In 1999, Texas passed a landmark clean energy law, beginning a groundswell of new policies that promised to make the US a world leader in renewable energy. As Leah Stokes shows in Short Circuiting Policy, however, that policy did not lead to momentum in Texas, which failed to implement its solar laws or clean up its electricity system. Examining clean energy laws in Texas, Kansas, Arizona, and Ohio over a thirty-year time frame, Stokes argues that organized combat between advocate and opponent interest groups is central to explaining why states are not on track to address the climate crisis. She tells the political history of our energy institutions, explaining how fossil fuel companies and electric utilities have promoted climate denial and delay. Stokes further explains the limits of policy feedback theory, showing the ways that interest groups drive retrenchment through lobbying, public opinion, political parties and the courts. More than a history of renewable energy policy in modern America, Short Circuiting Policy offers a bold new argument about how the policy process works, and why seeming victories can turn into losses when the opposition has enough resources to roll back laws.

Congress in the latter part of the nineteenth century decided to enact a series of statutes facilitating state enforcement of their respective criminal laws. Subsequently, Congress enacted statutes federalizing what had been solely state crimes, thereby establishing federal court and state court concurrent jurisdiction over these crimes. Federalization of state crimes has been criticized by numerous scholars, U.S. Supreme Court justices, and national organizations. Such federalization has congested the calendars of the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals leading to delays in civil cases because of the Speedy Trial Act that vacates a criminal indictment if a trial is not commenced within a specific number of days, resulted in over-crowded U.S. penitentiaries, and raises the issue of double jeopardy that is prohibited by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of each state. This book examines the impact of federalization of state crime and draws conclusions regarding its desirability. It also offers recommendations directed to Congress and the President, one recommendation direct to state legislatures for remedial actions to reduce the undesirable effects of federalized state crimes, and one recommendation that Congress and all states enter into a federal-interstate criminal suppression compact.

This comparative case study addresses central determinants of inequalities that persist in India and South Africa. The particular focus of the study is on programs aiming at the redistribution of land to the landless poor and these programs' consequences. The central question is why extreme inequalities persist despite land redistribution programs that have been in place for decades and what role different actors and dominant ideas play in this. Beyond this empirical focus, the study transcends theoretical cleavages in the social sciences by following the basic ideas of Giddens' Structurational Theory. An actor-centred approach is chosen as the primary tool for analysis. It is complemented with a structurational approach to discourse analysis for a detailed analysis of actors' preferences.

Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970 when Italy created new governments for each of its regions. After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and health services, they reveal patterns of associationism, trust, and co-operation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity. Winner of the 1992 Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) emphasizes the word "community" for building economic development, citizen participations, and revitalization of facilities and services in urban and rural areas. Resident Councils are one way to develop and build community among residents of public housing. Despite HUD stressing community building in public housing and investing money and policies around it, there are some resident councils that are not fulfilling the expectations of HUD. This book is my attempt to describe and explain HUD's expectations for the resident council as an active agent for community building and the actual practices of the resident council. I argue that policies and regulations of resident councils which exist to support the effectiveness of the resident council in creating and implementing community-building, self-sufficiency, and empowerment activities and goals in a public housing community may do more harm than good. The Department of Housing and Urban Development invests and spends billions on Public Housing Programs (6.6 billion in 2013). The majority of the 1.2 million people who live in public housing do not live in large urban areas with thousands of people confined to a certain space. The majority of public housing units (90%) have fewer than 500 units. These smaller units and the people that live in them tend to go unnoticed. This ethnographic case study focuses on explaining and understanding the factors and constraints that exist between HUD's expectations for the resident council as an active agent for community building and the actual practices of the resident council. To explain the disjunction-in fact, to determine if such disjunctions identified by Rivertown council members are real. Using the tenets of Critical Race Theory allows us to understand what forces-either real or imagined, structural or cultural-prevent the resident council from being an effective agent for change in the public housing community.

This volume sheds light on the development of squatting practices and movements in nine European cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Brighton) by examining the numbers, variations and significant contexts in their life course. It reveals how and why squatting practices have shifted and to what extent they engender urban movements. The book measures the volume and changes in squatting over various decades, mostly by focusing on Squatted Social Centres but also including squatted housing. In addition, it systematically compares the cycles, socio-spatial structures and the political implications of squatting in selected cities. This collection highlights how squatters' movements have persisted over more than four decades through different trajectories and circumstances, especially in relation to broader protest cycles and reveals how political opportunities and constraints influence the conflicts around the legalisation of squats. p>

Creating civic will by engaging citizens on the toughest public problems helps break legislative and bureaucratic gridlock and restores trust in public institutions. This book shows you how to do it.
--The Honorable Federico Pena, U.S. Secretary of Transportation

The leaders who are most effective in addressing public issues are those who have the credibility to bring together the right people to create visions and solve problems. Drawing on their extensive research, as well as on the advice and guidance of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, David Chrislip and Carl Larson show how elected officials and other civic leaders can generate the civic will to break through legislative and bureaucratic gridlock, deal with complex issues, and engage frustrated and angry citizens. They also describe how to design, initiate, and sustain a constructive, collaborative process. This groundbreaking book provides insight and answers to the major challenges facing communities today.

Divided Cities is the comparative analysis of New York and London which many have been waiting for. Wider in scope and richer in detailthan any previous study, this work provides the best introduction available to these pre-eminent world cities.
Seeming at times to mirror each other acrocc the Atlantic, New York and London stand at the apex of their respective national hierarchies, as economic and cultural capitals, and occupy similarly commanding positions within the world economy. From decline in the 1970s to renewal in the 1980s, both cities once again face decline in the 1990s, exhibiting ever-widening social divisions.
While struck by the many socio-political similarities on New York and London in their responses to global economic restructuring, the authors also delineate the quite distinctive political structures and social divisions constituted by class, race, and gender, of each city.
At the heart of the book lies the question: In what sense, if any, was there an urban revival in the last decade - and for whom? In answering this question Divided Cities traces the influence of international economic forces, and national and local policies upon the fortunes of New York and London.

This book presents the key interactions in local government and public enterprise, drawing together the challenges for local governance in the practice of public entrepreneurship and its response to collaboration, place and place making. Specifically, this book includes the impact of local partnerships and public entrepreneurs in local policy implementation. It is written by established authors bringing together their experience and practice of local partnerships and public entrepreneurship in place-based strategies, and will be of value to local government, new forms of enterprise partnerships, wider agencies and public entrepreneurship scholars as well as policymakers responsible for implementation of place-based regeneration. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners in public administration, business administration, local government, entrepreneurship, public sector management and more broadly to those with interests in public policy, business and management, political science, economics, urban studies and geography.

This comprehensive volume studies the vices and virtues of regionalisation in comparative perspective, including countries such as Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the UK, and discusses conditions that might facilitate or hamper responsiveness in regional democracies. It follows the entire chain of democratic responsiveness, starting from the translation of citizen preferences into voting behaviour, up to patterns of decision-making and policy implementation. Many European democracies have experienced considerable decentralisation over the past few decades. This book explores the key virtues which may accompany this trend, such as regional-level political authorities performing better in understanding and implementing citizens' preferences. It also examines how, on the other hand, decentralisation can come at a price, especially since the resulting multi-level structures may create several new obstacles to democratic representation, including information, responsibility and accountability problems. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal West European Politics.

Topical and up to date, Talons of the Eagle: Latin America, the United States, and the World, Fifth Edition, presents an eminent scholar's perspective on the interaction between global trends and inter-American affairs-a subject that has become crucially important in the current era. Rather than concentrating solely on U.S. policy, Peter H. Smith and Ana Covarrubias uniquely address the structural relationships between the two regions by focusing on international systems, the distribution of power, and the perception and pursuit of national interests. Throughout, this provocative text casts light on such contemporary issues as economic integration, drug trafficking, undocumented migration, and the rise of Latin America's "new left." It also analyzes Latin American reactions and responses to the U.S.-and to the rest of the world-in these complex and troubling times.

A major new introduction to the UK planning system. It outlines the evolution and use of the new spatial planning approach which is increasingly adopted at all levels of the UK planning system from European through to the national, regional, sub-regional and local level.

Contemporary practices of international peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction are often unsatisfactory. There is now a growing awareness of the significance of local governments and local communitites as an intergrated part of peacebuilding in order to improve quality and enhance precision of interventions. In spite of this, 'the local' is rarely a key factor in peacebuilding, hence 'everyday peace' is hardly achieved. The aim of this volume is threefold: firstly it illuminates the substantial reasons for working with a more localised approach in politically volatile contexts. Secondly it consolidates a growing debate on the significance of the local in these contexts. Thirdly, it problematizes the often too swiftly used concept, 'the local', and critically discuss to what extent it is at all feasible to integrate this into macro-oriented and securitized contexts. This is a unique volume, tackling the 'local turn' of peacebuilding in a comprehensive and critical way. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

A step-by-step guidebook for advance preparation and early response to school crises

This Second Edition of Preparing for Crises in the Schools arrives at a critical moment. With several recent dramatic examples of school violence and other tragedies afflicting communities nationwide, the need for school districts to take proactive measures–rather than merely react to a crisis–is critical.

This completely updated edition offers practical plans for laying the important groundwork to ensure that crisis response will be both immediate and thorough in the wake of tragedy. Authored by three school crisis response planning experts, it offers advice on early detection of trouble, developing plans and procedures to intervene with youths quickly and successfully, and conducting a school in-service workshop on crisis response planning and intervention.

Essential for counselors, school psychologists, teachers, and administrators alike, this book helps ensure that schools are not caught by surprise when a crisis occurs.

Comparing Political Regimes provides a current and comprehensive empirical assessment of the world's 195 sovereign states. Alan Siaroff analyses and classifies countries in terms of economic development, political evolution, and state strength, ultimately outlining and contrasting the aspects of four regime types: liberal democracies, electoral democracies, semi-open autocracies, and closed autocracies. The fourth edition explains institutional differences within democracies and autocracies respectively, including how regimes evolve in key countries and how this change is incremental. An invaluable reference for students to refer to, this book provides a thorough foundational introduction to the comparative politics of countries and contains several unique figures and tables on the world's sovereign states. This new edition modifies the conceptual focus regarding some features of democracy and democratic party systems, expands on variations in autocracies, and adds a new chapter on the historical evolution of democracy, including key thresholds of representative democracy and levels of participation and competition at various historical junctures for all countries.

This landmark publication addresses key governance issues in the management of development, drawing seminal papers from the 1999 Jubilee conference proceedings of the journal Public Administration and Development. It fills a major gap in the literature and provides a timely review of the state-of-the-art which is both historically-grounded and forward looking. The book is divided into three parts:

• Part 1 poses three challenges spanning past, present and future: the transformation of state, markets and civil society; institutional performance; and humanising globalisation.
• Part 2 focuses on the great contemporary forces shaping public administration and development: state, market, and civil society. It uses case studies to draw conclusions and suggest areas for further research.
• Part 3 addresses important themes for the future: states and economies in transition, conflict management and resolution, poverty and local development, governmental integrity and trust.

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 book introduces students to the complex landscape of state-local intergovernmental relations today. Each chapter illustrates conflict and cooperation for policy problems including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental regulation, marijuana regulation, and government management capacity. The contributors, leading experts in the field, help students enhance their understanding of the importance of state-local relations in the U.S. federal system, argue for better analysis of the consequences of state-local relations for the quality of policy outcomes, and introduce them to public service career opportunities in state and local government.

Systemic Islamophobia in Canada presents critical perspectives on systemic Islamophobia in Canadian politics, law, and society, and maps areas for future research and inquiry. The authors consist of both scholars and professionals who encounter in the ordinary course of their work the – sometimes banal, sometimes surprising – operation of systemic Islamophobia. Centring the lived realities of Muslims primarily in Canada, but internationally as well, the contributors identify the limits of democratic accountability in the operation of our shared institutions of government. Intended as a guide, the volume identifies important points of consideration that have systemic implications for whether, how, and under what conditions Islamophobia is enabled and perpetuated, and in some cases even rendered respectable policy or bureaucratic practice in Canada. Ultimately, Systemic Islamophobia in Canada identifies a range of systemically Islamophobic sites in Canada to guide citizens and policymakers in fulfilling the promise of an inclusive democratic Canada.

The delivery of justice is a core function of the modern state. The recent introduction of jury/lay judge systems for criminal trials in Japan, South Korea, Spain, and perhaps soon Taiwan represents a potentially major reform of this core function, shifting decision making authority from professional judges to ordinary citizens. But the four countries chose to empower their citizens to markedly different degrees. Why? Who Judges? is the first book to offer a systematic account for why different countries design their new jury/lay judge systems in very different ways. Drawing on detailed theoretical analysis, original case studies, and content analysis of fifty years of Japanese parliamentary debates, the book reveals that the relative power of 'new left'-oriented political parties explains the different magnitudes of reform in the four countries. Rieko Kage's vital new study opens up an exciting new area of research for comparative politics and socio-legal studies.

Even today, many people think of social problems as involving poor and powerless individuals in society. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy seeks to improve the balance by adding a focus on important and powerful institutions. Such organizations often play key roles in managing, and mismanaging, the ways in which some of today's most important social problems are handled by the public policy system. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy is now available online at ScienceDirect - full-text online of volumes 8 onwards. Elsevier book series on ScienceDirect gives multiple users throughout an institution simultaneous online access to an important compliment to primary research. Digital delivery ensures users reliable, 24-hour access to the latest peer-reviewed content.

This book explores the complex web of federal-state working relationships and their effect on the implementation of environmental policies. Scheberle develops an analytical framework to help understand the interactions among the federal agencies--the Office of Surface Mining (Department of the Interior) and the central and regional EPA offices--and state environmental officials. This book is unusual in that it looks at the implementation, at the extent to which the state and federal offices work together effectively, and not just the content of environmental policies. The four cases are asbestos (updated to include the fallout from the WTC), surface coal mining, drinking water, and radon. The material on the wellhead protection program has been deleted to keep the size of the book down. Since the first edition was published, there have been some major developments in the implementation of environmental policy. One is the devolution of environmental policy to states in the 1990s (as with so many other policy areas). There were also two new major directives that changed federal-state interactions, the National Environmental Performance Partnership System (NEPPS) for the EPA (1996) and the new oversight policy for the Office of Surface Mining, the REG-8 directive of 1997. Her conceptual framework now includes two new elements, refocusing events and implementation energizers. This revised edition has been extensively updated--Scheberle says that hardly a paragraph has remained unchanged. She has re-interviewed and surveyed the officials (or their replacements) who provided information for the first edition, and she compares their previous and current attitudes and opinions about state-federal working relationships.

As performance management has evolved, it has encompassed many different tools and approaches including measurement, data analysis, evidence-based management, process improvement, research and evaluation. In the past, many of the efforts to improve performance in government have been fragmented, separated into silos and labeled with a variety of different names including performance-based budgeting, performance-informed management, managing for results and so on. Making Government Work: The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management by Katherine Barrett and Rich Greene is loaded with dozens of stories of what practitioners are currently working on-what's working and what's not. The benefits are ample, so are the challenges. This book describes both, along with practical steps taken by practitioners to make government work better. Readers will discover that while the authors strive to meet the documentation standards of carefully vetted academic papers, the approach they take is journalistic. Over the last year, Barrett and Greene talked to scores of state and local officials, as well as academics and other national experts to find out how performance management tools and approaches have changed, and what is coming in the near-term future. Performance management has been in a state of evolution for decades now, and so Barrett and Greene have endeavored to capture the state of the world as it is today. By detailing both the challenges and conquests of performance management in Making Government Work: The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management, Barrett and Greene insure readers will find the kind of balanced information that is helpful to both academics and practitioners-and that can move the field forward.

Why are some states able to deliver public services to their citizens while others cannot? Why are some states beset by internal conflict that leaves many impoverished? Much of what has become known as the failed states literature attempts to engage with these questions, but does so in way that betrays a particular bias, engaging in advocacy for intervention rather than analysis. The Idea of Failed States directly challenges existing thinking about conventional state strength as it finds that institutional approaches to state strength obscure as much as they reveal. The question of why some states are strong and others weak has traditionally been addressed using measures of economic growth, resources, and quality of life. This book compares the dimensions of state strength characterised by community, society, and nation and uses social capital concepts to further illuminate them. Applying this approach across forty-two countries shows 'weak' states exhibiting a consistent and unique patterns of relationships between community, society, and nation as well as equally consistent and unique relationships in strong states. A blend of theory and empirics, The Idea of Failed States present a new way to think about the state - one that applies to both strong and weak alike. This work should be of interest to students and scholars researching social capital, public policy, international development and security studies.