Modern Russia's turbulent relations with its Muslim frontiers date back centuries. Indeed the nineteenth century, when the Muslim Caucasus first came under Russian rule, witnessed many of the historical antecedents to today's violent confrontations. With this in mind, On The Religious Frontier examines the history of Muslim Azerbaijan under Christian Orthodox Russian imperial rule and the attempts of the Russian administrators of the Caucasus to integrate the region into the empire. Drawing on original archival research from across Azerbaijan and Russia, Firouzeh Mostashari considers the formation of a Russian colonial administration in the Muslim Caucasus; subsequent social, political and economic developments; and the local responses to conquest, military rule and Russification. From 1804 to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, On The Religious Frontier offers a fascinating and timely insight into both the period itself and the ways in which the seeds of recent conflict were sown in tsarist Russia. This is important reading for all scholars of the history and politics of the Caucasus, as well as those with an interest in imperial Russia and its relationship with minority groups.

The Government of World Cities assesses the future of metropolitan administrations in the light of some spectacular challenges to their operation, notably the collapse of the "metro model" in cities as diverse as London, Barcelona and Copenhagen. This key collection of essays from recognised authorities, including the final publication by the late Jean Gottmann, the doyen of urban studies, provides a balanced and provocative view of the strengths and weaknesses of metropolitan government at possibly the most crucial point in its history. The purpose of this book is to take stock of the concept of the metropolitan government idea as it currently seems to be faring in a variety of contexts and examples throughout the world. Specific cities that exemplify the three categories (outright abolition, under fire, and successfully thriving) are examined to determine why the experience of each has differed so markedly. Each essay offers an up-to-date account of the relative success of each metro government and its prospects for the future. This book also evaluates whether it is possible to make some judgement as to how far the existence of a metropolitan government has improved the governance of the big city. This is an invaluable book for students of geography, urban studies, urban politics and planning, as well as professionals in local government.

In the age of digitalization, even the way we govern is adapting. Recently, with the successful implementation of e-governments, the way our systems are organized has changed. Here, Israel Patino Galvan suggests a specialized design structure as an alternative to the new, digital governments that are becoming increasingly more common. Through a thorough exploration of the history of these structures, and through field research in Mexico, serious deficiencies have been identified in the ways in which these e-governments have been implemented. Instead, Galvan offers a tri-phase solution to designing local governments, placing the direction and division of Information Technologies at the core to support the modernization and optimization process. For researchers and practitioners in public administration, information technologies, or information systems, this is a vital text providing a detailed case study as support for a new organizational system.

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

The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited nationwide protests and brought widespread attention police brutality and institutional racism. But Ferguson was no aberration. As Colin Gordon shows in this urgent and timely book, the events in Ferguson exposed not only the deep racism of the local police department but also the ways in which decades of public policy effectively segregated people and curtailed citizenship not just in Ferguson but across the St. Louis suburbs. Citizen Brown uncovers half a century of private practices and public policies that resulted in bitter inequality and sustained segregation in Ferguson and beyond. Gordon shows how municipal and school district boundaries were pointedly drawn to contain or exclude African Americans and how local policies and services-especially policing, education, and urban renewal-were weaponized to maintain civic separation. He also makes it clear that the outcry that arose in Ferguson was no impulsive outburst but rather an explosion of pent-up rage against long-standing systems of segregation and inequality-of which a police force that viewed citizens not as subjects to serve and protect but as sources of revenue was only the most immediate example. Worse, Citizen Brown illustrates the fact that though the greater St. Louis area provides some extraordinarily clear examples of fraught racial dynamics, in this it is hardly alone among American cities and regions. Interactive maps and other companion resources to Citizen Brown are available at the book website.

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

"Mafia" has become an indigenous South Asian term. Like Italian mobsters, the South Asian "gangster politicians" are known for inflicting brutal violence while simultaneously upholding vigilante justice-inspiring fear and fantasy. But the term also refers to the diffuse spheres of crime, business, and politics operating within a shadow world that is popularly referred to as the rule of the mafia, or "Mafia Raj." Through intimate stories of the lives of powerful and aspiring bosses in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this book illustrates their personal struggles for sovereignty as they climb the ladder of success. Ethnographically tracing the particularities of the South Asian case, the authors theorize what they call "the art of bossing," providing nuanced ideas about crime, corruption, and the lure of the strongman across the world.

Listing every right that a constitution should protect is hard. American constitution drafters often list a few famous rights such as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and free exercise of religion, plus a handful of others. However, we do not need to enumerate every liberty because there is another way to protect them: an "etcetera clause." It states that there are other rights beyond those specifically listed: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Yet scholars are divided on whether the Ninth Amendment itself actually does protect unenumerated rights, and the Supreme Court has almost entirely ignored it. Regardless of what the Ninth Amendment means, two-thirds of state constitutions have equivalent provisions, or "Baby Ninth Amendments," worded similarly to the Ninth Amendment.This book is the story of how the "Baby Ninths" came to be and what they mean. Unlike the controversy surrounding the Ninth Amendment, the meaning of the Baby Ninths is straightforward: they protect individual rights that are not otherwise enumerated. They are an "etcetera, etcetera" at the end of a bill of rights. This book argues that state judges should do their duty and live up to their own constitutions to protect the rights "retained by the people" that these "etcetera clauses" are designed to guarantee. The fact that Americans have adopted these provisions so many times in so many states demonstrates that unenumerated rights are not only protected by state constitutions, but that they are popular. Unenumerated rights are not a weird exception to American constitutional law. They are at the center of it. We should start treating constitutions accordingly.

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

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

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.

While many introductory public administration textbooks contain a dedicated chapter on ethics, The Public Administration Profession is the first to utilize ethics as a lens for understanding the discipline. Analyses of the ASPA Code of Ethics are deftly woven into each chapter alongside complete coverage of the institutions, processes, concepts, persons, history, and typologies a student needs to gain a thorough grasp of public service as a field of study and practice. Features include: A significant focus on "public interests," nonprofit management, hybrid-private organizations, contracting out and collaborations, and public service at state and local levels. A careful examination of the role that religion may play in public servants' decision making, as well as the unignorable and growing role that faith-based organizations play in public administration and nonprofit management at large. End-of-chapter ethics case studies, key concepts and persons, and dedicated "local community action steps" in each chapter. Appendices dedicated to future public administration and nonprofit career management, writing successful papers throughout a student's career, and professional codes of ethics. A comprehensive suite of online supplements, including: lecture slides; quizzes and sample examinations for undergraduate and graduate courses containing multiple choice, true-false, identifications, and essay questions; chapter outlines with suggestions for classroom discussion; and suggestions for use of appendices, e.g., how to successfully write a short term paper, a brief policy memo, resume, or a book review. Providing students with a comprehensive introduction to the subject while offering instructors an elegant new way to bring ethics prominently into the curriculum, The Public Administration Profession is an ideal introductory text for public administration and public affairs courses at the undergraduate or graduate level.

Although it is less than three years since the previous edition, some important changes in the law have taken place. These include new provisions relating to reviews of parishes in England in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, with the power to create parishes in Greater London; the extension to some parish councils of the power to promote well-being enacted by the Local Government Act 2000; the removal of local councils from the ambit of the best value legislation (also in the LGPIHA 2007); new codes of conduct for councillors in both England and Wales; new regulations on allowances for community councillors in Wales; new election rules; and, revised accounting guidance and practice; and the coming into force of much of the Commons Act 2006. There have also been many detailed changes in regulations and orders made by statutory instrument. The alphabetical format of the book remains the same, as does its extensive but clear coverage of all aspects of the law and practice of parish, town and community councils in England and Wales. New councillors, in particular, will find this book invaluable and, in fact, many clerks insist that all their councillors have a copy to ensure they have a full understanding of their duties and responsibilities. It is also an essential reference for clerks themselves.

How, in the absence of institutional mechanisms, do Maoist rebels in India quit an ongoing insurgency without getting killed? How do rebels give up arms and return to the same political processes that they had once sought to overthrow? The question of weaning rebels away from extremist groups is highly significant in counterinsurgency and in the pacification of insurgencies. In Farewell to Arms, Rumela Sen goes to the rebels themselves and breaks down the protracted process of rebel retirement into a multi-staged journey as the rebels see it. She draws on several rounds of interviews with current and former Maoist rebels as well as security personnel, administrators, activists, politicians, and civilians in two conflict zones in North and South India. The choice to quit an insurgency, she finds, depends on locally embedded, informal exit networks. The relative weakness of these networks in North India means that fewer rebels quit than in the South, where more feel that they can disarm without getting killed. Sen shows that these networks grow out of the grassroots civic associations in the gray zone of state-insurgency interface. Correcting the course for future policy, Sen provides a new explanation of rebel retirement that will be essential to any policymaker or scholar working to end protracted insurgencies.

New York Politics examines aspects of state government that are often hidden in the secret sessions of the parties' legislative conferences: the closed-door budget; a complicated array of opaque agencies, authorities, and local governments; and a campaign finance system that lacks transparency. New York is unique among the American states in the existence of regional and demographic divisions, making it difficult to govern. Edward V. Schneier, Antoinette Pole, and Anthony Maniscalco bring clarity and understanding to the politics of the Empire State. This third edition of the leading textbook on New York politics combines historical, legal, statistical, and journalistic sources with the candid perspectives of legislators, lobbyists, and other public officials. Critical updates and new information include an analysis of the rise and fall of Governor Andrew Cuomo, coverage of growing demographic diversity in New York State and its government, and the impact of unified government when the legislature and executive branch are both controlled by the Democratic Party.

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.

On July 4, 1867, a group of men assembled in Houston to establish the Republican Party of Texas. Combatting entrenched statewide support for the Democratic Party and their own internal divisions, Republicans struggled to gain a foothold in the Lone Star State, which had sided with the Confederacy and aligned with the Democratic platform. In The Republican Party of Texas, Wayne Thorburn, former executive director of the Texas GOP, chronicles over one hundred and fifty years of the defeats and victories of the party that became the dominant political force in Texas in the modern era. Thorburn documents the organizational structure of the Texas GOP, drawing attention to prominent names, such as Harry Wurzbach and George W. Bush, alongside lesser-known community leaders who bolstered local support. The 1960s and 1970s proved a watershed era for Texas Republicans as they shored up ideological divides and elected the first Republican governor and more state senators and congressional representatives than ever before. From decisions about candidates and shifting allegiances and political stances, to race-based divisions and strategic cooperation with leaders in the Democratic Party, Thorburn unearths the development of the GOP in Texas to understand the unique Texan conservatism that prevails today.

On marijuana, there is no mutual federal-state policy; will this cause federalism to go up in smoke? More than one-half the 50 states have legalized the use of marijuana at least for medical purposes, and about a dozen of those states have gone further, legalizing it for recreational use. Either step would have been almost inconceivable just a couple decades ago. But marijuana remains an illegal "controlled substance" under a 1970 federal law, so those who sell or grow it could still face federal prosecution. How can state and federal laws be in such conflict? And could federal law put the new state laws in jeopardy at some point? This book, an edited volume with contributions by highly regarded legal scholars and policy analysts, is the first detailed examination of these and other questions surrounding a highly unusual conflict between state and federal policies and laws. Marijuana Federalism surveys the constitutional issues that come into play with this conflict, as well as the policy questions related to law enforcement at the federal versus state levels. It also describes specific areas such as banking regulations in which federal law has particularly far-reaching effects. Readers will gain a greater understanding of federalism in general, including how the division of authority between the federal and state governments operates in the context of policy and legal disputes between the two levels. This book also will help inform debates as other states consider whether to jump on the bandwagon of marijuana legalization.

Tracing the erosion of democratic norms in the US and the conditions that make it possible Jonathan Beecher Field tracks the permutations of the town hall meeting from its original context as a form of democratic community governance in New England into a format for presidential debates and a staple of corporate governance. In its contemporary iteration, the town hall meeting models the aesthetic of the former but replaces actual democratic deliberation with a spectacle that involves no immediate electoral stakes or functions as a glorified press conference. Urgently, Field notes that though this evolution might be apparent, evidence suggests many US citizens don't care to differentiate. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

Managing Local Government: An Essential Guide for Municipal and County Managers offers a practical introduction to the changing structure, forms, and functions of local governments. Taking a metropolitan management perspective, authors Kimberly Nelson and Carl W. Stenberg explain U.S. local government within historical context and provide strategies for effective local government management and problem solving. Real-life scenarios and contemporary issues illustrate the organization and networks of local governments; the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of city and county managers; and the dynamics of the intergovernmental system. Case studies and discussion questions in each chapter encourage critical analysis of the challenges of collaborative governance. Unlike other books on the market, this text's combined approach of theory and practice encourages students to enter municipal and county management careers and equips them with tools to be successful from day one.

"This book will inspire people to work with and for their neighbors in all kinds of ways!" --Bill McKibben, author of Falter Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take an active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! And tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines isn't the sleepy town it appears to be. Yes, the assembly must stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street, but there is also a bitter debate about the fishing boat harbor and a vicious recall campaign that targets three assembly members, including Lende. In Of Bears and Ballots we witness the nitty-gritty of passing legislation, the lofty ideals of our republic, and the way our national politics play out in one small town. With her entertaining cast of offbeat but relatable characters, the writer whom the Los Angeles Times calls "part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott" brings us an inspirational tale about what living in a community really means, and what we owe one another.