This book studies how a modern monarchy transformed Bhutan into a parliamentary democracy. A political ethnography, it focuses on the historic elections of 2007-2008, and studies democracy and its transformational processes from the ground up. It draws on historical as well as contemporary theories about kingship and regime change to analyse Bhutan's nascent democratic process and reflect on the direction of political change, both at the state and local levels in the aftermath of the elections. It also presents insights into the electoral and political process by giving a first-hand account of the author's own participation in the elections and ponders on the larger political implications of this election for the region. A strong theoretical discussion situated in robust fieldwork and personal experience, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of politics, especially comparative politics and political institutions, South Asian and Himalayan Studies, political sociology and social anthropology.

Originally published in 1987, Cost-Benefit Analysis in Urban and Regional Planning, outlines the theory and practice of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in the context of urban and regional planning. The theory of CBA is developed with examples to illustrate the principles, it also deals with details of the applications and covers issues such as local health and social services provision, local economic development and regional policy evaluation, and planning in less developed countries - as well as the conventional land-use issues of physical planning.

This anthology will be appropriate for administrative ethics classes and professional thinking in public administration at both the masters and doctoral levels. It is a collection of administrative ethics articles published in journals of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) from 1941 (the earliest publication) through 1983 (the year that the first ASPA Code of Ethics was established). The articles are organized by themes of enduring importance to the field in order to provide graduate students with ready access to the classic works on ethics in public administration. Reading this collection will enhance student's knowledge and skills to think and act ethically and contribute to their ability to view current practices in light of traditional perspectives. The ASPA Classics volume serves to bridge the practice of public policy and administration with the empirical research base that has accrued and the models for practice that may be deduced from the research

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.

In "Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps," Dick Simpson challenges and recasts current theories of Regime Politics as he chronicles the dramatic story of the civic wars in the Chicago City Council since the civil war. At the same time, the author provides a window into the broader struggle for democracy and justice.Simpson points out that through analyzing city council floor fights, battles at the ballot box, and street demonstrations, one can begin to see certain patterns of conflict emerge. These patterns demonstrate that before the Great Depression, fragmented city councils were dominant. The author also discusses how since the Democrats seized control of Chicago government after the Great Depression, Rubber Stamp City Councils have been predominant, although they have been punctuated by brief eras of council wars and chaos. This book is important for anyone wanting to understand the nature of these battles as a guideline for America's future, and is well suited for courses in urban politics, affairs and history."Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps" received an Honorable Mention for the 2001 Society of Midland Authors Book Award for Adult Non-Fiction.

The lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American South Despite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to support Republican candidates, gun rights, and the death penalty, and southern whites harbor higher levels of racial resentment than whites in other parts of the country. Why haven't these sentiments evolved or changed? Deep Roots shows that the entrenched political and racial views of contemporary white southerners are a direct consequence of the region's slaveholding history, which continues to shape economic, political, and social spheres. Today, southern whites who live in areas once reliant on slavery-compared to areas that were not-are more racially hostile and less amenable to policies that could promote black progress. Highlighting the connection between historical institutions and contemporary political attitudes, the authors explore the period following the Civil War when elite whites in former bastions of slavery had political and economic incentives to encourage the development of anti-black laws and practices. Deep Roots shows that these forces created a local political culture steeped in racial prejudice, and that these viewpoints have been passed down over generations, from parents to children and via communities, through a process called behavioral path dependence. While legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act made huge strides in increasing economic opportunity and reducing educational disparities, southern slavery has had a profound, lasting, and self-reinforcing influence on regional and national politics that can still be felt today. A groundbreaking look at the ways institutions of the past continue to sway attitudes of the present, Deep Roots demonstrates how social beliefs persist long after the formal policies that created those beliefs have been eradicated.

This anthology, "Defining Public Administration," is designed to assist beginning and intermediate level students of public policy, and to stir the imaginations of readers concerned with public policy and administration. The forty-five articles included in the text are all reprinted from the "International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration," and these accessible, interesting articles have been assembled to offer a sample of the riches to be found within the larger work. The articles provide definitions of the vocabulary of public policy and administration as it is used throughout the world-from the smallest towns, to the largest national bureaucracies. "Defining Public Administration" is organized into twelve parts. Each part focuses on a domain pertinent to the study of public administration, including overviews, policy making, intergovernmental relations, bureaucracy, organization behavior, public management, strategic management, performance management, human resource management, financial management, auditing and accountability, and ethics.

Local participation can and does influence the political process. Local Politics and Participation in Britain and France, first published in 1990, provides a unique comparative study of the involvement of average citizens in local politics and government between national elections. The work of Professor Mabileau and his colleagues will illuminate the nature of contemporary processes of participation at a time when the local level of government, administration and participation democracy are topics of renewed interest in all Western democracies. French and British teams explore the salient differences between the two local government systems - both of which have been reformed. Through a series of local case studies, they examine levels of individual and group participation, mobilisation into single-issue protest groups, links between councillors and the local electorate, and the importance of local context in participation patterns. Local Politics and Participation in Britain and France is a product of collaborative research carried out at the Universities of Manchester and Bordeaux. The results are based on surveys of ordinary people as well as on interviews with local leaders. They will be equally of interest to academics - students and specialists of British and French politics, local government, participation and democratic theory - and to local party workers and activists.

"Culture wars" have turned American communities into ideological battlegrounds. When issues like gay rights, needle exchange programs, abortion clinic protests, and hate crime are at stake, the response of citizens is likely to be strong--and that of local governments is likely to be unpredictable.

This collection provides alternative explanations of local actions with a focus on current conflict. A team of prominent scholars in urban politics examines how local governments handle morality-based issues: whether they evade controversies or instigate them, enact policies responsive to activist pressure or repress protests calling for change.

"Culture Wars and Local Politics" features examples of actual experiences in selected cities, differing in community culture and size, from New York to San Francisco, Denver to Greenville, South Carolina. The contributors examine how the responses of local government to specific issues are influenced by such factors as political culture and institutions, belief systems of public officials, and a city's niche in intergovernmental relations or national social movements.

Because culture wars represent more than just politics-as-usual, most theory related to urban politics doesn't necessarily apply. Departing from typical economic approaches to urban problems, this collection develops a perspective that draws on cultural analysis, the new institutionalism, feminism, social movement theory, and regime theory. It breaks new ground by challenging the comprehensiveness of existing treatments of urban politics, with each of the chapters contributing to a theoretical synthesis.

How local governments handle these volatile issues has major implications for civil liberties, preventing violence and the development or erosion of public trust. By providing a multi-topical approach focused at the local level, this book offers an excellent source for triggering both student discussion and citizen awareness.

Woven through this text is the unifying theme that American politics represents "conflict and compromise," in direct opposition to the increasingly commonly held view that all politics are dirty and all politicians are crooks. By presenting a balance of essential factual content with a broad assessment of system dynamics and their policy effects, the authors provide an accessible yet sophisticated overview of American politics.Features: Coherent theme of "conflict versus compromise" in the American political system Consistent examination of American history for institutional development Emphasis on the positive role of citizenship in shaping good government Each chapter is accompanied by primary source readings Concise 12 chapter format Our computerized test bank is available for PC based Windows operating systems. Over 1000 test items (including multiple choice, true-false, short answer and essay questions) are offered via the ESATEST 2000 system. This system includes numerous options for creating and editing tests, options for creating multiple versions of a single test, and allows professors to administer tests via LAN or Web-based testing centers. A simple, user-friendly interface, along with animated program guides add to the program's ease of use.

This text evaluates the validity of a key proposition of public choice theory: that competition is associated with superior performance by governmental organizations. Three forms of competition in local government are identified: competition between local authorities; competition between councils and private contractors; and competition between parties for political power. The extent and consequences of competition are assessed in both the UK and USA. The analysis is used to draw conclusions on the effects of competition and the validity of public choice theory.

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.

Conflict, Improvisation, Governance presents a carefully crafted and edited collection of first hand accounts of diverse public sector and non-profit urban practitioners facing the practical challenges of "doing democracy" in the global/local context of the interconnected major European city of Amsterdam and its region. The book examines street level democratic processes through the experiences of planning and city governance practitioners in community development, youth work, public service delivery, urban public administration, immigration and multi-cultural social policy. These profiles and case studies show widely shared challenges in global and local urban environments, and new, "bottom-up," democratic and improvisational strategies that community members and public officials alike can use to make more inclusive, democratic cities.

How far can government be reinvented? What is the impact of globalization on the delivery of government services around the world? This comparative book debates new managerial and policy paradigms, with a sophisticated analysis of the potential effects of the marketizing of government services. Case studies explore The US Government's National Performance Review, the relocation of Britain's Inland Revenue IT services with a US multi-national, the impact of the Europeanization of government in the EU, the implausibility of reinventing government, and the applicability of new theories of analysis.

America has rediscovered its states and their governments. After decades of dominance by the federal government, the balance of power is returning, often dramatically, to state governments. A devolution of authority began during the Reagan years, but recent Republican victories in Washington and in the states promise to accelerate the rate at which state governments assume greater responsibility for governing the nation. Inherent in that development is the sense that state governments, long perceived as the weakest link in American politics, are now perhaps the strongest.Here, David Hedge provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of how states have evolved over the past several decades both on the demand side (citizen participation, elections, parties, interest groups) and the supply side (governors, legislatures, the courts) of state government. In addition to describing the kinds of changes that are occurring at the state level, Hedge looks at the impact of those developments on the quality of statehouse democracy and the ability of the states to govern effectively. The major theme of the text is that state governments in the nineties are better able to govern than ever before but suffer the same kinds of problems--inordinate interest group influence, partisanship, political stalemate--that we have seen at the federal level."Governance and the Changing American States" offers students an important and timely framework for viewing and assessing these changes in state government in the context of recent research on the impact of changing state politics and governing.

Recently, budgetary restraints and institutional gridlock have limited the role of the national government in domestic policymaking. Subnational governments have responded by assuming primary responsibility for a number of key problems, including economic development, educational improvement, environmental regulation, and health and welfare innovations. The United States has some 80,000 subnational governments from nation-sized states to mosquito abatement districts. A concise introduction to state-local relations, this volume of nine original essays includes an overview of the structure of state-local arrangements, central policy issues in state-local relations, and the likely future of state-local relations.

This book examines how China's decentralization process has affected and will affect the country's macroeconomic performance and the functioning of the market. With an innovative application of game theory, the author develops an analytical framework that can explain the behaviour of the central and local governments under alternative institutional environments. The study also suggests how to establish desirable rules of games in China's political and economic institutions through appropriate reforms.

Economic development and urban growth are the contested grounds of urban politics. Business elites and politicians tend to forge "pro-growth" coalitions centered around downtown development while progressive and neighborhood activists counter with a more balanced approach that features a strong neighborhood component. Urban politics is often shaped by this conflict, which has intellectual as well as practical dimensions. In some cities, neighborhood interests have triumphed; in others, the pro-growth agenda has prevailed.

In this illuminating comparative study, Barbara Ferman demonstrates why neighborhood challenges to pro-growth politics were much more successful in Pittsburgh than they were in Chicago. Operating largely in the civic arena, Pittsburgh's neighborhood groups encountered a political culture and institutional structure conducive to empowering neighborhood progressivism in housing and economic development policymaking. In contrast, the pro-growth agenda in Chicago was challenged in the electoral arena, which was dominated by machine, ward-based politicians who regarded any independent neighborhood organizing as a threat. Consequently, neighborhood demands for policymaking input were usually thwarted.

Besides revealing why the development policies of two important American cities diverged, Ferman's unique comparative approach to this issue significantly expands the scope of urban analysis. Among other things, it provides the first serious study to incorporate the civic sector-neighborhood politics-as an important component of urban regimes. Ferman also emphasizes institutional and cultural factors-often ignored or relegated to residual roles in other studies-and expounds on their influence in shaping local politics and policy. To add an analytical and normative dimension to urban analysis, she focuses on the "non-elite" actors, not just the economic and political elites who compose governing coalitions.

Ultimately, Ferman takes a more holistic and balanced view of large cities than is typical for urban studies as she argues that neighborhoods are an important, integral part of what cities are and can be. For that reason especially, her work will have a profound impact upon our understanding of urban politics.

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.

Global, national and subnational change (political, economic, social and demographic) are forcing local governments to search, reactively or proactively, for alternative organizational patterns and management styles. This book explores different approaches toward local government reorientation in selected Western countries as well as the 'reinvention' of local government in Eastern Europe. Eight national case-studies (U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, Norway, Israel, the Czech Republic and Russia) provide the empirical basis. From a theoretical point of view, the book exposes three main critical factors: the range of policy options facing local governments (strategic choice), their organizational capabilities to cope with major environmental shifts (strategic capabilities), and their capacity for organizational learning (including programmed experimentation, innovation and creativity).

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.

In the efficient delivery of local public services, size matters. Many countries around the world have vertical government structures that are perceived as inefficient because of their high levels of jurisdictional fragmentation. This timely volume examines the different strategies used to address local government fragmentation and their observed results and consequences. Expert contributors in economics and political science offer a comprehensive breakdown of the issue of local jurisdiction fragmentation and provide recommendations for successful policy reform. Topics discussed include economies of scale, the costs and benefits of voluntary and forced amalgamation programs, the correlation between government size and corruption, privatization, and inter-municipal cooperation. A combination of theory and empirical evidence provides depth and makes this book an invaluable addition to the literature. Economists, public administrators and political scientists will find much of interest in this innovative volume, as will professors, students and international institutions with an interest in local government structure and reform. Contributors: R. Andrews, G. Bel, N. Charron, B. Dafflon, L. de Mello, B. Dollery, J. Fernandez-Albertos, N. Fiorino, E. Galli, J.L. Gomez-Reino, B. Grant, M. Kortt, S. Lago-Penas, V. Lapuente, J. Martinez-Vazquez, M.A. Nelson, F. Padovano, M.E. Warner

Regional associations have become major players in international politics and economics. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), composed of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, is considered as a player which will strengthen the international influence and international trade of the post-socialist countries. It is intended to become a parallel association to the European Union. This comprehensive volume considers the potential global role of the EEU. A major problem outlined is the balancing of relations between the EU and the West on the one hand, and China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on the other. The book explores the impact of the global crisis as well as a consideration of the EEU in the world system of states. It also examines the EEU's relationship with other regional developments, in relation to the EU and to the outer circle of post-socialist states that joined neither the EU nor the EEU. It concludes by considering Eurasia in the Asian context, looking at the two central Asian countries (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), relations with China and the relationship between the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the EEU. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Politics and Society.

Examines the reconstruction of institutional power relationships that had to be negotiated among the courts, the parties, the President, the Congress, and the states in order to accommodate the expansion of national administrative capacities around the turn of the twentieth century.