. This vivid and authentic account of life in Satellite City' is set in the 1980s, a decade when the promises of the enterprise culture failed to deliver, and the conditions were created for a generation hooked on crime.
Tarnished Vision depicts the 1980s inner city cycle of social tragedy followed by inept societal response, followed by social tragedy. But this is not only a story for the 1980s. The message is that programmes to save the inner cities, however well-resoourced, cannot afford to ignore the destructive frustrations of urban male youths wh are involved in crime. Community action programmes can be no more than window dressing to camouflage these realities.

Since first publication in 1982, Howard Elcock's Local Government has established a reputation as a comprehensive and unbiased account of how British local government really works. This respected textbook has been completely revised and rewritten for its third edition, to take account of changes in local government and in the circumstances in which it operates. The third edition examines new management structures and accountabilities that follow the policy initiatives of the central Conservative administration. It appraises the impact of the three-pronged reform of the Thatcher years: impact on local authorities' financial resources, new structures of local government and new pressure to contract services out to the private and voluntary sectors.

Recent changes in public service industrial relations have created major public policy problems. This book introduces the main issues and theoretical perspectives of industrial relations in local government and the public services more generally. The problems of industrial relations are illustrated by case studies of a Thatcherite Conservative and a left-wing Labour Council in Britain. The author pays particular attention to the problems of sustaining management authority roles in elected public agencies. The series is designed to provide up-to-date comprehensive and authorative analyses of public policy and politics in practice and focuses on contemporary Britain. It embraces not only local and central government activity, but also central-local relations, public-sector/private-sector relations and the role of non-governmental agencies.

The last decade has seen an increase in political and ideological conflict in local government. This book analyzes this context and examines both the operation of elected local authorities and the rise of a non-directly elected local governement.

This book studies how a modern monarchy transformed Bhutan into a parliamentary democracy. A political ethnography, it focuses on the historic elections of 2007-2008, and studies democracy and its transformational processes from the ground up. It draws on historical as well as contemporary theories about kingship and regime change to analyse Bhutan's nascent democratic process and reflect on the direction of political change, both at the state and local levels in the aftermath of the elections. It also presents insights into the electoral and political process by giving a first-hand account of the author's own participation in the elections and ponders on the larger political implications of this election for the region. A strong theoretical discussion situated in robust fieldwork and personal experience, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of politics, especially comparative politics and political institutions, South Asian and Himalayan Studies, political sociology and social anthropology.

This book analyses the process of reform that led to the formation of the London County Council; the forces that shaped it; and the role played by local and national politicians in its establishment. In the middle of the nineteenth century London was the world's largest city, and the Victorians were the first to face a task which has become familiar to other generations and other advanced societies - how to provide for its government. The divergent political and material interests within a metropolis have to be reconciled; where previously separate communities are joined together by the spread of the city, traditional local rivalries are likely to be deepened by the growing differentiation of rich and poor areas, and to take political shape. This fascinating account of the economic, social, and administrative complexities of Victorian London will appeal to all those interested in the intractable `metropolitan problem.'

Increased flows of people, capital, and ideas across geographic borders raise urgent challenges to the existing terms and practices of politics. Comparative political theory seeks to devise new intellectual frames for addressing these challenges by questioning the canonical (that is, Euro-American) categories that have historically shaped inquiry in political theory and other disciplines. It does this byanalyzing normative claims, discursive structures, and formations of power in and from all parts of the world. By looking to alternative bodies of thought and experience, as well as the terms we might use to critically examine them, comparative political theory encourages self-reflexivity about the premises of normative ideas and articulates new possibilities for political theory and practice. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory provides an entry point into this burgeoning field by both synthesizing and challenging the terms which motivate it. Over the course of five thematic sections and thirty-three chapters, this volume surveys the field and archives of comparative political theory, bringing the many approaches to the field into conversation for the first time. Sections address geographic location as a subject of political theorizing; how the past becomes a key site for staking political claims; the politics of translation and appropriation; the justification of political authority; and questions of disciplinary commitment and rules of knowledge. Ultimately, the handbook demonstrates how mainstream political theory can and must be enriched through attention to genuinely global, rather than parochially Euro-American, contributions to political thinking.

This book, written by a leading sociologist, tells Edinburgh's modern story and unveils its power structure. It examines its politics, formal and informal; its changing political economy; and the rise of its status as Festival city. Behind all this lies a complex system of money and culture, of presumed social status tied into a hierarchy of schools and institutions, universities, banks and finance houses. The book explores arguments about what sort of city Edinburgh should be and what it should look like. It examines planning controversies, from post-war developments through various 'holes in the ground' up to and including The Trams controversy. Studying Edinburgh lets us draw lessons about cities in general, and their roles in the modern world.

The Context of Legislating provides a much-needed examination of how the rules, resources, and political conditions within and surrounding different institutions raise or lower the costs of legislating. Using data tracking over 1,100 legislators, 230 committees and 12,000 bills introduced in ten state lower chambers, Shannon Jenkins examines how political conditions and institutional rules and resources shape the arc of the legislative process by raising the costs of some types of legislative activity and lowering the costs of others. Jenkins traces these important contextual effects across the legislative process, examining bill introduction, committee processing and floor passage of bills in these legislatures. The analysis reveals that institutional variables shape the legislative process on their own, but they also have important interactive effects that shape the behavior of actors in these chambers. After tracing these effects across the legislative process, the book concludes by examining the practical implications of these analytical findings. How can the rules of institutions be designed to create effective legislatures? And what do these findings mean for those who seek to shape the policies produced by these institutions? Understanding of how the context of legislating shapes the outputs of legislatures is a critical element of understanding legislatures that has been sorely missing. An original and timely resource for scholars and students researching state legislatures and state politics.

As recently as the mid-2000s, Catalonia was described and analysed by scholars as exhibiting a non-secessionist nationalism and was seen within Europe and beyond as a role model for successful devolution which had much to teach other parts of the world. The Spanish state seemed to be on a journey towards an authentic federal order and was generally admired. However, the new century has been marked by an ever-growing independence movement, with 47.8 per cent of Catalonia voting in favour of independence in September 2015. Pro-independence mobilization has produced a rupture in political relations with the rest of Spain leading to a sovereignty struggle with Madrid. This book explores how an accumulation of long-, medium- and short-term factors have produced the current situation and why the Spanish territorial model has been unable or possibly, unwilling, to respond. The Catalan question is not purely a Spanish problem: it has direct implications for the traditional nation-state model, in Europe and beyond.