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

When the landmark book Collaborative Leadership was first published in 1994, it described the premise, principles, and leadership characteristics of successful collaboration. The book outlined an innovative way of building partnerships to solve the civic problems too big for anyone to solve alone as well as a new type of leadership that brings together diverse stakeholders to solve a community's problems. While that book provides a much-needed framework for working together, The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook offers nonprofit practitioners, community leaders, and public officials a practical, hands-on resource. It presents the tools needed for applying the lessons learned, powerful approaches that get results, and guidance for solving complex community problems. In clear and concise terms, the Fieldbook

• Presents a wide range of tools and concepts that can be readily applied
• Provides a comprehensive guide to collaboration from conception to implementation
• Describes how to establish effective civic leadership development programs to support collaborative efforts
• Contains stories and examples that clearly illustrate the book's concepts and tools
• Helps readers find-quickly and easily-what they need for their specific situations

  
  

While the focus on national governments as the main providers of different forms of transnational governance in Southeast Asia is entirely understandable, such a focus can significantly underestimate the roles played by non-state actors. This comprehensive collection provides five different case studies that explore in detail how these governance forms work in different policy arenas. While previous studies have noted the way that non-state actors act as pressure or advisory groups, lobbying or advising states and regional organisations, this book explores how they are now more actively involved in a variety of cross-border networked forms of coordination, providing standards, rules and practices that other actors voluntarily abide by. The chapters in this volume reveal variations in the architecture of transnational governance, why they emerge, the modes of social co-ordination through which they work to shape actor behaviour and achieve impact, their normative implications, and how these governance schemes intersect with state and national regulatory frameworks. The authors point to the importance of looking beyond arrangements established through intergovernmental mechanisms in order to gain a full understanding of how international interactions are organised in Southeast Asia. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Asia.

Although the relationship between elected officials and appointed executives has often been viewed as a struggle between master and servant--with disagreements as to which individuals occupy which roles--Poul Erik Mouritzen's and James Svara's comparison of city governments in fourteen countries reveals more interdependence and shared influence than conflict over control.

Mouritzen and Svara bring local government to the forefront, emphasizing the sophisticated level of city management in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their findings lead to a revision of the general view concerning the boundaries of public administration. "Leadership at the Apex" illustrates in practical ways how the democratic control of government and professional administration can coexist without undermining the logic or integrity of each other.

Selected Contents: 1. Introduction2. Theories of Institutional Dynamics3. Political and Administrative Cities4. The Evolution of Political Cities5. The Evolution of Administrative Cities6. The Evolution of the Model City Charter7. The Discovery of Adapted Cities8. Probing the Complexities of Adapted Cities9. The Conciliated City10. Conclusions

Rebecca Browning Rankin was a politician in the best sense of the word. She supervised the New York Municipal Reference Library for 32 years until her retirement in 1952. Serving in many key policy-making positions, both on mayoral committees and in professional organizations, Rankin was an excellent lobbyist for the role of information in educating the electorate. She published over fifty articles and books on aspects of city government and libraries, and delivered weekly radio speeches on WNYC from 1928 to 1938. Her career as a librarian, author and radio commentator demonstrates the use of research in the formation of public policy decisions and provides a unique perspective on politics in New York. Rankin also served as president of several library organizations including the Special Library Association, which she led to national status during her tenure. During the Depression, she established the Association's employment service and worked with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and other library officials to provide pensions for public librarians in New York City. Rankin and La Guardia shared the belief that government should carry out the will of the people and care for their needs, and the two worked together to make this a reality. Quotations from primary sources in the archives of the New York Public Library and the City of New York give the book a strong narrative style. Focusing on Rankin's efforts to document New York City's past as its unofficial historian, the book examines the city's political history during the first half of the twentieth century and illuminates the relationship of the local government with one of its great cultural institutions, the New York Public Library.

There are many types and forms of regional government agencies. These include regional planning commissions, council of governments, regional advisory committees, regional allocation agencies, and special purpose regional agencies. Even so innovative approaches to regional government and cooperation among general-purpose local governments are relatively recent phenomena. The first section of this volume provides the reader with a comprehensive introduction and overview to the field of regional government in general, and of recent regional government innovations throughout the nation in particular. The second section provides 25 case studies that examine outstanding examples of public and nonprofit initiatives and programs that promote regional government throughout America. The final section studies current trends in regional governance, the evolving role of regional councils, and the regional challenges posed by increased global competition. A directory of regional and national resource organizations dealing with regional government as well as a comprehensive annotated bibliography are included at the end of this volume.

After over a decade of administrative and economic reform in mainland China, the center has become increasingly remote and less important for many localities. In many ways, the mobilization capacity of the central government has been weakened. Central government policies are often ignored and local officials are often more interested in personal projects than in centrally directed economic plans. In this study of local government and politics in China, the author explores when and why local government officials comply with policy directives from above. Drawing on interviews with government officials in various municipalities and a review of county records and other government documents, he provides the first in-depth look at policy implementation at the county and township levels in the PRC. The book examines the impact of the Chinese cadre system on the behavior of local officials, local party and government structure, relationships among various levels of Chinese local government, policy supervision mechanisms at local levels, village governance of China, and more.

This book explores experiences, issues and challenges which have emerged since Constitutional status was granted to the local bodies at grassroots level in India in the early 1990s. Among other issues, it focuses on: the contrasting political ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar on Panchayati Raj Institutions the legal and constitutional prov

This book studies political leadership at the local level, based on data from a survey of the mayors of cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants in 29 European countries carried out between 2014 and 2016. The book compares these results with those of a similar survey conducted ten years ago. From this comparative perspective, the book examines how to become a mayor in Europe today, the attitudes of these politicians towards administrative and territorial reforms, their notions of democracy, their political priorities, whether or not party politicization plays a role at the municipal level, and how mayors interact with other actors in the local political arena. This study addresses students, academics and practitioners concerned at different levels with the functioning and reforms of the municipal level of local government.

This book showcases new research by emerging and established scholars on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa.

Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the geographical and chronological limitations of existing scholarship by presenting case studies from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe that track the fortunes of nonhegemonic whites during the era of white minority rule. Arguing against prevalent understandings of white society as uniformly wealthy or culturally homogeneous during this period, it demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa’s white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region. Addressing themes such as the class-based disruption of racial norms and practices, state surveillance and interventions – and their failures – towards nonhegemonic whites, and the opportunities and limitations of physical and social mobility, the book mounts a forceful argument for the regional consideration of white societies in this historical context. Centrally, it extends the path-breaking insights emanating from scholarship on racialized class identities from North America to the African context to argue that race and class cannot be considered independently in Southern Africa.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of southern African studies, African history, and the history of race.

Table of Contents

1. Workers Called White and Classes Called Poor: The ‘White Working Class’ and ‘Poor Whites’ in Southern Africa 1910-1994 2. Rhodesian State Paternalism and the White Working-Class Family, 1930s-1950s 3. Immigration and Settlement of "Undesirable" Whites in Southern Rhodesia, c. 1940s to 1960s 4. White People Fit for a New South Africa? State Planning, Policy and Social Response in the Parastatal Cities of the Vaal, 1940-1990 5. Whites, but not Quite: Settler Imaginations in Late Colonial Mozambique, c. 1951-1964 6. "Village Portugal" in Africa: Discourses of Differentiation and Hierarchization of Settlers, 1950s-1974 7. Labour and Mobility on Rhodesia’s Railways: The 1954 Fireman’s Strike 8. The Dog that Didn’t Bark: The Mufulira Strike and White Mineworkers at Zambian Independence 9. Social Engineering and Scientific Management: Some Reflections on the Apartheid Public Service and Historical Process 10. White Workers and the Unravelling of Racial Citizenship in Late Apartheid South Africa

Contents:
1. Understanding Inclusion in the City 2. "A Great Learning City" 3. Perspectives on Inclusion/Exclusion in Birmingham 4. Selection by Attainment 5. Embracing the Faith, Including the Community? 6. Single-sex Education and Inclusive School Communities 7. Student Choice and Participation in Further Education 8. A 'Turbulent' City: Mobility and Social Inclusion 9. Moving Towards Inclusion?

This book explores the relationship between bureaucrats and elected politicians in Bangladesh and discusses how this impacts governance and development in the country from an empirical perspective. It looks at the interplay of politics and bureaucracy in ancient societies, western democracies and in the developing world while highlighting the uniqueness of the Bangladesh experience and its indigenous contexts of local governance. The author presents a historical overview of the nature of political development, shift of regimes in Bangladesh, and the role of various agents and stakeholders. Through a detailed study, the book provides an analytical and theoretical framework to understanding the linkages between politics and bureaucracy, governance and development in South Asia and Bangladesh, with implications for geopolitics and economic growth. This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of political economy, development studies, public administration, comparative politics as well as to policymakers, bureaucrats, government bodies, and especially those concerned with Bangladesh.

The Kurdish question remains one of the most important and complicated issues in ethnic politics in contemporary times, with the Kurds being one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state of their own. This comprehensive volume brings together a group of distinguished scholars to address the Kurdish question in its centennial year with a fresh analytical lens, to demonstrate that the study of Kurdish politics has developed beyond a narrow focus on the state-minority antagonism. It addresses a series of interrelated questions focusing on Kurdish politics as well as broader themes related to nationalism, ethnic mobilization, democratic struggles, and international security. The authors examine the agency of Kurdish political actors and their relations with foreign actors; the relations between Kurdish political leaders and organizations and regional and great powers; the dynamics and competing forms of Kurdish political rule; and the involvement of Kurdish parties in broader democratic struggles. Using original empirical work, they place the scholarship on Kurdish politics in dialogue with the broader scholarship on ethnic nationalism, self-determination movements, diaspora studies, and rebel diplomacy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnopolitics.

This book uses a multi-method approach to explain why recent Iowa governors have been able to stay in office significantly longer than their peers. Voters in Iowa value a personal connection with their governor and those governors who ignore that expectation are held accountable at the polls.

One of the genuine classics of American political science literature, "Constitutional Government in the United States" is also a subtle and influential criticism of the American founding fathers produced during the Progressive Era. Wilson's interpretation of the Constitution shaped the thought of scholars and students of American politics. His definition of constitutional government and the place of the United States in the development of constitutional theory continues to shape discourse today. Wilson discusses the three branches of government in the United States, the relation between the states and the federal government and party government in a manner quite distinct from the founding fathers.

"Constitutional Government" has its origins in a series of lectures Wilson delivered at Columbia University in 1907. It is carefully organized around three separate but mutually supporting arguments. First, is the idea that constitutional government evolves historically from primitive beginnings of the state toward a universal and ideal form. Second, this idea of historical evolution contains within it an analysis of how and where the Constitution fits into the evolutionary process as a whole. Third, the historical thesis itself provides a prescription for bringing American government, and with it the Constitution, into accord with his first principle of the ideal form of modern government.

In his new introduction, Sidney A. Pearson explores how, with "Constitutional Government in the United States," Wilson helped create a new genre of political writing using the point of view of a "literary politician." He discusses Wilson's intention to replace the constitutional argument of the founders with one of his own based on the application of Darwinian metaphor in a political science framework. And he examines the differences between the views launched by Wilson and those set forth by James Madison in "The Federalist." This is an essential work for all interested in the evolution of American political thought.

First published in 1984 this book has established itself as the leading text in British public administration. The third edition builds on the previous edition's success to bring the considerable changes and very latest developments in the field.
This new edition includes:

a. A new chapter on the influence of Europe
b. A focus on new developments that have emerged in recent years such as managerism, privatisation, consumerism, charters, contracting and regulation.
c. New features include boxed summaries of key concepts and facts, guides to further reading as well as an extensive bibliography.

Written by three leading authorities in the field, this text will be essential reading for those who want an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to public administration.

Your roadmap to community leadership: This significant guide puts the tools of democracy into everyones hands. Based on the best of Blandin Foundations 20-year experience in developing community leaders, it gives community members like yourself the tools to bring people together to make changes. Here are some of the useful resources you'll find: Identifying Community Assets; Community Problem Analysis; Accessing Community Data; Appreciative Inquiry; Translating Vision to Action; Interpersonal Communication for Leaders; Managing Interpersonal Conflict as a Leader; Building Social Capital Across Cultures; Network Mapping: Locating Your Social Capital; Stakeholders Analysis; Building Coalitions; Building Effective Community Teams; Recruiting and Sustaining Volunteers; Getting the Most from Your Meetings. Across the country, individuals and groups are hearing a bugle call to action. Rural, urban, rich, poor, left, right, and everywhere in between community members are waking up to bridge differences and make their communities the best they can be. If you want to make a difference where you live, this book is your roadmap. If you attend early and late night meetings to figure out what needs to get done, this book is your handbook. If you give your time and energy to make things happen, this book is your guide. If you work to involve your neighbors to solve problems, this book is your ally. Carefully crafted examples based on real-life leadership issues help you see how to put the tools of leadership to work where you live, today. Whether you are an active community member who wants to make a difference, a nonprofit leader serving the community, a leadership advisor, a government liaison called on to convene the community, a business leader, a public servant, or a foundation program officer specializing in community needs, you will find in this book the tools and theories essential to getting your work done.

Your roadmap to community leadership: This significant guide puts the tools of democracy into everyones hands. Based on the best of Blandin Foundations 20-year experience in developing community leaders, it gives community members like yourself the tools to bring people together to make changes. Here are some of the useful resources you'll find: Identifying Community Assets; Community Problem Analysis; Accessing Community Data; Appreciative Inquiry; Translating Vision to Action; Interpersonal Communication for Leaders; Managing Interpersonal Conflict as a Leader; Building Social Capital Across Cultures; Network Mapping: Locating Your Social Capital; Stakeholders Analysis; Building Coalitions; Building Effective Community Teams; Recruiting and Sustaining Volunteers; Getting the Most from Your Meetings. Across the country, individuals and groups are hearing a bugle call to action. Rural, urban, rich, poor, left, right, and everywhere in between community members are waking up to bridge differences and make their communities the best they can be. If you want to make a difference where you live, this book is your roadmap. If you attend early and late night meetings to figure out what needs to get done, this book is your handbook. If you give your time and energy to make things happen, this book is your guide. If you work to involve your neighbors to solve problems, this book is your ally. Carefully crafted examples based on real-life leadership issues help you see how to put the tools of leadership to work where you live, today. Whether you are an active community member who wants to make a difference, a nonprofit leader serving the community, a leadership advisor, a government liaison called on to convene the community, a business leader, a public servant, or a foundation program officer specializing in community needs, you will find in this book the tools and theories essential to getting your work done.

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 comprehensive volume explores debt dynamics and the intensification of debt crises across the globe, bringing together several recent but underexplored debt crises from different regional and socioeconomic contexts. Using detailed case studies, the authors recast the perils of debt-based growth in the context of regional/global imbalances; not to advocate 'one-size-fits-all' reforms, but to point to the need for accommodating diversity. They examine how current economic developments put developing and developed countries under new strain. They also interrogate the opportunities and challenges generated for developing countries by the new development finance landscape and newly (re)emerged geopolitical tensions. The book also explores the inability of existing dominant structures and thinking to effectively manage the multiple facets of the ongoing global debt crisis, pointing to responses that exacerbate rather than address unsustainable debt dynamics. The authors illustrate the adverse effects of ad hoc crisis management mechanisms which are not fit for purpose, and indicate the negative consequences that existing policies may have for democracy. They then put forward a framework for alternative thinking as well as concrete ideas on what needs to be done, in response. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and professionals in the field of global debt studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Third World Thematics.

Over the past few decades and throughout the world, numerous government-initiated experiments and attempts at directly engaging and including citizens have emerged as remedies for a variety of problems faced by modern democracies, including political disaffection and insufficient capacity to deal with the complexity inherent in many contemporary public problems, such as climate change and segregation. In practice, these attempts are given many names, such as citizen panels, deliberative fora, collaborative dialogues, etc. In the academic literature as well, the phenomenon falls under many different headings, for instance collaborative, deliberative or interactive governance. Participatory Governance and Representative Democracy refers to this empirical phenomenon as local participatory governance, that is, government-sponsored direct participation between invited citizens and local officials in concrete arrangements and concerning problems that affect them. Participatory governance, we argue, may take many forms, regarding (1) type of interaction and type of communication between participants within the specific participatory arrangement (e.g., deliberative vs. aggregative) as well as regarding (2) the relation and connection between the specific arrangement and the more traditional representative structures (e.g., compatible, incompatible, transformative or irrelevant). The proposed edited volume addresses the matter of institutionalization, highlighting the difficulties associated with establishing stability and a shared understanding of the roles and rules among citizens, local politicians and administrators in participatory arrangements.

This book explores the normalization of HIV and AIDS, reflecting upon the intended and unintended consequences of the multifarious "AIDS industry."

The Normalization of the HIV and AIDS Epidemic in South Africa deals with the manner in which the HIV and AIDS epidemic has become such a well-known disease with such wide-ranging ramifications. With its focus on the "AIDS industry," this book examines issues such as the framing of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in a manner that greatly fostered notions of stigmatization and moralization. This book looks at the complexities of dealing with the epidemic in contemporary South Africa, examining the difficulties of addressing the social aspects of a disease in the context of increased focus on technological quick-fix solutions. De Wet explores these issues thoroughly, looking at the social determinants of the spread of the disease as well as the configuration and the nature of the responses to it, and their increasing marginalization as factors to address in an era of increased biomedicalization and concomitant normalization.

This book will intrigue scholars and students of public health, global health care, medical sociology, and African Studies.

Table of Contents

1. From Exceptionality to Ordinariness: How HIV and AIDS Lost its Sex Appeal 2. Dollars, Donors, and Drugs: South Africa in the Era of Global Health 3. "Thin Citizenship" of Community Health Workers 4. The Continued Relevance of HIV and AIDS Activism: "Help Prevent a Sequel" ... 5. The AIDS Industry: Entanglements, Ethics, and The Future of AIDS As We Know It

Research on global norm diffusion and institutional transfer has often neglected the agency of the governed. This collection argues that limited statehood - the lack of state capacities in most parts of the global South - provides opportunities for the governed to raise their voices and be listened to. Thus, people on the receiving end of development cooperation, state building, or security interventions can significantly shape global dynamics of normative and institutional change. Drawing on the emerging body of literature on the agency of the governed, this book assesses the current dynamics of transfer and diffusion studies at the interstice of political science and social anthropology. By focusing on the agency of the governed, the authors integrate a broad spectrum of issues and debates, from the proliferation of global norms to state and security building to international policy cooperation. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of global politics and international relations, particularly those focusing on the global South. It was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Third World Thematics.

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