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.

"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.

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

In "Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps," Dick Simpson challenges and recasts current theories of Regime Politics as he chronicles the dramatic story of the civic wars in the Chicago City Council since the civil war. At the same time, the author provides a window into the broader struggle for democracy and justice.Simpson points out that through analyzing city council floor fights, battles at the ballot box, and street demonstrations, one can begin to see certain patterns of conflict emerge. These patterns demonstrate that before the Great Depression, fragmented city councils were dominant. The author also discusses how since the Democrats seized control of Chicago government after the Great Depression, Rubber Stamp City Councils have been predominant, although they have been punctuated by brief eras of council wars and chaos. This book is important for anyone wanting to understand the nature of these battles as a guideline for America's future, and is well suited for courses in urban politics, affairs and history."Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps" received an Honorable Mention for the 2001 Society of Midland Authors Book Award for Adult Non-Fiction.

"New York Unbound "is a critical examination of the problems and prospects of New York City as it approaches the twenty-first century and a call to arms for a new infusion of energy and creativity in charting its future. As the authors take stock of the city's remarkable resources, they build the argument that the wellsprings of New York's continuing prosperity reside not in further regulation, taxation, subsidization, and political intransigence, but rather in the release of market forces as the stimulant to further growth and greater prosperity and opportunity.

From the creation of better housing to the streamlining of social services, the lessons proffered in New York Unbound will have implications not only for the future of the world's greatest city, but for every city attempting to grapple with the challenges of the future.

Debates about Liberalism in imperial Germany have focused almost exclusively on the national level. This book investigates liberal politics in local government; the only sphere in which liberals had direct access to power throughout Germany. Through the study of one of Germany's most progressive cities, Frankfurt am Main, Jan Palmowski examines more generally the processes of politicization and policy formulation at the local level. He argues that in Frankfurt as elsewhere, local affairs had become politicized not around 1900, as is generally assumed, but by the 1870s. Once in power, the liberals' concern for religion, social policy, and education, as well as their skilful use of fiscal policy shows that liberals in Germany were as sophisticated as liberals in Britain or France. Even in the face of an authoritarian state structure, German liberals received and made use of freedom for renewal and reform. German liberalism was not inherently weak. Instead, the crucial problem lay in the country's complicated federal structure, which made it impossible to transfer innovations from the local level to the state and national levels.

2015 sees the fiftieth anniversary of the London boroughs, the thirty-two subdivisions of Greater London laid out to facilitate public services. Professor Tony Travers provides some explanatory history as to why London's government is so fragmented, along with a section on each borough. London's Boroughs at 50 includes an analysis of how London has changed from 1965 to 2015, going from 'swinging' London to 'global' London. Along the way, it looks at some of the personalities who have led London's boroughs or had an impact upon them, including Ted Knight, Ken Livingstone, Dame Shirley Porter and, of course, Boris Johnson.

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.

Democratization is a process of collective emancipation through self-government. Continuous political contestation is essential for emancipation but, in order to know which strategies and conditions will emancipate us, we also need to know which ones subjugate us. Political mechanisms with the capacity to modulate our individual and collective bodies and make them docile tend to be close relatives of those which make us equal and free. Drawing on the latest theories concerning globalization and democracy, this book argues that postnational and postsovereign multilevel governance regimes, including the European Union, should be understood as mechanisms of global capitalism aimed at privatizing democracy. Through a detailed applied analysis of the Basque case, the author illustrates how democratization is closely linked to ideas about territory, collective empowerment and institutional political capacity. Democratization always takes place partially: it never "ends". Contrary to the dominant thinking, this book argues that the incomplete nature of democratization is a positive aspect, with perpetual conflict leading to perpetual change. This is precisely what allows, and obliges, each generation to shape its own forms of emancipation.

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.

Christine Todd Whitman came from nowhere in 1993 to defeat Democrat Jim Florio and become the first woman governor of New Jersey. Her meteoric rise to power has left many people wondering who she is, where she came from, and what motivates her. This engrossing political biography traces her background of old money tempered with social conscience and details its impact on her difficult but successful journey to the New Jersey governor's mansion...and perhaps beyond. Though an aristocrat from a moderate Republican family, Christie Whitman waged a grass-roots campaign to cut the heavy burden of New Jersey's taxes. At first, a skeptical public, reacting negatively to her plan, sent her public-opinion rating so low that even her own supporters felt she had lost the race for the governorship. But in the final, dramatic days of the campaign for the statehouse, Whitman proved to be the campaign's strongest asset. Undaunted by the polls, she donned a pair of blue jeans and took her campaign directly to New Jersey voters in farmers' markets, shopping centers, and businesses. She convinced people of her sincerity, dispelled the "out-to-lunch" image Democrats had painted of her, and fought on to capture one of the most powerful governorships in the nation. Taking office in January 1994, she surprised everyone by making good on her promise to cut income taxes for most New Jersey residents by 30 percent. As a result, she stands as a major player in national Republican politics with pundits speculating on her role in upcoming presidential elections. A voice of caution to the conservative wing of the party, she has shied away from dramatic cuts in government and takes a moderate position on socialissues. Author Sandy McClure traces Whitman's roots back to the days when she was a young tomboy plotting pranks at her parents' rural estate in northwestern New Jersey. She provides an inside look at Whitman's family heritage: the impact of her politically active grandparents, her role as the daughter of Republican party movers and shakers, her early years at the Republican National Committee, her marriage to the grandson of a New York governor, and her devotion to her role as a mother. The story includes the controversies of Whitman's early years in local and state politics and tells how her near defeat of U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, the state's most popular politician, launched her bid for the statehouse.

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.

The Consequences of Governance Fragmentation explains the ongoing legacy of Milwaukee's longstanding school voucher policy. The book details the evolution of school choice in Milwaukee, its impacts on student achievement, key externalities such as school closures and political conflict, and the ways in which the Milwaukee voucher program challenges traditional notions of accountability and democratic control. Michael R. Ford concludes that the voucher policy has fragmented public education to the point where true aggregate level progress of pupils is impossible and proposes an umbrella governance structure to bring funding and accountability equity to all publicly funded Milwaukee schools.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The importance of public opinion in the determination of public policy is the subject of considerable debate. Whether discussion centres on local, state or national affairs, the influence of the opinions of ordinary citizens is often assumed yet rarely demonstrated. Other factors such as interest group lobbying, party politics and developmental, or environmental, constraints have been thought to have the greater influence over policy decisions. Professors Erikson, Wright and McIver make the argument that state policies are highly responsive to public opinion, and they show how the institutions of state politics work to achieve this high level of responsiveness. They analyse state policies from the 1930s to the present, drawing from, and contributing to, major lines of research on American politics. Their conclusions are applied to central questions of democratic theory and affirm the robust character of the state institution.

This text is about the very essence of urban planning in a market economy. It is concerned with people - landowners, developers, investors, politicians and ordinary members of the public - who produce change in towns and cities as they relate to each other and react to development pressure. Whether such change occurs slowly and is almost unnoticed, or happens rapidly and is highly disruptive, a production process is creating a finished product: the built environment. This form of production, known as the land and property development process, is regulated but not controlled by the state. Urban planning is therefore best considered as one form of state intervention in the development process. Since urban planning would have no legitimate basis without state power, it is an inherently political activity, able to alter the distribution of scarce environmental resources. Through doing so, it seeks to resolve conflicts of interest over the use and development of land. However, urban plans that appear to favour particular interests (such as house-builders) above others (such as community groups) provoke intense controversy. Development planning can thus become highly politicized, with al

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.

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.