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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Local government > General
First published in 1969, this book is concerned with the processes of policy-making in local government. The authors address themselves to the basic challenge of planning in a democracy and consider issues such as how those elected to exercise choice on our behalf can preserve and expand their capacity to choose discriminatingly, when the sheer complexity of the issues facing them tends all the time to make them increasingly dependent on the skills and judgements of their professional advisers. This question is explored in relation to the many different, yet interdependent, aspects of the planning process which impinge on any local community - with particular reference to the planning of housing, transport, education, and shopping, of land use and local government finance. The book is the outcome of a four-year program of research during which a mixed team of operational research and social scientists was given a unique opportunity to observe the ways in which decisions were made and plans formulated in one particular city- Coventry. It covers both political and professional aspects of local government in 1960s Great Britain and has had important implications for urban governments throughout the world.
This book presents an overview of the political occurrences that have affected the regulation of conflict of interest in government. Exploring the far-reaching consequences of the conduct and misconduct of past administrations, this provocative study traces the development of standards-of-conduct regulations and the implementation of regulatory laws, beginning with the Truman presidency, followed by the Eisenhower years, the New Frontier, the Ethical Nightmare of the Nixon administration, Carter and Ethics Reform, and Ronald Reagan.
Based upon a sampling of some 800 public agency heads, division and bureau chiefs in 10 states, this study explores the world of state public management. It examines and reflects practicing public managers' judgments concerning the factors that contribute to and impede effective agency performance. It also looks at the role of state administrative units in shaping state policy and the impact of various nonadministrative actors on the conduct of state management. While a variety of problems are seen to be severe in the eyes of these managers--especially those that involve the adequacy and use of fiscal and human resources--most state administrative units seem to function despite impediments. While state managers are very important players in the processes of state policymaking, they and their organizations also must function within a highly complex influence matrix which substantially limits their automony. The depth and breadth of this study provide a major contribution to the literature on state management. Its findings will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in public administration, public policy, and government.
In this special issue, leading neuroscientists and neurologists present comprehensive review papers and empirical studies on the topic of the neural basis of self-identification. From philosophical definitions to single-case studies, the articles provide the reader with a broad view of the self in contemporary neuroscience. Review papers address the fundamental question of how to define and study the construct of identity. Methods in empirical studies range from socio-linguistic analyses to neuroimaging and diverse patient populations. As a whole, this issue provides a diverse sample of the myriad of ways in which identity is defined and studied in contemporary neuroscience.
After a decade and a half of decentralization reforms in post-communist states, we still know very little about their impact on local populations. This study, which examines local social services and economic promotion in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia, fills this important gap. The book dispels the myth that socio-economic 'givens' or inter-governmental systems are key determinants of local development. Party political factors and local civic activism can and do make a difference, and should be given greater prominence in the literature on local performance.
A broad-ranging assessment of continuities and change in local governance in the western industrialized world providing in-depth assessments by leading experts of a wide range of countries exemplifying between them the whole spectrum of types and models of local government systems and networks. A central focus is on the impact of public management reforms, new forms of community governance and changes in central-local relations.
Today, social media have attracted the attention of political actors and administrative institutions to inform citizens as a prerequisite of open and transparent administration, deliver public services, contact stakeholders, revitalize democracy, encourage the cross-agency cooperation, and contribute to knowledge management. In this context, the social media tools can contribute to the emergence of citizen-oriented, open, transparent and participatory public administration. Taking advantage of the opportunities offered by social media is not limited to central government. Local governments deploy internet-based innovative technologies that complement traditional methods in implementing different functions. This book focuses on the relationship between the local governments and social media, deals with the change that social media have caused in the organization, understanding of service provision, performance of local governments and in the relationships between local governments and their partners, and aims to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of the growing use of social media by local governments. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in e-government, public administration, political science, communication, information science, and social media. Government officials and public managers will also find practical use recommendations for social media in several aspects of local governance
Competitive elections have become an institutionalized feature of contemporary Indonesia 's politics. This, together with other considerations, makes it reasonable to call Indonesia the world 's third largest democracy. Nonetheless, democratic elections in Indonesia are both more complex and interesting than is commonly understood. This book explores how local elections in Indonesia have affected the development and dynamics of Indonesia 's fledgling democracy. Based on fine-grained analyses of elections in five localities, the book shows how Indonesia 's transition to direct elections of local government executives has transformed party politics and elite development at local levels of governance. Employing the methods of political anthropology and informed by a critical reading of theories of democracy and decentralization, the book presents detailed analyses of elections in five localities across four Indonesian provinces. The book calls attention to the ambiguous relation between formal democratic reforms and political behavior. It illustrates how local elite politics has evolved within the context of political and administrative reforms, whose announced goals are to improve the representativeness and responsiveness of political institutions. This book provides a window onto local political processes that will be of interest to students and scholars of politics in Southeast Asia and beyond.
In 1845 Frederick Engels wrote that 'Manchester is the seat of the most powerful unions, the central point of Chartism, the place which numbers the most Socialists'. There have been many local studies of the Chartist struggle for democratic political reform, but there is no major study of the movement in the Manchester-Salford conurbation, its most important provincial centre. This book brings an innovative approach to an exploration of aspects of the Chartist experience in the 'shock city' of the industrial revolution.
The Purchase of all of Louisiana in 1803 brought the new American nation into contact with the French Creole population of the Lower Mississippi Basin. The Spanish called it Baja Luisiana. While the settlement in and around the city of New Orleans (the capital of the province when it was ruled by Spain) was not large, it had well established governmental and legal institutions. Which system of law would prevail in this volatile corner of the North American continent, a region that was distant and strategically vulnerable to rival European powers -- Spain, France and Great Britain - who still coveted the vast empire that was Louisiana? This was one of the most vexing problems that confronted the Administration of Thomas Jefferson. Reflecting contemporary American opinion, Jefferson did not believe that the United States would be able to incorporate Lower Louisiana into the Union on a basis of equality as a separate and independent state until the very character of its people and the institutional foundation of its culture had been thoroughly transformed. The pivotal issue that came to symbolize this conflict was the struggle between Louisiana civil law and Anglo-American common law. That Louisianians would remain committed to their civil law heritage was by no means certain. But the enactment of the Civil Law Digest by the territorial legislature in 1808 was a major event in the evolution of Louisiana's increasingly complex legal regime. Jefferson's Louisiana shows how this important moment came at a time when political forces and outside events joined together to reinforce local determination to resist total Americanization and to preserve Louisiana's established legal culture. The book reconnects a segment of American legal history to the general history of the period. In addition to official records, it also uses archival sources that demonstrate how the struggle between civil law and common law forces affected people who were either outside of, or but marginally connected to, legal and governmental structures. As stated in the Introduction to this revised edition of Jefferson's Louisiana, "The Civil Law Digest of 1808 was not only a foundational legal document but a constitutive cultural moment in historical time - an effort by the people of Louisiana to preserve language, culture, and historical memory as well as law." George Dargo grew up in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Erasmus Hall High School and Columbia College, he completed his Doctorate in the Department of History at Columbia University and, later, earned his law degree at Northeastern University. His previous books include Roots of the Republic, Law in the New Republic, and A History of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He now teaches law at New England Law/Boston. Along with his wife Lois, he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. "This penetrating book, first published in 1975, has already influenced and shaped the work of a whole generation of historians and scholars. With this new revised edition published by The Lawbook Exchange, its influence will continue and increase. George Dargo's work remains the indispensable point of departure for those who wish to understand the complex and contingent historical forces at play in Louisiana's successful retention of its civilian legal heritage. A valuable feature of this revised edition is a new introductory essay from the author summarizing and evaluating in a most lucid and balanced way the various debates among scholars that have appeared or continued since the original edition. And the timing of this publication seems perfect-given the recent celebration of the Bicentennial of the Digest of 1808, which itself embodied the "clash of legal traditions." Vernon Valentine Palmer Thomas Pickles Professor of Law, Tulane University.
Regional governance is a topical public policy issue and is receiving increased attention from scholars, government officials and civic leaders. As countries continue to urbanize and centralize economic functions and population in metropolitan regions, the traditional governing system is not equipped to handle policy issues that spill over local government boundaries. Governments have utilized four basic approaches to address the regional governing problem: consolidating governments, adding a regional tier, creating regional special districts, and functional cooperative approaches. The first two are structural approaches that require major (radical) changes to the governing system. The latter two are governance approaches that contemplate marginal changes to the existing governance structure and rely generally on cooperation with other governments and collaboration with the nongovernmental sector. Canada and the United States have experimented with these basic forms of regional governance. This book is a systematic analysis of these basic forms as they have been experienced by North American cities. Utilizing cases from Canada and the United States, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of each approach to regional governance. This research provides an additional perspective on Canadian and U.S. regional governance and adds to the knowledge of Canadian and United States governing systems. This study contributes to the literature on the various approaches to regional governance as well as bringing together the most current literature on regional governance. The author develops a framework of the values that a regional governing system should provide and measures to assess how well each basic approach achieves these values. Based on this assessment, he suggests an approach to regional governance for North American metropolitan areas that best achieves these values.
This book will provide one of the first comprehensive approaches to the study of smart city governments with theories and concepts for understanding and researching 21st century city governments innovative methodologies for the analysis and evaluation of smart city initiatives. The term "smart city" is now generally used to represent efforts that in different ways describe a comprehensive vision of a city for the present and future. A smarter city infuses information into its physical infrastructure to improve conveniences, facilitate mobility, add efficiencies, conserve energy, improve the quality of air and water, identify problems and fix them quickly, recover rapidly from disasters, collect data to make better decisions, deploy resources effectively and share data to enable collaboration across entities and domains. These and other similar efforts are expected to make cities more intelligent in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, transparency, and sustainability, among other important aspects. Given this changing social, institutional and technology environment, it seems feasible and likeable to attain smarter cities and by extension, smarter governments: virtually integrated, networked, interconnected, responsive, and efficient. This book will help build the bridge between sound research and practice expertise in the area of smarter cities and will be of interest to researchers and students in the e-government, public administration, political science, communication, information science, administrative sciences and management, sociology, computer science, and information technology. As well as government officials and public managers who will find practical recommendations based on rigorous studies that will contain insights and guidance for the development, management, and evaluation of complex smart cities and smart government initiatives.
A research team from the United States has completed an examination of citizen participation experiments in seven European countries. The team included Donald Appleyard, Marc Draisen, David Godschalk, Chester Hartman, Janice Perlman, Hans Spiegel, John Zeisel, and ourselves. This book is a product of our joint efforts. Our studies are aimed at summarizing and sharing what can be learned from recent European efforts to enhance the effectiveness of local government through increased public involvement in the organization and management of public services and urban redevelopment. Almost a year was spent assembling the team, developing a shared framework for analysis and identifying appropriate case study cities. European and American public officials and citizen activists helped us assess the potential impact of such a study on current practice. A second year was spent visiting the European cities and preparing the case-study drafts. Finally, team members gathered in Washington, D. C., with fifty American and European public officials, citizen activists, and scholars. A two-day symposium provided an exciting opportunity to present preliminary research findings and encourage an exchange of ideas between researchers, activists, and policymakers. The final versions of the case studies that appear in this book, along with several commentaries by symposium participants, are written especially for city officials and citizen activists. We have tried to translate the results of our scholarly inquiry into pragmatic suggestions for officials and activists."
The Civil War and Reconstruction changed the face of social welfare provision in the South as thousands of people received public assistance for the first time in their lives. This book examines the history of southern social welfare institutions and policies in those formative years. Ten original essays explore the local nature of welfare and the limited role of the state prior to the New Deal. The contributors consider such factors as southern distinctiveness, the impact of gender on policy and practice, and ways in which welfare practices reinforced social hierarchies. By examining the role of the South's unique political economy, the impact of racism on social institutions, and the region's experience of war, this book makes it clear that the South's social welfare story is no mere carbon copy of the nation's.
Autonomy has been widely advocated as a means of managing national diversity, whilst meeting the demands of justice and stability. It comes in a variety of forms, both territorial and non-territorial and spans the categories of secession, confederation, federalism, devolution, local government and cultural self-management. Using the term in a broad way, this book examines its meanings in political and legal theory and its application in a variety of settings in Europe, North America and Asia. Among the issues discussed are: normative theories of self-determination; the definition and boundaries of autonomous communities; secession and its alternatives; the political economy of autonomy; the policy capacity of autonomous governments; legal conceptions of autonomy and the international context.
This volume of historical essays explores the full ramifications of the beginnings and development of the various branches of higher education in the area of London. It discusses: the contributions of the London County Council and the City of London; the economic and social context; questions of funding, class and gender; the polytechnics, teacher training, university extension, technical and scientific education; and the arts.
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.
How are responses to urban policy challenges affected by new ideas about governance? How can we explain the governance transformations that result? And what are the consequences for democracy? This wide-ranging study of three European cities - Birmingham, Copenhagen and Rotterdam - shows how hybrid forms of governance emerge from the tensions between new visions and past legacies, and existing institutional arrangements and powerful actors. Hybrid governance includes public-private partnerships, stakeholders boards, and multi-actor forums operating at arm's length to institutions of representative democracy. Offering detailed studies of migration and neighbourhood policy, as well as a novel Q methodology analysis of public administrators' views on democracy, the book explores how actors generate new practices, shows how these develop, and evaluates the democratic implications. The book concludes that hybrid governance is both widespread and diverse, is spatially and policy specific and that actors - public managers, politicians and the public - contribute to hybrid designs in ways that promote and challenge democratic conventions.
Power and Party in an English City provides an account of how decisions are taken by the state at the level of locality. More specifically, it is an account of the private policy-making activities of a ruling Labour group of councillors in the major English city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Despite the fact that local government in most of the towns and cities of England is one-party government, very little is known abotu the private behaviour of ruling party groups. In this book David Green provides a penetrating empirical study of the realities of local government. The author seeks to examine and analyse the importance of party discipline, the relationship between the Labour group of councillors and the party outside the council, the power of the committee chairmen, the role of local patronage and the openness of the local policy-making process. The government of Newcastle is perhaps the most closely association in the public mind with T. Dan Smith, the corrupt local politician. In fact, Smith had left local politics in Newcastle in teh mid-1960s. How was the city being run a decade or so later? This study is however much more than an inside view of the affairs of a single authority. The last part of the book is devoted to a discussion of aspects of some traditional and modern theories of democracy and specifically to what author sees as the inadequate advocacy of participatory democracy in recent years. Green makes a major contribution to our thinking about the kind of democracy that is possible in modern large-scale societies, explores weaknesses of moder theories and puts forward some original modifications to modern democratic theory, in the light of a theory of knowledge which is seen as more appropriate for modern natural and social scientific activity. This book was first published in 1981.
Urban governance in most western democracies has seen various forms of public-private concerted actions becoming increasingly important instruments for local governments. These new features of urban governance are often seen as local governments trying to enhance their "capacity to act" by fusing their capabilities with those of other major societal actors. At the same time such transgressions of the border between the public and the private spheres of society make local governments more susceptible to political pressures from those actors. This volume looks at the historical development and present performance of public-private partnerships for local economic development in western Europe and the United States. The theoretical framework applied in the volume is derived from theories of governance as well as from institutional theory.
This book explores how political structures and relations affect the 'black box of power' between governmental levels. It draws on case studies in Canada, the UK and continental Europe to illustrate how the design of political structures and the relative hierarchy of the relations between actors affect how governments deliver services.
In this groundbreaking study, Zimmerman explores the town meeting form of government in all New England states. This comprehensive work relies heavily upon surveys of town officers and citizens, interviews, and mastery of the scattered writing on the subject. Zimmerman finds that the stereotypes of the New England open town meeting advanced by its critics are a serious distortion of reality. He shows that voter superintendence of town affairs has proven to be effective, and there is no empirical evidence that thousands of small towns and cities with elected councils are governed better. Whereas the relatively small voter attendance suggests that interest groups can control town meetings, their influence has been offset effectively by the development of town advisory committees, particularly the finance committee and the planning board, which are effective counterbalances to pressure groups. Zimmerman provides a new conception of town meeting democracy, positing that the meeting is a de facto representative legislative body with two safety valves--open access to all voters and the initiative to add articles to the warrant, and the calling of special meetings to reconsider decisions made at the preceding town meeting. And, as Zimmerman points out, a third safety valve--the protest referendum--can be adopted by a town meeting. |
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