This book discusses the forms and dynamics of political processes in rural India with a special emphasis on West Bengal, the nation's fourth-most populous state. West Bengal's political distinction stems from its long legacy of a Left-led coalition government for more than thirty years and its land reform initiatives. The book closely looks at how people from different castes, religions, and genders represent themselves in local governments, political parties, and in the social movements in West Bengal. At the same time it addresses some important questions: Is there any new pattern of politics emerging at the margins? How does this pattern of politics correspond with the current discourse of governance? Using ethnographic techniques, it claims to chart new territories by not only examining how rural people see the state, but also conceiving the context by comparing the available theoretical frameworks put forward to explain the political dynamics of rural India.

How do public employees win and lose their collective bargaining rights? And how can public sector labor unions protect those rights? These are the questions answered in From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging. Dominic Wells takes a mixed-methods approach and uses more than five decades of state-level data to analyze the expansion and restriction of rights.   Wells identifies the factors that led states to expand collective bargaining rights to public employees, and the conditions under which public employee labor unions can defend against unfavorable state legislation. He presents case studies and coalition strategies from Ohio and Wisconsin to demonstrate how labor unions failed to protect their rights in one state and succeeded in another.  From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging also provides a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the economic, political, and cultural factors that both led states to adopt policies that reduced the obstacles to unionization and also led other states to adopt policies that increased the difficulty to form and maintain a labor union. In his conclusion, Wells suggests the path forward for public sector labor unions and what policies need to be implemented to improve employee labor relations.

What threatens the property rights of business owners? And what makes these rights secure? This book transcends the conventional diagnosis of the issue in modern developing countries by moving beyond expropriation by the state ruler or by petty bureaucratic corruption. It identifies 'agent predation' as a novel threat type, showing it to be particularly widespread and detrimental. The book also questions the orthodox prescription: institutionalized state commitment cannot secure property rights against agent predation. Instead, this volume argues that business actors can hold the predatory state agents accountable through firm-level alliances with foreign actors, labor, and local communities. Beyond securing ownership, such alliances promote rule of law in a rent-seeking society. Taking Russia and Ukraine between 2000 and 2012 as its empirical focus, the book advances these arguments by drawing on more than 150 qualitative interviews with business owners, policy makers, and bureaucrats, as well as an original large-N survey of firms.

This book compares urban finances in cities located in two different South Asian countries and assesses their fiscal health. It uses simulation to estimate the required augmentation in financial resources by the urban local bodies (ULBs) to reach a level of city development that is significantly better compared to existing levels. The book provides a systematic analysis of the fiscal health of two city corporations in Bangladesh, viz. Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC); and one city corporation in the Indian state of West Bengal viz. Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). The choice of city corporations was based on the shared history and the similarity of heritage, culture, topography and socio-economic conditions. Both DNCC and DSCC as well as the KMC have a high population density, which puts immense pressure on the service delivery provided by these corporations of basic services such as water supply, sanitation facilities, street lighting, drainage and sewerage and waste disposal. This is compounded by poor fiscal health of the ULBs. Using primary data collected through surveys and personal interviews and information obtained from official documents, the book estimates fiscal gaps of the ULBs and undertakes simple simulations to estimate potential revenue enhancements and expenditure requirements to deliver services at the internationally acceptable standards. It highlights under-exploited sources of revenue which can be better realized and also identifies untapped revenue sources that can be easily introduced, in order to significantly enhance city revenues. The book is an excellent resource not only for researchers studying this topic, but also for policy makers and urban planners, particularly those from developing countries having to deal with burgeoning cities with high migrant population density.

In one of the only accounts of Latino legislative behavior, Stella M. Rouse examines how well the growing Latino population translates their increased presence into legislative influence. Latinos in the Legislative Process explores Latino representation by considering the role of ethnicity throughout the legislative process - from bill sponsorship, to committee deliberations, to floor votes - in seven state legislatures. Rouse first identifies issues that are priorities for Latinos and tells us whether a Latino political agenda exists. She then provides a theoretical framework for ethnicity in legislative behavior and outcomes. Rouse demonstrates that ethnicity is a complex dynamic that plays a variable role in the legislative process. Thus, Latino representation cannot be viewed monolithically.

"The war is still raging. And [Gene Nichol]'s still fighting." -John Grisham North Carolina has, since 2013, undergone a greater political sea change than any other state. For the first time, seven years ago, state government became completely captured by a radicalized and aggressive Republican leadership determined to produce the most ultra-conservative political regime in the nation. In a remarkably brief time span, Republican lawmakers have moved successfully toward that goal. The New York Times refers to the project as "North Carolina's pioneering work in bigotry." Other states have begun to follow what they expressly deemed the "North Carolina playbook." Indecent Assembly lays out in detail, and with no small dose of passion, the agenda, purposes, impacts, and transgressions of the Republican North Carolina General Assembly since it came to dominate life in the Tar Heel State. Nichol outlines, without holding punches, the stoutest war waged against people of color and low-income citizens seen in America for a half-century. All-white Republican caucuses, dominating both houses of the General Assembly, have behaved essentially like a White People's Party, without the nomenclature. Bold steps have also been taken to diminish the equal dignity of women and an internationally famed crusade against LGBTQ+ Tar Heels has capped off what has become a state-based battle against the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Republican General Assembly has not stopped with substantive legal changes. It has attacked the fundaments of American constitutional government. In 2019, the state of North Carolina, in short, is involved in a brutal battle for its own decency. If the contest is lost here, other states will likely abandon defining cornerstones of American liberty and equality as well. North Carolina today is not presented with the mere give and take of normal politics. It struggles over its meaning as a commonwealth and its future as a democracy. The book is introduced with a foreword by Rev. William Barber, leader of the Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina and the Poor People's Campaign nationally, and Timothy Tyson, Duke University civil rights historian, activist, and author of The Blood of Emmett Till and Blood Done Sign My Name.

This accessible text summarizes and explains the structure of British local government, focusing on key changes introduced during the Thatcher/Major years and initiatives implemented by the current Labour administration. While offering a detailed discussion of these policies, the book examines how local government has sought to respond in a proactive way to a range of important social, political and economic changes.

Readers are introduced to local government as a lively and complex site of political engagement. British local government is set in a wider political, social and theoretical context. Throughout, the authors argue that the attempt by the Thatcher and Major administrations of 1979-97 to push local government into the role of merely administrating centrally defined policies was largely short-circuited. While outlining and explaining these changes and their effects, the authors argue that far from being defenceless victims of central government, local authorities devised numerous strategies to protect their independent policy-making role. The authors go on to examine the proposals for change introduced by the Labour government and assess their implications for local government in the twenty-first century.

This book will be essential reading for lecturers and students of local government, politics, public policy and urban policy, as well as practitioners.

The Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government is an historic undertaking. It contains a wide range of essays that define the important questions in the field, evaluate where we are in answering them, and set the direction and terms of discourse for future work. The Handbook will have a substantial influence in defining the field for years to come. The chapters critically assess both the key works of state and local politics literature and the ways in which the sub-field has developed. It covers the main areas of study in subnational politics by exploring the central contributions to the comparative study of institutions, behavior, and policy in the American context. Each chapter outlines an agenda for future research.

This book investigates the new representation unfolding in Chinese local congresses. Drawing qualitative fieldwork and data analysis from original surveys of 5,130 township, county, and municipal congressmen and women and constituents, Melanie Manion shows the priorities and problems of ordinary Chinese significantly influence both who gets elected to local congresses and what the congresses do once elected. Candidates nominated by ordinary voters are 'good types', with qualities that signal they will reliably represent the community. By contrast, candidates nominated by the communist party are 'governing types', with qualities that reflect officially valued competence and loyalty. However, congressmen and women of both types now largely reject the Maoist-era role of state agent. Instead, they view themselves as 'delegates', responsible for advocating with local government to supply local public goods. Manion argues that representation in Chinese local congresses taps local knowledge for local governance, thereby bolstering the rule of autocrats in Beijing.

This book investigates the new representation unfolding in Chinese local congresses. Drawing qualitative fieldwork and data analysis from original surveys of 5,130 township, county, and municipal congressmen and women and constituents, Melanie Manion shows the priorities and problems of ordinary Chinese significantly influence both who gets elected to local congresses and what the congresses do once elected. Candidates nominated by ordinary voters are 'good types', with qualities that signal they will reliably represent the community. By contrast, candidates nominated by the communist party are 'governing types', with qualities that reflect officially valued competence and loyalty. However, congressmen and women of both types now largely reject the Maoist-era role of state agent. Instead, they view themselves as 'delegates', responsible for advocating with local government to supply local public goods. Manion argues that representation in Chinese local congresses taps local knowledge for local governance, thereby bolstering the rule of autocrats in Beijing.

Democratization from Above seeks to explain why some national and state governments in the developing world introduce reforms to make local governance more democratic while others neglect or actively undermine democracy at local levels of government. The study challenges conventional wisdom that local democratization is implemented as a means of granting more autonomy to local actors. Instead, Anjali Thomas Bohlken argues that local democratization offers higher level government elites who lack control over party organizational networks an alternative means of increasing the effectiveness of local intermediaries on whom these elites rely to mobilize political support. The book starts with a focus on India and uses original data, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence, to show support for the argument. The study then relies on an original cross-national dataset to show how the argument helps explain the variation in the implementation of local democratization reforms across the developing world.

This book argues that if public services are to be 'reformed' or 'improved', achieving the best possible quality of service is essential.It starts from the premise that citizens and users are the key 'stakeholders'. They need to be consulted and involved at every stage. Within inevitable resource constraints, it is their needs, balanced with those of society, which must be met. Service providers need to change their culture and behaviour to make this happen.This book presents a straightforward and comprehensive model for understanding quality and putting it into practice. Existing quality philosophies and approaches are examined. Overviews of recent policy on quality in central and local government, in the health service, and in public service partnerships are included. Finally, five practitioners present practical 'vignettes' of citizen involvement, local partnerships, and quality improvement in health, housing and local government.Providing Quality in the Public Sector is essential reading for students and practitioners in the fields of public policy, local government, health, housing and the voluntary sector.

There is no one-size-fits-all decentralized fix to deeply divided and conflict-ridden states. One of the hotly debated policy prescriptions for states facing self-determination demands is some form of decentralized governance - including regional autonomy arrangements and federalism - which grants minority groups a degree of self-rule. Yet the track record of existing decentralized states suggests that these have widely divergent capacity to contain conflicts within their borders. Through in-depth case studies of Chechnya, Punjab and Quebec, as well as a statistical cross-country analysis, this book argues that while policy, fiscal approach, and political decentralization can, indeed, be peace-preserving at times, the effects of these institutions are conditioned by traits of the societies they (are meant to) govern. Decentralization may help preserve peace in one country or in one region, but it may have just the opposite effect in a country or region with different ethnic and economic characteristics.

First published in 1935, this book was created to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the London City Council (LCC). The text describes various aspects of life in London and the LCC's role in maintaining an effective infrastructure, including areas such as health care, education, poor relief and finance. The condition of London's green spaces and housing is also described. Numerous photographs, original drawings and a bibliography are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in British history and the development of the LCC.

Das voelkergewohnheitsrechtliche Interventionsverbot ist seit jeher ein unverzichtbares Element des internationalen Friedenssicherungssystems. Trotz seiner unbestrittenen Wichtigkeit ist unklar, welche Handlungsweisen gegenwartig von dem Verbot umfasst sind. Aufbauend auf eine umfassende Auswertung der Staatenpraxis seit 2011 untersucht die Autorin, unter welchen Voraussetzungen Regierungen und Oppositionsbewegungen in Burgerkriegen voelkerrechtsgemass unterstutzt werden durfen. Angesichts der Schneise der Verwustung, die sich seit Beginn des "Arabischen Fruhlings" durch die betroffenen Lander erstreckt, hinterfragt die Autorin die kontemporare rechtliche Relevanz des Interventionsverbots.

In 2016, Donald Trump broke almost all the rules of politics to win the Republican nomination and, even more improbably, to edge out heavily favored Hillary Clinton in one of the great upsets in presidential campaign history. In Trumped: The 2016 Election That Broke All the Rules, Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley, leading experts in American politics, bring together respected journalists, analysts, and scholars to examine every facet of the stunning 2016 election and what its improbable outcome will mean for the nation moving forward under a Trump administration. 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 dramatic conclusion as one of the greatest upsets in presidential campaign history. Trumped will be an indispensable read for political junkies and all students of American politics. Contributions by Alan Abramowitz, Matt Barreto, David Byler, Anthony Cilluffo, Rhodes Cook, Robert Costa, Ariel Edwards-Levy, Natalie Jackson, Kyle Kondik, Susan MacManus, Diana Owen, Ron Rapoport, Larry Sabato, Greg Sargent, Tom Schaller, Gary Segura, Geoffrey Skelley, Walter Stone, Michael Toner, Karen Trainer, Sean Trende, and Janie Valencia.

What drug provides Americans with the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain? The answer, hands down, is alcohol. The pain comes not only from drunk driving and lost lives but also addiction, family strife, crime, violence, poor health, and squandered human potential. Young and old, drinkers and abstainers alike, all are affected. Every American is paying for alcohol abuse. Paying the Tab, the first comprehensive analysis of this complex policy issue, calls for broadening our approach to curbing destructive drinking. Over the last few decades, efforts to reduce the societal costs--curbing youth drinking and cracking down on drunk driving--have been somewhat effective, but woefully incomplete. In fact, American policymakers have ignored the influence of the supply side of the equation. Beer and liquor are far cheaper and more readily available today than in the 1950s and 1960s. Philip Cook's well-researched and engaging account chronicles the history of our attempts to "legislate morality," the overlooked lessons from Prohibition, and the rise of Alcoholics Anonymous. He provides a thorough account of the scientific evidence that has accumulated over the last twenty-five years of economic and public-health research, which demonstrates that higher alcohol excise taxes and other supply restrictions are effective and underutilized policy tools that can cut abuse while preserving the pleasures of moderate consumption. Paying the Tab makes a powerful case for a policy course correction. Alcohol is too cheap, and it's costing all of us.

Most people will recognize the name Robert Blagojevich as the brother of ill-fated Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. But many don't know why Robert came to work for his brother or how he came to be named as a defendant in the criminal trial accusing Rod of attempting to sell Barack Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder after the presidential election of 2008. Now, Robert offers a brutally honest inside look at what it is like to face the full force and power of the federal government and maintain innocence in a high-profile criminal case. By the time United States of America vs. Rod Blagojevich and Robert Blagojevich was over, one of the most renowned prosecutors in America, Patrick Fitzgerald, had brought down a governor of Illinois for the second time in five years. An investigation that would unseat one of the unindicted "co-conspirators" in the case, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., had begun. And the integrity of President Obama, US Senator Roland Burris, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had been called into question. For the last four months of 2008, Robert was, at his brother's request, the head of Rod's fundraising operation, Friends of Blagojevich. Rod and Robert had taken very different career paths and had drifted apart by middle age. But when Rod asked Robert to help him fundraise-because he couldn't trust anyone else in the role-Robert agreed, honoring his parents' wish that the brothers help one another when needed. In the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago-style politics, operating on an ethical level was not easy, as this telling memoir demonstrates. Robert often had to tell potential donors that there was no quid pro quo for a contribution: giving money did not result in state contracts and certainly didn't result in an appointment to fill a vacant Senate seat. Fundraiser A is a criminal defendant's gripping account of how he rose to the biggest challenge of his life and beat the odds of a 96 percent Department of Justice conviction rate to walk away with his freedom. It offers not only a previously untold story of a fascinating trial with well-known, colorful characters that captured the attention of the nation, but also a look at a universal relationship-brothers-as well as the theme of a David ordinary citizen facing the Goliath federal government. Those who enjoy legal thrillers, political dramas, family sagas, and all things Chicago will be especially interested in this memoir.

If there is a "culture war" taking place in the United States, one of the most interesting, if under-the-radar, battlegrounds is in local school board elections. Rarely does the pitch of this battle reach national attention, as it did in Kansas when the state school board - led by several outspoken conservative Christians - voted to delete evolution from the state's science curriculum and its standardized tests in August 1999. That action rattled not only the educational and scientific communities, but concerned citizens around the nation as well. While the movement of the Christian Right into national and state politics has been well documented, this is the first book to examine their impact on local school board politics. While the Kansas decision was short-lived, during the past decade in school districts around the country, conservative Christian majorities have voted to place limits on sex education, to restrict library books, to remove references to gays and lesbians in the classroom, and to promote American culture as superior to other cultures. "School Board Battles" studies the motivation, strategies, and electoral success of Christian Right school board candidates. Based on interviews, and using an extensive national survey of candidates as well as case studies of two school districts in which conservative Christians ran and served on local boards, Melissa M. Deckman gives us a surprisingly complex picture of these candidates. She reveals weaker ties to national Christian Right organizations - and more similarities between these conservative candidates and their more secular counterparts than might be expected. Deckman examines important questions: Why do conservative Christians run for school boards? How much influence has the Christian Right actually had on school boards? How do conservative Christians govern? "School Board Battles" is an in-depth and in-the-trenches look at an important encounter in the "culture war" - one that may well determine the future of our nation's youth.

Interest and research on regionalism has soared in the last decade. Local governments in metropolitan areas and civic organizations are increasingly engaged in cooperative and collaborative public policy efforts to solve problems that stretch across urban centers and their surrounding suburbs. Yet there remains scant attention in textbooks to the issues that arise in trying to address metropolitan governance. Governing Metropolitan Areas describes and analyzes structure to understand the how and why of regionalism in our global age. The book covers governmental institutions and their evolution to governance, but with a continual focus on institutions. David Hamilton provides the necessary comprehensive, in-depth description and analysis of how metropolitan areas and governments within metropolitan areas developed, efforts to restructure and combine local governments, and governance within the polycentric urban region. This second edition is a major revision to update the scholarship and current thinking on regional governance. While the text still provides background on the historical development and growth of urban areas and governments' efforts to accommodate the growth of metropolitan areas, this edition also focuses on current efforts to provide governance through cooperative and collaborative solutions. There is also now extended treatment of how regional governance outside the United States has evolved and how other countries are approaching regional governance.

In one of the only accounts of Latino legislative behavior, Stella M. Rouse examines how well the growing Latino population translates their increased presence into legislative influence. Latinos in the Legislative Process explores Latino representation by considering the role of ethnicity throughout the legislative process - from bill sponsorship, to committee deliberations, to floor votes - in seven state legislatures. Rouse first identifies issues that are priorities for Latinos and tells us whether a Latino political agenda exists. She then provides a theoretical framework for ethnicity in legislative behavior and outcomes. Rouse demonstrates that ethnicity is a complex dynamic that plays a variable role in the legislative process. Thus, Latino representation cannot be viewed monolithically.

This book addresses issues of national identity and nationalism in Scotland from a political and linguistic perspective. It compares a variety of attitudes and opinions from the political elite to the masses, examining the nature of national identity held by members of these groups and the differences within and between them. There is consideration of non-civic aspects of national identity, as well as a measure of political party nationalism in Scotland over the past forty years that illustrates the ideological movements of each major party during this period. This work also represents the first comprehensive examination of the discourse involved in the expression of national identity within Scottish politics and society, combining quantitative and discourse analysis methods to illustrate the articulation of national identity by differing groups in different contexts. Key Features Presents a detailed consideration of the language used within the political and nationalist arena in Scotland Compares a variety of attitudes and opinions held within Scotland from the political elite to the masses Introduces a new method for measuring political nationalism using manifesto analysis

The democratization of a national government is only a first step in the diffusion of democracy throughout a country's territory. Even after a national government is democratized, subnational authoritarian enclaves often continue to deny rights to citizens of local jurisdictions. Edward L. Gibson offers new theoretical perspectives for the study of democratization in his exploration of this phenomenon. His theory of boundary control captures the conflict pattern between incumbents and oppositions when a national democratic government exists alongside authoritarian provinces (or states ). He also reveals how federalism and the territorial organization of countries shape how subnational authoritarian regimes are built and how they unravel. Through a novel comparison of the late nineteenth-century American Solid South with contemporary experiences in Argentina and Mexico, Gibson reveals that the mechanisms of boundary control are reproduced across countries and historical periods. As long as subnational authoritarian governments coexist with national democratic governments, boundary control will be at play.