New Zealand (NZ) is widely regarded as being at the frontier of public policy reforms and public governance innovations. Bringing together acclaimed scholars and practitioners from NZ, including those who have led reforms, this edited collection examines the evolution of public policy in NZ. Through focusing on four areas of NZ's strength in public policy governance and management - managing and governing the economy, governing the natural environment, the effectiveness and management of the public service, and the advancement of minority populations - the authors highlight specific challenges, contexts and responses, with an emphasis on contemporary matters such as wellbeing, sustainability and fiscal responsibility. The authors discuss practices for developing innovative public policy and governance, discuss public governance reforms in detail and examine the use of innovative public management and e-government practices. Through the analysis of specific policies and management tools, this title offers an assessment of the impact of policies and their implementation. This book will appeal to scholars, practitioners, policy advisors and consultants in national and international organizations who are interested in, or involved with, cutting-edge, innovative public policy and governance strategies.

In 1925, Essae Martha Culver, a California librarian, arrived in Louisiana to direct a three-year project funded by the Carnegie Corporation that aimed to introduce public libraries to rural populations. Culver purchased a round-trip ticket, but she never used the second half. Instead, she stayed in Louisiana the rest of her life, working tirelessly to see libraries established in every parish by 1969. In Spreading the Gospel of Books, Florence M. Jumonville chronicles the impressive, colorful history of Louisiana parish libraries and the State Library of Louisiana. She draws upon Culver's journals and library reports, in addition to correspondence, scrapbooks, and State Library internal documents, and includes photos from five decades, many never before published. The campaign to persuade individual parishes to financially support a library of their own was a long, uphill pull through poverty and politics, flood and famine, discouragement and depression, war and bureaucracy, ignorance and prejudice. Culver credited success to the citizens, whose thirst for books and embrace of the idea of a library inspired perseverance. In time, Culver's Louisiana plan served as an exemplar of library development elsewhere in the United States as well as abroad. Culver touched the lives of generations of Louisianians who have never heard her name. Spreading the Gospel of Books is her story, along with that of colleagues and supporters, of making the dream of library service come true for all.

In spite of the expanding role of public participation in environmental decisionmaking, there has been little systematic examination of whether it has, to date, contributed toward better environmental management. Neither have there been extensive empirical studies to examine how participation processes can be made more effective. Democracy in Practice brings together, for the first time, the collected experience of 30 years of public involvement in environmental decisionmaking. Using data from 239 cases, the authors evaluate the success of public participation and the contextual and procedural factors that lead to it. Thomas Beierle and Jerry Cayford demonstrate that public participation has not only improved environmental policy, but it has also played an important educational role and has helped resolve the conflict and mistrust that often plague environmental issues. Among the authors' findings are that intensive "problem-solving" processes are most effective for achieving a broad set of social goals, and participant motivation and agency responsiveness are key factors for success. Democracy in Practice will be useful for a broad range of interests. For researchers, it assembles the most comprehensive data set on the practice of public participation, and presents a systematic typology and evaluation framework. For policymakers, political leaders, and citizens, it provides concrete advice about what to expect from public participation, and how it can be made more effective. Democracy in Practice concludes with a systematic guide for use by government agencies in their efforts to design successful public participation efforts.

Curtains up explores city diplomacy in global migration governance. The author lays out the paradox that cities, although increasingly de facto migration actors in an urbanizing world, lack channels to influence international policies that directly impact local realities. Drawing on ten case studies from around the world, the author shows that local governments strive to overcome this paradox through global-level interaction with national and international actors contributing to the emergence of a role of cities in global migration governance. Cities draw on this role to influence migration narratives, place local issues on global agendas and demand a seat at decision-making tables. Advancing the analysis of cities as global-level actors, the author introduces role theory to migration studies and presents a series of timely policy recommendations. These set out concrete steps towards a stronger institutionalization of city diplomacy in global migration governance.This book is written for scholars of migration studies, urban studies, and international relations as well as for practitioners focusing on multi-level migration governance, city diplomacy and multi-stakeholder partnerships.

This book analyses changes which have occurred in the organization and management of the UK public services over the last 15 years, looking particularly at the restructured NHS. The authors present an up to date analysis around three main themes: 1. the transfer of private sector models to the public sector 2. the management of change in the public sector 3. management reorganization and role change In doing so they examine to what extent a New Public Management has emerged and ask whether this is a parochial UK development or of wider international significance. This is a topical and important issue in management training, professional and policy circles. Important analytic themes include: an analysis of the nature of the change process in the UK public services: characterisation of quasi markets; the changing role of local Boards and possible adaptation by professional groupings. The book also addresses the important and controversial question of accountability, and contributes to the development of a general theory of the New Public Management.

This book is a collection of texts on one of China's boldest social experiments in recent years: the rural reconstruction project in Bishan. The Bishan Project (2011-2016) was a rural reconstruction project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China. The writings describe and criticize the social problems caused by China's over-loading urbanization process and starts a a contemporary agrarianism and agritopianism discourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a global desire for the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today's environmental and political crises.This practical utopian commune project ran for 6 years and caused a national debate on rural issues in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad. This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, China scholars, architects, and the cultural community at large.

The European Parliament (EP) - a powerful actor in today's European Union - was not intended to be more than a consultative assembly at first. Yet this book shows that the EP was much more influential in shaping Community policy in the early years of the integration process than either the founding Treaties or most existing scholarship would allow. It studies the EP's institutional evolution through the lens of Community social policy, a policy area with a particularly strong ideational dimension. By promoting a European social dimension, Members of the EP (MEPs) presented the Parliament as the true representative of European citizens by channelling their interests and needs. MEPs thus emphasised the EP's role as a provider of democratic legitimacy for Community politics, whilst at the same time trying to convince European citizens that the Communities could have a real and positive impact on their everyday lives.

The COVID-19 virus outbreak has rocked the world and it is widely accepted that there can be no return to the pre-pandemic society of 2019. However, many suggestions for the future of society and the planet are aimed at national governments, international bodies and society in general. Drawing on a decade of research by an internationally renowned expert, this book focuses on how cities and communities can lead the way in developing recovery strategies that promote social, economic and environmental justice. It offers new thinking tools for civic leaders and activists as well as practical suggestions on how we can co-create a more inclusive post COVID-19 future for us all.

This book presents international experiences in urban network learning. It is vital for cities to learn as it is necessary to constantly adapt and improve public performance and address complex challenges in a constantly changing environment. It is therefore highly relevant to gain more insight into how cities can learn. Cities address problems and challenges in networks of co-operation between existing and new actors, such as state actors, market players and civil society. This book presents various learning environments and methods for urban network learning, and aims to learn from experiences across the globe. How does learning take place in these urban networks? What factors and situations help or hinder these learning practices? Can we move from intuition to a strategy to improve urban network learning?

This book explores the concept of multi-species relationships and suggests critical systemic pathways to protect shared habitats. This book discusses how the eradication of species as a result of rapid urbanisation places humanity at risk. This book demonstrates how narrow anthropocentrism has focused on the rights of human beings at the expense of other species and the environment. This book explores a priori norms and a posteriori measures and indicators to include and protect multiple species. This book aims to strengthen institutional capacity and powers to address and extend the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda by drawing on local wisdom but also the need to implement laws to prevent ecocide. This book highlights that our fragile interdependence requires a recognition of our hybridity and interconnectedness within the web of life and suggests ways to reframe policy within and beyond the nation state to support living systems of which we are a strand.

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

This book reviews and analyzes the innovative measures introduced, lessons learned and problems encountered by selected and representative provinces, cities and counties with regard to the openness of local government affairs. To do so, it focuses on fields that are closely related to economic and social development and to the vital interests of the people, and which have thus aroused great social concerns, such as the pre-disclosure of major decision-making, policy interpretation, optimization of the business environment, and education. In turn, the book addresses standardization concerning the openness of government affairs; in this regard, numerous departments under the State Council and local governments at various levels have already engaged in pilot work, so as to provide a basis for pursuing the openness of government affairs throughout the country. The book subsequently analyzes current problems in this regard, considers the future prospects, and puts forward suitable solutions.

Bill de Blasio's campaign rhetoric centered on a tale of two cities: rich and poor New York. He promised to value the needs of poor and working-class New Yorkers alongside the elite, making government work better for all denizens of New York, not just those-the elite-who thrived during Bloomberg's tenure as mayor. But well into de Blasio's administration, many critics see the city finding myriad new ways to create profit for land owners and developers through a constant process of destruction and rebuilding. Many lauded his goals of creating more affordable housing, but, in 2015, Brooklyn was deemed the most unaffordable housing market in the United States, when viewed as a median income-to-median home cost ratio. Manhattan even with its higher median income, was the third least affordable market. Its notable new buildings include the much-maligned 432 Park Avenue, which is usually uninhabited due to the fact that most of its units are fourth residences. The old adage is becoming truer: New York is a place only for the very rich and the very poor. In The Creative Destruction of New York City, urban scholar Alessandro Busa tells the story of fifteen years of shocking transformations in the city, and an updated tale of two New Yorks, circa 2017. There is a gilded city of sky-high glass towers where Wall Street managers, Hollywood celebrities and Middle-Eastern billionaires live their glamorous lives or stash their offshore cash. And there is another New York, a city where even the professional middle class is one rent hike away from eviction. Despite de Blasio's rhetoric, the trajectory since Bloomberg has been remarkably consistent. A brand new global class of super-wealthy city consumers has been born, and, Busa argues, New York's urban development is changing to suit their ostentatious consumption demands. Meanwhile, the power of city producers, those who hold all the cards in the city building game, has never been greater. Power players in real estate, banking and finance have managed to ensure that, regardless of changes in leadership, their interests are safeguarded at City Hall. By aggressively re-zoning and re-branding neighborhoods across the board, they are producing a brand new city, a repackaged wonderland of lavish real estate targeting the elite market. The Creative Destruction of New York City is an important chronicle of both the success of the city's elite and of efforts to counter the city's march toward a glossy and exclusionary urban landscape. It is essential reading for everyone who cares about affordable housing access and, indeed, the soul of New York City.

The field of intergovernmental relations has changed substantially over the past five decades. It maintains a critical and evolving role in the US federal system as well as in public policy and administration. Building upon the legacy of Deil S.Wright's scholarship, this collection of essays by distinguished scholars, emerging thought leaders, and experienced practitioners chronicles and analyzes some of the tensions and pressures that have contributed to the current state of intergovernmental relations and management. Although rarely commanding media attention by name, intergovernmental relations is being elevated in the public discourse through policy issues dominating the headlines. Many of these intergovernmental issues are addressed in this book, including health insurance exchanges under the now-threatened Affordable Care Act, and the roles of the federal, state, and local governments in food safety, energy, and climate change.Contributors interpret and assess the impacts of these and other issues on the future directions of intergovernmental relations and management. This book will serve as an ideal text for courses on intergovernmental relations and federalism, and will be of interest to government practitioners and civic and nonprofit organization leaders involved in public policy and management.

The shut-down of Omaha, Nebraska's Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, raided by federal agencies in November 1988, sent shock waves all the way to Washington, D.C. $40 million was missing. The credit union's manager: Republican Party activist Lawrence E. "Larry" King, Jr., behind whose rise to fame and riches stood powerful figures in Nebraska politics and business, and in the nation's capital.
In the face of opposition from local and state law enforcement, from the FBI, and from the powerful "Omaha World-Herald" newspaper, a special Franklin committee of the Nebraska Legislature launched its own probe. What looked like a financial swindle, soon exploded into a hideous tale of drugs, Iran-Contra money-laundering, a nationwide child abuse ring, and ritual murder.
Nineteen months later, the legislative committee's chief investigator died - suddenly, and violently, like more than a dozen other people linked to the Franklin case.
Author John DeCamp knows the Franklin scandal from the inside. In 1990, his "DeCamp memo" first publicly named the alleged high-ranking abusers. Today, he is attorney for two of the abuse victims.
Using documentation never before made public, DeCamp lays bare not only the crimes, but the cover-up - a textbook case of how dangerous the corruption of institutions of government, and the press, can be. In its sweep and in what it portends for the nation, the Franklin cover-up followed the ugly precedent of the Warren Commission.

This open access edited volume introduces the concept of causal mechanisms to explore new ways of explaining the global dynamics of social policy, and shows that a mechanism-based approach provides several advantages over established approaches for studying social policy. The introductory chapter outlines the mechanism-based approach, which stands out by modularisation and a clear focus on actors. The mechanism-based approach then guides the twelve chapters on social policy developments in different Asian, African, European and Latin American countries. Based on these findings, the concluding chapter provides a structured compilation of causal mechanisms and outlines how a mechanism-based approach can further strengthen research on the global development of social policies, especially in a comparative perspective. The edited volume is highly relevant for social policy scholars from a variety of disciplines, as well as for scholars interested in strengthening explanation in the social sciences.

In this book, Christina Zuber outlines a theory of ideational policy stabilization to explain stable policy choices despite changing incentives. Historical legacies are frequently invoked in popular and academic accounts of the politics of migration, but the mechanisms of transmission are left underspecified. This work contributes to research on migration and to theories of public policy by arguing that the missing link between past events and present choices is ideational: initially a historical constellation of interests leads actors to defend policy ideas that match the historical environment, but over time, ideas can detach themselves from interests and stabilize into societal dispositions (shared values and identities). This occurs if elites build a discursive consensus around a policy idea, and if bureaucrats develop concomitant policy practices. The book's empirical section analyses ideational stabilization in Catalonia (Spain), which takes an inclusive approach to immigration, and in South Tyrol (Italy), where immigration is framed as a threat. The comparison shows that these differences can be explained by the political economy of historical industrialization and internal migration. Catalans were in the driving seat of industrialization, receiving unskilled migrant workers from the rest of Spain to boost their own economy. South Tyroleans, on the other hand, were in the passenger seat, perceiving incoming Italians as colonizers. Over time, socioeconomic conditions changed, and internal migration was replaced with international migration. Yet with historical ideas having stabilized into dispositions, political and administrative elites continued to understand immigration through the now-obsolete perspective of economic opportunity in Catalonia and ethnic competition in South Tyrol. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

During the period from 1931 to 1967 -- thirty-six years -- Kentuckians elected only one Republican as governor of the Commonwealth. Yet that man, a former justice of the state's highest court, seldom appears as other than a footnote in the standard histories. That is unfortunate, for Simeon Willis of Ashland made a fine record as governor, assuming the office during World War II and leaving it strengthened in a postwar world. In this new volume in the Public Papers of the Governors of Kentucky series, editor James C. Klotter has assembled 173 documents and public statements, so that the Willis administration may be examined in depth for the first time. Such an examination is long overdue, for Willis sought to accomplish much under difficult circumstances. Hindered by the opposition party's control of the legislature and operating under wartime restrictions, the Willis administration nevertheless made path-breaking moves in education, health care, transportation, and civil rights. Many of the same difficulties Kentucky has faced in more recent years also existed during Willis's term. How he dealt with those puzzles can be instructive for today's citizens and leaders. Willis faced budget problems, sought to increase aid to education, confronted a conflict over the presidency of what is now Morehead State University, and attempted to increase tourism in the state. His calls for change would be echoed by later governors.

Fifty years before the suffragettes fought to have the parliamentary vote, women in England were able to elect and be elected to local district councils, school boards and Poor Law boards. This pioneering study explores the world of those women who held office on behalf of other women, children, the old and the sick. They faced widespread hostility, but such was their success that in many cities and counties they were a stronger presence in 1900 than in 1975. Local government offered that conjunction of "compulsory philanthropy", "municipal housekeeping" and local responsibility which made it a sphere suitable for women. Based on the records of some 20 towns and 10 rural districts, Ladies Elect describes and assesses their work in local government before 1914, and places it in the context of the general movement towards woman's emancipation.

The authoritarian upgrading process in Egypt has enabled the regime to have a more effective dominance in local politics and to enhance its political control. However, its strategies failed to overcome the weakness of system mobilisation functions, which reflected the authoritarian dilemma of bridging the national and the local. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Hani Awad explores the formal and informal decentralisation strategies employed under three regimes (Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak) to upgrade the Egyptian system of local governance without giving up power or democratising local governments. He traces the rise and increasing influence of Islamist challenges to loyalist networks and explains how the efficacy of Islamist mobilisation over the past two decades influenced the region's response to the events of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011.

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.

Sheriffs were among the most important local office-holders in early modern England. They were generalist officers of the king responsible for executing legal process, holding local courts, empanelling juries, making arrests, executing criminals, collecting royal revenue, holding parliamentary elections, and many other vital duties. Although sheriffs have a cameo role in virtually every book about early modern England, the precise nature of their work has remained something of a mystery. The Tudor Sheriff offers the first comprehensive analysis of the shrieval system between 1485 and 1603. It demonstrates that this system was not abandoned to decay in the Tudor period, but was effectively reformed to ensure its continued relevance. Jonathan McGovern shows that sheriffs were not in competition with other branches of local government, such as the Lords Lieutenant and justices of the peace, but rather cooperated effectively with them. Since the office of sheriff was closely related to every other branch of government, a study of the sheriff is also a study of English government at work.