This book takes a comparative approach to local government across 14 European countries, looking at processes of decentralisation, regionalisation and reforms of local government. Examining second levels of government, such as UK Counties, French Departements, Italian and Spanish Provinces, and German Landkreise, this book reveals both the specific characteristics of particular countries, and also similarities across Europe. As the first book focussing on the second level of local governments, this monograph combines comparative analysis of institutional trends and reforms of local government with examination of country-specific features to provide an original and insightful evaluation of European governance. Organised along common thematic lines, leading experts in their field outline the historical development of local government, and analyse recent or current reform debates. The book argues democratic quality and effectiveness of this territorial level of government is in the focus of on-going debates about the rescaling of statehood and a shift from 'government to governance'. The Second Tier of Local Government in Europe will be of interest to students and scholars studying local government, public administration and multi-level governance.

Privatization of local government is making headlines throughout the world. Scottsdale, Arizona, contracts for fire protection; Baltimore, to run nine city schools; and Chicago and Philadelphia for a range of services from janitors to recreational facilities. The United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia have arguably gone further than the United States. But much of the debate on contracting has been high on politics, philosophy, and emotion with little attention to practical issues of how to do contracting well. The book shifts the debate away from the politics and rhetoric to the practicalities and realities of contracting.

The book is concerned with four issues--the role of contracting in government, the appropriateness of different contracting strategies, the process of contracting, and who does the contracting. Drawing on examples in the United States and the United Kingdom, the author considers the historical and cultural context of contracting, where contracting works and where it doesn't, the features of smart contracting, and the conditions that are conducive to smart contracting. The book provides an invaluable guide to those concerned with the practicalities of contracting.

Over the past three decades, decentralization has been seen as the means for allowing local governments to become more accountable, and for encouraging the deepening of democracy and the building of village communities. By drawing on original village-level case studies of six villages in three different Indian states, this book presents a systematic analysis of the impact of decentralization on the delivery of social services at the local level within India. Supplementing national and state-level data and analyzing the different historical legacies in each state, the book argues that decentralization is not simply a function of the structure of the decentralization program or of the relationship between higher-tiered and local government. Rather, the possibility of decentralization affecting social outcomes depends on several interacting factors, including the distribution of power among local elites, the dynamics of political competition, and the level of civil society mobilization. By examining constitutionally-mandated political decentralization across India, this book identifies the circumstances under which local government structures can lead to improved social services and societal wellbeing, as well as presenting a substantial contribution to studies on South Asian Politics and Local Government.

Provides an overview of state and local taxation, the current and future outlook across the nation, the role of taxes in economic development, and tax administration. Analyzes and compares all types of state and local taxes-income (individual and corporate) sales (retail and wholesale taxes on food, medicine, gas, and electricity), excise and consumption (on motor fuel, tobacco, and alcoholic beverages and on food, lodging, amusements, parimutuels, and lotteries), property (on different types of property), and severance taxes (on timber and minerals). Examines the philosophy behind the different taxes, recent trends, and current and future policy options. Appendices describing policy analysis and evaluation and listing key sources of information about state and local taxes, many statistical exhibits, and selective bibliography further enhance this reference for undergraduate and graduate students, the general public, and for public administrators, economists, and political scientists.

"Florida's modern face, the result of its astonishing population growth since World War II, belies an unbalanced economy: overly dependent on tourism and retirement that generates primarily low-paying service jobs. . . . Florida's Megatrends is timely reading for any citizen, and especially any aspiring politician." St. Petersburg Times "This brief but powerful book analyzes Florida since the 1870s. ?. . . Here each historical event is included for a reason, and each forecast for the future is based on solid historical precedents. The result is an exciting and informative book."--Florida Historical Quarterly "Offers an important perspective on some of the most critical issues facing our great state in the twenty-first century."--U.S. Senator Bob Graham In the first edition of Florida Megatrends, David Colburn and Lance deHaven-Smith revealed the state for what it is: a bellwether for the nation. The intervening years have only confirmed their analyses, as Florida and the U.S. have been battered and transformed by the housing collapse, the great economic recession that began in 2008, record-high gas prices, withering tourism, the 2004 hurricane season, and much more. This completely revised and updated edition brings the story up-to-date.

14 Weeks to Smarter Government In Smarter Government: How to Govern for Results in the Information Age, former governor Martin O'Malley draws on his deep experience in implementing performance measurement and management, or "Stat" systems, at the city and state levels in Baltimore and Maryland. And the results speak for themselves: the biggest crime reduction in any big city in America; a reversal of a 300-year decline in the health of the Chesapeake Bay; and schools ranked #1 for five years in a row. Now, take these tested solutions and apply them to your government organization in fewer than four months. Smarter Government Workbook: A 14-Week Implementation Guide to Governing for Results is your practical, hands-on companion workbook for Smarter Government and for realizing the promise of Stat. Smarter Government Workbook: A 14-Week Implementation Guide to Governing for Results distills the lessons from Smarter Government and concisely presents an interactive, easy-to-follow, proven 14-week plan any government can follow to achieve strategic performance management. You will devise a framework to: Gather and share timely, accurate information Rapidly deploy resources Build leadership and collaboration Develop and refine effective strategic goals and key performance indicators Assess your results The difference between a dream and a goal is a deadline. Here's your plan.

The International Directory of Government is the definitive guide to people in power in every part of the world. All the top decision-makers are included in this one-volume publication, which brings together government institutions, agencies and personnel in every country and dependency in the world. Each chapter offers information about: the country's system of government the head of state the legislature government ministers and ministries the election commission the judiciary state-related agencies and other institutions arranged by subject heading. For a number of countries, information has also been included about provincial government where considerable power is devolved to government at that level. Institutional entries contain the names and titles of principal officials, postal, e-mail and internet addresses, telephone, and fax numbers and other relevant details.

This volume contains articles examining freedom of information statutes, including those protecting government employees who expose official misconduct. Using United States laws as examples, the articles explore the relationship of these laws to administrative and constitutional theory in the United States. In addition, they demonstrate how varying conceptions of information illuminate the controversies in the application of these laws to the revolution in the electronic storage and retrieval of information. The articles allow the reader to speculate how the connection of these laws to liberal democratic theory explains their recent adoption in several countries and their international application.

This book provides the only available historical account and comprehensive assessment of the factors surrounding the 2004 referendum on an elected assembly in the North-East region of England.

The referendum delivered a 'no' vote of considerable magnitude and called a halt to the program of gradual reform being pushed through by the Labour government. This book examines the campaigns around and the lead-up to the referendum, and offers in-depth analysis of the result, plus explorations of future options available to policy-makers around the sub-national governance of England (a key aspect of the 'English Question'). Crucially, the book contains chapters from scholars who carried out cutting-edge research at the time of the referendum and are thus in a unique position to contribute authoritatively to the historical understanding of these events. This volume will be of great benefit to students and researchers in Regional Studies, Local Government Studies and Constitutional Studies.

Liberal democracies are experiencing a major transformation of public governance by which self-regulation, co-operation and negotiation between public and private actors and across different political-administrative levels play an increasingly important role for policy-making and implementation. Using the term 'governance imagery', or what a given society envisions to be the proper way of governing public affairs, this volume examines the emergence, causes and consequences of the politics of self-governance both within relevant social science theorizing and in the everyday production of public governance in various policy areas. It questions how self-governance materialized in various areas of public governance in different liberal democracies, and the driving forces and political effects of attempts to enhance the role of self-governance. Challenging the theory and practice of public administration, The Politics of Self-Governance is an indispensable read for all those interested in new forms of public governance.

Governing the Locals demonstrates that with the exception of a brief period in 1990-92 when the local soviets fostered mass mobilization, local governments in post-Soviet Russia have actively constrained grass-roots activism. Rather than serving as instruments of the 'schooling in civil society, ' or of 'making democracy work'_as the conventional wisdom holds_local governments have been used by the regional authoritarian or ethnocratic regimes as instruments of top down social control. The author suggests that this tendency has been on the rise under President Putin, whose reforms have served to integrate local government into a centralized power vertical potentially facilitating authoritarian style social mobilization non only on a regional level, but also on a nation-wide scale. The author examines the impact of local self-governing institutions on nationalist movement mobilization in Russia. Using insights from social movement theories, Lankina argues that similar to the soviets in the Soviet system, municipalities in post-Soviet Russia continue to influence local societies through their control over social networks, material resources, and public agenda setting. Accordingly, their facilitating or constraining role crucially affects movement successes or failures. This is the first study identifying the centrality of local government for understanding the nature of state-society relations in Russia, and for explaining the broader questions of social activism or lack thereof in the post-Soviet space.

Drawing on original fieldwork in Nigeria, Portia Roelofs argues for an innovative re-conceptualisation of good governance. Contributing to debates around technocracy, populism and the survival of democracy amidst conditions of inequality and mistrust, Roelofs offers a new account of what it means for leaders to be accountable and transparent. Centred on the rise of the 'Lagos Model' in the Yoruba south-west, this book places the voices of roadside traders and small-time market leaders alongside those of local government officials, political godfathers and technocrats. In doing so, it theorises 'socially-embedded' good governance. Roelofs demonstrates the value of fieldwork for political theory and the associated possibilities for decolonising the study of politics. Challenging the long-held assumptions of the World Bank and other international institutions that African political systems are pathologically dysfunctional, Roelofs demonstrates that politics in Nigeria has much to teach us about good governance.

Local Politics: A Resource for Democracy in Western Europe examines the relationship between local institutional design and citizens' attitudes toward democracy. Translated by Angelika Vetter, this book is a unique contribution to traditional political culture research, which has focused primarily on national politics. As the last stage in the nation-state administrative apparatus, local authorities represent the synapse between the political-administrative system and the citizens. By comparing attitudes towards local and national politics in a cross-national framework, this book investigates the socialization functions of local politics including the feeling of identification or belonging, the input side of politics, and the citizens' satisfaction with local and national democracy. Following sophisticated analysis, Vetter highlights the conditions under which locally socialized political orientations may serve as a resource for democracy at higher system levels. Local Politics: A Resource for Democracy in Western Europe is a fascinating read for those interested in political science and European studies.

In 2010, the governor of Arizona signed a controversial immigration bill (SB 1070) that led to a news media frenzy, copycat bills in twenty-two states, and a U.S. Supreme Court battle that put Arizona at the cross-hairs of the immigration debate. Arizona Firestorm brings together well-respected experts from across the political spectrum to examine and contextualize the political, economic, historical, and legal issues prompted by this and other anti-Latino and anti-immigrant legislation and state actions. It also addresses the news media s role in shaping immigration discourse in Arizona and around the globe. Arizona is a case study of the roots and impact of the 21st century immigration challenge. Arizona Firestorm will be of interest to scholars and students in communication, public policy, state politics, federalism, and anyone interested in immigration policy or Latino politics.

How do female municipal leaders influence policymaking in American cities? Can gender determine who gets a say in local politics or what programs cities fund? These are some of the questions raised and answered in Mirya Holman's provocative "Women in Politics in the American City."
This book provides the first comprehensive evaluation of the influence of gender on the behavior of mayors and city council members in the United States. Holman considers the effects of gender in local, urban politics and analyzes how a leader's gender does-and does not-influence policy preferences, processes, behavior, and outcomes.
Holman effectively uses original survey data to evaluate policy attitudes, combined with observations of city council meetings and interviews with leaders and community members. In doing so, she demonstrates the importance of considering the gender of leaders in local office.
"Women in Politics in the American City "emphasizes that the involvement of women in local politics does matter and that it has significant consequences for urban policy as well as state and local democracy.

Everything you need to know about Vote by Mail! Successful campaign manager and three-term mayor of Ashland, Oregon, Catherine Shaw presents the must-have handbook for navigating local campaigns. This clear and concise handbook gives political novices and veterans alike a detailed, soup-to-nuts plan for organizing, funding, publicizing, and winning local political campaigns. Finding the right message and targeting the right voters are clearly explained through specific examples, anecdotes, and illustrations. Shaw also provides in-depth information on assembling campaign teams and volunteers, canvassing, how to conduct a precinct analysis, and how to campaign on a shoestring budget. The Campaign Manager is an encouraging, lucid presentation of how to win elections at the local level.The sixth edition has been fully revised to include new and expanded coverage of contemporary campaign management-from digital ads and new social media tools to data-driven voter targeting tactics and vote by mail strategies.

City-country consolidation builds upon the Progressive tradition of favoring structural reform of local governments. This volume looks at some important issues confronting contemporary efforts to consolidate governments and develops a theoretical approach to understanding both the motivations for pursuing consolidation and the way the rules guiding the process shape the outcome. Individual chapters consider the push for city-county consolidation and the current context in which such decisions are debated, along with several alternatives to city-county consolidation. The transaction costs of city-county consolidation are compared against the costs of municipal annexation, inter-local agreements, and the use of special district governments to achieve the desired consolidation of services. The final chapters compare competing perspectives for and against consolidation and put together some of the pieces of an explanatory theory of local government consolidation.

In this 144-page collection of essays, some of today's most important progressive thinkers - including John Holloway, well-known Marxist philosopher Daniel Bensaid and theorist of liberation theology and the national question, Michael Lowy - discuss strategies to change the world. The Zapatista rebels and the Seattle demonstrators were the tip of an iceberg of social and political revolt against the injustices of corporate-led globalisation. In 2002 John Holloway, working in Puebla, Mexico, came forward with his book Change the World without Taking Power. The book took up a phrase used by Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos, that the EZLN wanted to democratise Mexico, but did not seek to 'take power'. The success of Holloway's book came from the political conjuncture - the 'spirit of the times'. For tens of thousands of global justice and anti-war activists, often influenced by the ideas of NGOs, the aim was precisely to make the world fairer and curb the power of the multinational corporations, but not necessarily to end capitalism as such. Contributions in this book show how a whole new series of experiences since the year 2000 have put Holloway's thesis to the test.

The British polity has undergone a fundamental transformation in the last decade, and in 1998 this culminated in the most radical reform of the British state since its inception in 1707. Since 1998 devolution for Scotland and Wales and power sharing in Northern Ireland have fundamentally changed the balance of power between government at the centre and the new territorial polities.

Taking this profound change as its theme, "Devolution in British Politics" is an up-to date, comprehensive and effective review of the origins and development of the devolution process. In highly readable chapters crucial aspects of devolution are considered, and the process of constitutional change and its political and institutional consequences are the principal focus of enquiry by the contributors.

With clarity and passion, "Devolution in British Politics" examines the forces at work, both historical and contemporary, that are changing the British polity. It accounts for the emergence of the cultural and political movements in the Aother nationsA that since the 1960s have demanded significant devolution of power from Whitehall and challenged the control by Westminster parties and political elites over territorial politics. "Devolution" traces the residual legacy of deep-seated cultural differences and persistent territorial interests that gave rise during the nineteenth century to political resistance to government from London, even to the idea of shared nationhood.

A team of specialist writers provides a detailed assessment of the causes and demands of the devolution campaign as well as:

• a review of the significance of the newly devolved arrangements that have replaced the classicBritish unitary state;
• an assessment of the impact of the constitutional changes;
• consideration of devolutionAs importance for the present and future workings of British government and politics, both at the centre and in the new territorial polities;
• a detailed discussion of the idea of political identity in Britain, and in a wider European and global context.

The Editor
Michael OANeill is Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Politics at Nottingham Trent University.

China has witnessed numerous incidents of social protests over the past three decades. Protests create uncertainty for authoritarian governments, and the Chinese government has created, strengthened, and coordinated multiple dispute-resolution institutions to manage social conflicts and protests. Accommodating the aggrieved prevents the accumulation of grievances in society, but concessions require resources. As the frequency and scale of collective action are closely tied to the political opportunity for action, the Chinese government has also contained protest by shaping the political opportunity available to the aggrieved. Cai and Chen show that when the Chinese central government prioritizes social control, as it has under Xi Jinping's leadership, it signals that it will tolerate local governments' use of coercion. The result is an environment that is not conducive to the mobilization of collective action, large-scale occurrences of which have been uncommon in China in recent years.

A team of scholars from throughout the world joins together in this volume to discuss the changes and challenges for administrative structures at the beginning of the 21st century. Focusing on democratization movements, flexibilization tendencies, the inclusion or exclusion of minority groups and the restructuring of transitional or emerging states, it provides a differentiated spatial overview of key problems currently faced in public administration. Offering a wide range of regional case studies from Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa, it tests current theories and concepts of government and governance, space and place and society and community. In doing so, it offers valuable insights and makes policy implications.

A concise and provocative introduction to state legislative politics, State Legislatures Today is designed as a supplement for state and local government courses and upper level courses on legislative politics. The book examines state legislatures and state lawmakers, putting them in historical context, showing how they have evolved over the years, and differentiating them from Congress. It covers state legislative elections (including the impact of redistricting, candidate recruitment, etc.), the changing job description of state legislators, legislatures as organizations, the process by which legislation gets produced, and the influences upon legislators.

Comprised of a series of national case studies, this book critically examines initiatives in public participation and their relationship to developments in community governance. As such, the case studies enable national perspectives to be applied to crucial features of modern public policy and politics. Focusing on case studies in areas which are undergoing major social and institutional transformation and/or which raise particular issues because of the marginal position of the areas within their nation-states, the book also concerns itself with developments in Western European countries and why people should logically support some but not other initiatives in public participation. This book will be very useful for students and academics in areas such as politics, public administration, social policy and sociology. It should also be of interest to local activists such as councillors, members of pressure groups and those concerned about modern trends in democracy.