Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi examines gender and antebellum politics, and argues that the demands of masculinity and honour with in state's antiparty political culture made secession possible. The non-institutional context of all political rhetoric caused Mississippi voters to condemn the Republicans' anti-Southern programme as a personal insult, and linked men's understanding of masculinity with electoral politics, the actual mechanism for secession.

Since 1999, Tanzania has been actively pursuing reforms of how the central government finances local government activities. Although local government authorities play a significant role in the delivery of key government services such as primary education and basic health care, the central government tightly controls the resources which it provides to the local government level. The book presents a detailed overview and analysis of the issues involved in developing and implementing local government finance reform in Tanzania, including the introduction of a formula-based system of intergovernmental grants.

Local governments throughout the West are undergoing a transformation of their leadership styles and structures. Some countries have abandoned traditional systems of collective or committee based decision-making in favour of Cabinet models or, more radically, a directly-elected executive mayor, while others have strengthened existing mayoral systems. There are a few exceptions to this trend. Based on original research in eleven countries the book assesses these changes in terms of their implications for political accountability, the role of lay politicians, political recruitment, the professionalization of leadership, and relations with the bureaucracy.

Discusses the ambiguous nature of the state in Russia, focusing on elite networks and their role in policy processes. This book examines the paradoxical dualism of state institutions and ruling networks, providing answers as to why some decisions are not implemented, and why the state exists despite the systemic inefficiency of its institutions.

How did the territorial Conservative Party adapt to devolution? This detailed analysis of the Scottish and Welsh Conservative Parties explains how they moved from campaigning against devolution to sitting in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Tracing the processes of party change in both parties this study explains why the Welsh Conservatives unexpectedly embraced devolution while the Scottish Conservatives took much longer to accept that Westminster was no longer the priority. This book will be of interest to students of British, Scottish and Welsh politics and anyone who is interested in the Conservative Party. It also speaks to wider debates about the nature of devolution, party change and multi-level governance. -- .

Designed for local government managers and administrators, this pioneering work offers a clear and comprehensive guide to the use of strategic planning techniques in the public sector. The author presents a concise overview of the strategic planning process, defines the terms involved, and provides a step-by-step methodology for organizations ready to move into the actual implementation of strategic planning. In addition to differentiating between community-based, corporate, functional, and defined-purpose strategic planning processes, Mercer explains the delineation between strategic and tactical planning and offers practical approaches to overcoming barriers to the use of strategic planning in the public sector arena. Throughout, the author makes extensive use of case studies of strategic planning programs implemented by a variety of local government and public sector organizations.

Mercer begins by describing how strategic planning can be both an effective tool for dealing with change and a technique of organizational development. He goes on to provide detailed instructions on how to prepare to conduct strategic planning, how to determine strategic issues, the importance of a values audit, and how to develop an environmental scan or assessment. Subsequent chapters address determining organizational threats and opportunities, composing the mission statement, defining critical success factors and indicators, planning strategies, and assessing strategic risks and benefits. Finally, the author shows how to perform an internal assessment of ability to actually adopt and carry out strategies, the importance of contingency planning, and how to tie strategic planning to the budget and evaluate the process. The public sector manager experienced with strategic planning techniques can use the guide as a handy reference to particular aspects of the process, while those new to strategic planning will find this an indispensable aid in developing and implementing their own internal strategic planning processes.

This new textbook provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the main context in which social work is practiced - Local Authority Social Services. It is based on the realities of work in a modern social services authority and is written by an author team which combines teaching and writing expertise with the experience of working in the social services.

The book covers all the local authority personal social services and the frameworks within which they operate. It addresses the major changes that have taken place in the social services in recent years and looks forward to prospects for personal social services in the future.

This collection presents a varied picture of the state of democracy in Asia, revealing unique findings from a project entitled the 'Asia Democracy Initiative' which explored the role of ordinary people in democratization through the rise of expressive social values in Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand.

This book of critical essays explores new thinking and new evidence on the role of locally-elected representatives in Western democracies. The book is topical in the light of the intense political and popular interest in the problems of making local government representative and responsive. The contributors, drawn from the UK, US, France, Denmark and Norway, deal with two principal themes: political recruitment and representativeness; and the processes of political representation, and highlight the dilemmas of open and accessible local government.

Organizational development, as an alternative to Reagan administration methods of revamping federal agencies, has been successfully applied in many public sector organizations. "High Performance and Human CostS" focuses on the effective new management approach of one such organization, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), and provides perspective on how administrators can move away from outdated bureaucratic models.

The work focuses on public agency dynamics using MARTA as an example. The authors begin by studying emerging practices for high performance and include a detailed look at staff experience and interaction. They evaluate an executive with a look at self-forcing and self-enforcing systems. Other chapters focus on the personal reactions of MARTA executives, provide guides for doing better the next-time-around, and give a small case study of another project. The authors conclude with a comparison of two approaches to high performance: Organizational Development, and the cultural approach popularized by the Peters and Waterman book In "Search of Excellence."

Managing for Results is a model of organizational reform that utilizes performance indicators, strategic planning, and benchmarks. The model focuses on linking these systems to improve performance and public accountability. This book studies the implementation of Managing for Results on six states identified by the U.S. General Accounting Office as leaders of internal reinvention efforts. Government and business practitioners, as well as scholars and researchers of public administration and policy, will find this book useful in assessment, selection, and measurement of state-level reform efforts.

"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.

"Managing the Fiscal Metropolis: The Financial Policies, Practices, and Health of Suburban Municipalities" is an important book. This first comprehensive analysis of the financial condition, management, and policy making of local governments in a metropolitan region offers local governments currently dealing with the Great Recession a better understanding of what affects them financially and how to operate with less revenue.

Hendrick's groundbreaking study covers 264 Chicago suburban municipalities from the late 1990s to the present. In it she identifies and describes the primary factors and events that affect municipal financial decisions and financial conditions, explores the strategies these governments use to manage financial conditions and solve financial problems, and looks at the impact of contextual factors and stresses on government financial decisions. "Managing the Fiscal Metropolis" offers new evidence about the role of contextual factors -- including other local governments -- in the financial condition of municipalities and how municipal financial decisions and practices alter these effects. The wide economic and social diversity of the municipalities studied make its findings relevant on a national scale.

In the shadow of a French national narrative which demonises and rejects local specificities, highly differentiated territorial political spaces have been created, shaped by identity, decentralisation, and public policy. This book analyses regional power in France and paints a picture of a controversial central state undergoing fundamental changes.

The search for a more holistic approach to policy and management looks set to be as much a hallmark of public service reform in the early twenty first century as the changes introduced under the rubric of 'new public management' or 'reinventing government' were in the closing decades of the twentieth. Towards Holistic Governance presents an authoritative assessment of successes and failures to date and a new framework for analysis and implementation based on extensive research both in the UK - where the New Labor government has been an early enthusiast and pathfinder for 'joined-up government' just as its predecessors were for privatization and contracting out - and elsewhere.

This collection of fifteen original essays examines methods of policy evaluation, performance measurement, fiscal cutback effects, and strategies of economic development in American local government. Each essay addresses, not only techniques of analysis, but also the application of those techniques to actual local government policy problems in areas such as urban development, policing, economic development, citizen satisfaction with services, personnel, and licensing, among others.

Although considerable attention has been focused on the selection of minority candidates for political office, the impact of the increasing numbers of high-level minority administrative appointees has not been systematically examined. As the only work that reflects developments occurring in the 1980s, this volume presents the views of minority administrators together with analyses by three prominent scholars in the field. Six of the chapters are contributed by black, Hispanic, and Native American administrators who exercise substantial policy-making and decision-making authority. The group, which includes two women, consists of two city managers, two police chiefs, a deputy mayor, and the director of a quasi-governmental health organization. The editors' introduction to Chapter 1 provides a framework for analyzing the role of minority administrators and their impact on policy issues in urban settings. In the next chapter, the working environment, the constraints, the opportunities, and other factors that affect minority administrators are highlighted. Subsequent chapters explore the ways in which the demands of local governmental systems, traditional role expectations, peer pressures, and the expectations of minority communities influence these administrators' effectiveness and affect their perceptions of their responsibilities. It is clear that minority administrators confront unique pressures and conflicts in governmental systems that have not always been responsive to the concerns of minority groups. Their racial or ethnic "loyalty" is frequently questioned and applied as a test on critical issues by minority and majority communities alike. The editors conclude the volume with anexamination of differences and similarities in the experiences of the contributing authors and attempt to place common issues in a broader context. Blending theoretical and practical perspectives, this volume offers informed, constructive analyses of a broad range of issues of concern to both minorities and the field of public administration. It will be important reading for students, administrators, and academics as well as the political leadership of black, Hispanic, and Native American communities.

This book analyses the diffusion of norms concerning gender-based violence and gender mainstreaming of aid and trade between the EU, South America and Southern Africa. Norm diffusion is conceptualized as a truly multidirectional and polycentric process, shaped by regional governance and resulting in new geometries of transnational activism.

"Offices in Brussels representing the interests of regional actors in the EU have carved out a niche position within Europe's expanding multi-level political system. They are now the most visible indicators of the growing role played by EU regions. How can we understand their contribution to EU governance? What do they deliver to Europe's regions? This book covers these issues"--

While many books detail how senators and representatives operate in Washington, this one describes how they stay in power. The congressional elections of 1998 were the most expensive in history. Incumbency reelection rates were 98.3 percent in the House and 89.7 percent in the Senate, and this was a typical outcome after Watergate-era campaign reforms supposedly "reduced" the influence of money in politics. From the unique vantage of credible citizen-candidates who ran against congressional incumbents from Massachusetts to Hawaii during the 1990s, "Against Long Odds" tackles the question of why incumbents nearly always win.

These citizen-challengers learned that the system is rigged against them. Incumbents prevail through a virtual monopoly on campaign cash, lavish congressional perks, local media and business backing, intimidation of their challengers' supporters, and sometimes outright dirty tricks. This is true for Republicans and Democrats; for conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike. This account details, as no other book has, how representatives and senators are zealous participants in a system that threatens to overturn the American traditions of free elections and the free exchange of ideas. Frustrated voters often complain that, no matter which party controls Congress, nothing ever really seems to change. Merriner and Senter explain why.

The author of this book argues that the new local governance system created by Margaret Thatcher's reforms, when combined with New Labour's emphasis on delivering measurable improvements to outputs, has enabled Tony Blair to have unprecedented control over the public policy process. The author concludes that, far from a more pluralist political culture, the emphasis on achieving centrally determined outputs means that New Labour's governing style is more centralized and directive than the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher to what end is still uncertain.

This volume clearly demonstrates the diversity of our field. Twenty-two scholars have contributed thirteen unique pieces of research on a wide variety of topics including public management innovation; organizational learning; revenue forecasting; finance; qualitative research and research methods; intergovernmetnal relations; training and management information systems; bureaucratic responsibility; citizen participation; political influence of the bureaucracy; critiques of policy making; public administration research. This collection makes a rich contribution of knowledge to our field.

The study of urban governance provides a valuable insight into economic, social, and political forces and how they shape city life. But who and what are the real drivers of change? This innovative text casts new light on the issues and re-examines the state of urban governance at the start of the twenty-first century. Jon Pierre analyses four models of urban governance: 'management', 'corporatist', 'pro-growth' and 'welfare'. Each is assessed in terms of its implications for the major issues, interests and challenges in the contemporary urban arena. Distinctively, Pierre argues that institutions - and the values which underpin them - are the driving forces of change. The book also assesses the impact of globalization upon urban governance. The long-standing debate on the decline of urban governance is re-examined and reformulated by Pierre, who applies a wider international approach to the issues. He argues that the changing cast of private and public actors, combined with new forms of political participation, have resulted in a transformation - rather than a decline - of contemporary urban governance.

As places face increased competition for human and capital resources, public managers turn toward corporate-like governance strategies and branding practices to shape places and organizations. However, for better or worse, these organizations begin to resemble highly competitive, private-sector public relations and marketing firms. Place branding is taking hold within many organizations, including city governments, yet very few scholars take a public administration approach when exploring the causes and effects of branding practices. In Place Branding through Phases of the Image, Zavattaro explains how city promotional strategies can take the place of corporate governance structures through phases of the image. She examines how city government entities are undertaking place branding practices, with the realization that relying too much on image rather than a balance between image and substance has serious implications for democratic, collaborative governance. This book creates a workable framework that simultaneously serves as a cautionary tale for building a promotional campaign focused exclusively on image.