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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Local government > Local government policies
Neopatrimonial analysts attribute the failure of development
policies in Nigeria to entirely internal problems emanating from
the personalization of state resources by rulers for their own
benefits and as forms of patronage for securing the loyalty of
clients. Based on elaborate theoretical and empirical analysis of
development policies in Nigeria with special focus on development
planning, this book argues that the neopatrimonial analysis is
one-sided and does not adequately capture the fundamental factors
responsible for the development malaise in the country.
Understanding Nigeria's development problems entails looking beyond
neopatrimonialism. The adverse effects of diffusionism that
underlined development policies, and the associated external
factors that fostered neocolonial dependence and peripheralization
of Nigeria's economy are crucial for understanding and coming to
terms with the development problem. This book makes a strong case
for endogenous formulation of development policies and for the
reformulation of the Nigerian state in order to make it more
developmental.
This text analyses how the current generation of young adults enters the labour market and tries to create their own autonomous household, with or without children, exploring questions such as what does it mean to be a young adult in Europe today and what social policies help them to combine work and family life?
This book assesses the key factors underlying such Australian-Japanese cooperation and those policy challenges that could impede it. Experts offer critical insights into why their two countries - traditionally the two key 'spokes' in the US bilateral alliance network spanning Asia - are moving toward a security relationship in their own right.
This book provides the first full account of America's relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran from Jimmy Carter's presidency to Barack Obama's. It discusses all major facets of Iranian policy of interest to the United States: nuclear proliferation, revolutionary export and support for international terrorism, efforts to undermine the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and violations of human rights. It compares developments in Iran to their perception in Washington, providing the clearest picture available yet of the discrepancies between the complex and elusive Iranian reality and its understanding in the United States.
Using the cases of Northern Cyprus and Transdniestria, the author examines state-building as practiced by informal states. Exploring symbolic and economic dimensions of state-building projects and using insights from political sociology, she investigates how they function under circumstances of non-recognition.
Written for practitioners and practitioners-in-training of education development, this book reviews education issues in developing countries and provides in-depth case studies from Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
This book considers the extent to which, and in what circumstances, political parties affect public policy. It explores the regional level in Germany; using case studies in the areas of education, childcare and family, and labour market policy. In particular, the author explores whether party politicians make a difference to policies.
As 300 million Americans squeeze into our country, and as single-person households outnumber parents with children, it's time to rethink our land use laws that favor the single-family house. This provocative book visits sites of recent controversies--from an immigration dispute in a Virginia suburb, to eminent domain in New York City, to illegal apartments in the backyards of California. Boudreaux explores how we could scrap the old housing bias in favor of affluent homeowners, and in its place harness the free market to provide for a greater variety of residences--apartments, townhouses, and mobile homes - for the twenty-first century.
This study applies policy network theory to major technological, economic, environmental and social trends to generate propositions about the future of public policy. Among the findings are that we should expect more business-friendly policies, more intrusive law enforcement, more women-friendly policies, and stronger climate policies.
Divisions in the EU are considered, as well as the conflicts that have arisen from enlargement and foreign policy concerns. Leading specialists on European politics and society reflect on the nature of consensus and competition between elites, and whether the EU may be able to provide a sense of common identity and purpose for its citizens.
This book argues that policy-making is values-driven rather than, as is traditionally argued, the result of interest-driven politics or the consequences of path-dependent/institutionalist perspectives. Stewart devotes chapters to major values which drive public policy across developed nations such as fairness, efficiency and economic growth.
This book examines comparatively the US and the UK governments' management of Y2K and considers the extent to which such management can be understood as responses to market pressures, public opinion and organized interests. It concludes by providing valuable lessons to those concerned about managing risk and critical infrastructure today.
""This third edition of Hal Colebatch's book, "Policy," is a
welcome addition to the policy literature. Through as series of
interrelated questions--such as Why worry about policy? What is it
for? What does it look like on the ground? and How do we do
it?--Colebatch interestingly unravels and elaborates on the key
issues, both practical and theoretical, that constitute the field
of policy studies. In a very succinct and highly readable style,
the nine chapters weave together discussions of traditional models
and approaches (e.g., process models, rationality, and
incrementalism) with a presentation of newer emphases (e.g., social
constructivism, discourse, and his own innovative concept of
''policy work''). He does it in ways that are accessible to the
beginning university student, but that are, at the same time,
helpful to the experienced practitioner. As such, the book is
highly recommendable." "This 3rd edition, like the previous ones, offers students an
excellent guided tour of the field of policy studies. The major
strands of thinking and research are introduced as answers to a set
of straightforward, commonsense questions, written in highly
accessible, non-technical, easy to grasp prose. "This third edition of Hal Colebatch's volume, Policy, is a very
accessible book that has the ability to meet the needs of a broad
range of readers. The book provides a range of examples of the
illusive world of policy; these examples travel the globe and
allows the work to move beyond the original Australian focus in the
first edition. The nine questions that serve to organize the volume
are useful and provide access to the ever-growing literature in the
policy field." "This book is essential reading for all students of public
policy and policy analysis. It is pleasure to read and covers a
great deal of important material in a comprehensive and informed
manner. I warmly welcome this new edition." This new edition of a highly successful text provides an even sharper critical analysis than before of the place of policy in the way we are governed. It is a book about policy - not about what governments do ('public policy') or about particular fields of policy (such as 'health policy' or 'education policy') but about policy as a concept - an idea which makes sense of the way in which we are governed, and which we can use to be more effective participants in this governing. "Policy" is key reading for the student studying the subject, the public official or community activist engaged in making policy, and the interested member of the public who wants to know where policy comes from, and why it matters.
"Gender, Equality and Difference During and After State Socialism" examines gender as a socially and culturally constructed phenomenon which is influential in and influenced by state-led policies and structures, as well as social practices and relations and which shapes the experiences and lives of women and men. The volume explores the pivotal nature of the demise of the communist regimes, in relation both to experiences of gender and to their study in former state socialist societies. Each chapter is based on new and original research by the authors.
This study presents, for the first time, a synoptic picture of the future directions in which public policy in EU countries is likely to move based on using contemporary theories of policy-making to deduce the implications for public policy of major long-term technological, economic, environmental and social trends. The resulting 12 policy implications can be loosely summarized as more assertive security policies, more business-friendly economic policies, more liberal social policies and increased public spending.
Ken Livingstone was elected Mayor of London on a platform that
included a congestion charge for central London, a policy that
became reality on 17 February 2003. Richards uses his experience as
Director of a bliog2.5 million Government congestion charging
study, as one of those who created the scheme Livingstone adopted
and as advisor to the London Assembly, to provide a critical record
of the introduction of the London Congestion Charge, and of its
implications for congestion charging elsewhere.
Over the last century, the scale of Canada's domestic disaster response system has grown significantly due to the country's increased capacity for emergency management and the rise in natural hazards. However, there has been no systematic assessment of how effectively this multilevel system, which includes all levels of government and the military, has been integrated, and how efficient this system actually is at responding to high-level disasters. Using in-depth archival analysis and interviews with senior military and civilian officials on the inside, Boots on the Ground provides a detailed examination of Canada's disaster response system. Including policy recommendations focused on the expansion of emergency management networks, the maintenance of Canada's decentralized emergency management system, and disaster response resources for First Nations communities, Boots on the Ground aims to highlight opportunities to improve Canada's urgent disaster response. Boots on the Ground offers helpful lessons for students, policy makers, emergency management practitioners, and military officers, ensuring that readers gain concrete insights into the strategic and efficient implementation of disaster response initiatives.
Legalized gambling has spread like wildfire through the United States, with only Hawaii and Utah still prohibiting all of its forms. The reason? Gambling has become the method of choice for states in search of additional revenue: in 2002 alone, state lottery sales exceeded USD42 billion, netting nearly USD14 billion in voluntary taxes. Gambling Politics examines this dramatic development in contemporary state policymaking, as well as the shifting and often contentious politics accompanying gambling's spread. Fierce and Miller present a multistate analysis of lottery and casino proposals to explain why states have or have not adopted various forms of gambling since 1966. Supplementing their research with case studies of Florida and Illinois, they provide insight into the process of policy diffusion, explore the symbolic threats associated with gambling, and assess the changing influence of religious and other interest groups. Gambling lost much of its stigma, the authors conclude, once state-run lotteries meant government was engaged in the business of sin and citizen objections could no longer be heard over the din of interest-group lobbying.
Lance D. Fusarelli examines the relationship between the charter school and voucher issues: To what degree does political support for charter schools--from a coalition of teacher associations, school board groups, superintendents, and voucher advocates--slow or even stop the forces for vouchers? Or, do these coalitions, which successfully pushed charter school legislation through the legislature, actually fuel the fires of privatization? Charter schools legislation has enjoyed bipartisan support precisely because the threat of vouchers is so great. And, contrary to the strategy of voucher opponents, the spread of charter school increases, rather than alleviates, the push for vouchers.
Can governments do anything right? Can they do anything at all
about the problems of poverty and inequality? Despite the recent
boom in the U.S. economy, many millions of Americans have been left
behind. Poverty rates remain higher than in most other
industrialized countries. Income inequality has increased sharply.
Yet we are sometimes told that government cannot or should not do
anything about it: either these problems are hopeless, or
government action is inevitably wasteful and inefficient, or
globalization has made governments impotent.
The impact of political lobbyists remains highly controversial. No-one has explored when they matter. This book tells readers when lobbyists count and analyzes the relationship between lobbying, policy outcomes and the impact of external factors to reveal the professional lobbyist's limited effect on policy. On most policy issues lobbyists simply do not matter. But, on rare occasions lobbyists can make a difference and this book explains when they matter and why.
Collaboration between governments, business, the voluntary and community sectors is now central to the way public policy is made, managed, and delivered. This book provides the first comprehensive and authoritative account of the theory, policy, and practice of collaboration. Written by two leading authorities in the field, the book explores the experience of collaboration in regeneration, health, and other policy sectors, and assesses the consequences of the emergence of public-private partnerships contrasting the UK experience to that elsewhere in the world.
Corruption and ineffectiveness are often expected of public servants in developing countries. However, some groups within these states are distinctly more effective and public oriented than the rest. Why? Patchwork Leviathan explains how a few spectacularly effective state organizations manage to thrive amid general institutional weakness and succeed against impressive odds. Drawing on the Hobbesian image of the state as Leviathan, Erin Metz McDonnell argues that many seemingly weak states actually have a wide range of administrative capacities. Such states are in fact patchworks sewn loosely together from scarce resources into the semblance of unity. McDonnell demonstrates that when the human, cognitive, and material resources of bureaucracy are rare, it is critically important how they are distributed. Too often, scarce bureaucratic resources are scattered throughout the state, yielding little effect. McDonnell reveals how a sufficient concentration of resources clustered within particular pockets of a state can be transformative, enabling distinctively effective organizations to emerge from a sea of ineffectiveness. Patchwork Leviathan offers a comprehensive analysis of successful statecraft in institutionally challenging environments, drawing on cases from contemporary Ghana and Nigeria, mid-twentieth-century Kenya and Brazil, and China in the early twentieth century. Based on nearly two years of pioneering fieldwork in West Africa, this incisive book explains how these highly effective pockets differ from the Western bureaucracies on which so much state and organizational theory is based, providing a fresh answer to why well-funded global capacity-building reforms fail-and how they can do better.
In times of dramatic social, economic and political change, governments around the world are questioning their roles and responsibilities in the public sector. The trend is away from a traditional public-sector market model, but there does not yet exist a universally accepted alternative. The essays offer a comparative analysis of public administration in several OECD countries, including the UK, US, Australia, and Scandinavia, and explores possible future directions.
In this fascinating, theoretically informed case study of policy making, Jack R. Van Der Slik demonstrates partisan politics in action in Illinois. Specifically, he shows how major changes in governing state universities were enacted over the objections of members of the higher education community, who preferred to maintain the status quo. In 1991, Republican Governor Jim Edgar, enthusiastically aided by Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra, began a political effort to decentralize the "system of systems," which had governed state universities since the 1960s. Despite partisan defeat of their plan in 1993, Edgar and Kustra managed to neutralize support for the status quo in the educational community. After their 1995 landslide reelection, which brought about Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature, Edgar and Kustra were so successful in achieving their goals that they actually had to restrain the legislature's enthusiasm for decentralization: the legislature wanted to extend decentralization to community colleges. To account for these policy shifts, Van Der Slik interviewed twenty-five significant players from the executive branch of Illinois government, from the legislature, and from the educational community. Grounding his study theoretically, he compared his findings to previous studies in American policy making: Jack Kingom's 1984 notion of the crucial role of the "policy entrepreneur"; arguments in 1993 by Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones that public policies are inherently unstable and that discoverable phenomena can account for policy eruption; and research in 1995 by Charles O. Jones covering presidential transitions from Kennedy to Reagan. To a remarkable degree, the political actions in Illinois fit the theoretical formulations of previous scholarship in national policy making. As key participants recount their own actions and their observations, then, Van Der Slik places what happened in Illinois into a larger context. |
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