Tracing the erosion of democratic norms in the US and the conditions that make it possible Jonathan Beecher Field tracks the permutations of the town hall meeting from its original context as a form of democratic community governance in New England into a format for presidential debates and a staple of corporate governance. In its contemporary iteration, the town hall meeting models the aesthetic of the former but replaces actual democratic deliberation with a spectacle that involves no immediate electoral stakes or functions as a glorified press conference. Urgently, Field notes that though this evolution might be apparent, evidence suggests many US citizens don't care to differentiate. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

States are the key to contemporary government reform efforts in the United States, but we know very little about their relative effectiveness at resource allocation and their actual capacity to absorb additional fiscal and managerial responsibilities. This path-breaking study examines state budget offices as institutional actors, with special attentio to the role of budget examiners. Drawing on empirical findings from field studies of eleven states in the American heartland, the authors demonstrate how budgeting at the state level has become more policy-oriented, requiring complex decision making by budget analysts. The incrementalist model of budgetary decision-making thus gives way to a multiple rationalities model. The authors illustrate the decision-making model with the story of two office examiners who have distinctly different orientations as they begin their work, and contrast the different decision nationalities that come into play for them at different points in a typical budget cycle. The book includes a comprehensive bibliography of historical and modern writings on state budgeting operations, activities, and decision-making; state budgeting cycles; and the state-level policy development process.

Across many parts of the postcolonial world, it is everyday reality for people to cross regularly between state-based and customary governance, institutions and norms. This book examines this phenomenon in the context of the villages of Timor-Leste, and the state-building efforts that have been conducted by the Timorese government and international development agencies since the vote for independence in 1999. Drawing on 5 years of ethnographic fieldwork in the remote, rural areas of Timor-Leste, the book provides a critical analysis of the challenges that communities face when navigating coexisting customary and state-based structures and norms in a context where customary law continues to be the central guiding force. It also explores the various creative ways in which local leaders and community members make sense of their local governance environment. It then draws on these insights to provide a more nuanced, contextualised account of the impact of institutional interventions, state-building and democratisation within these villages. While set in the context of state- and nation-building efforts following Timor-Leste's vote for independence, the book also provides a broader examination of the issues that arise for the postcolonial state adequately meeting the needs of its citizens. Further, it explores the challenges that are met by communities when incorporating state influences and demands into their everyday lives. Expanding the scope of empirical Timor-Leste scholarship by moving beyond anthropological description and providing the first detailed political analysis of local-level governance in contemporary Timorese communities, this book is a valuable contribution to studies on Asian Politics, Governance and International Studies.

In 2007, after serving almost fifteen years on the Philadelphia City Council, Michael A. Nutter became the ninety-eighth mayor of his hometown of Philadelphia. From the time he was sworn in until he left office in 2016, there were triumphs and challenges, from the mundane to the unexpected, from snow removal, trash collection, and drinkable water, to the Phillies' World Series win, Hurricane Irene, Occupy Philadelphia, and the Papal visit. By the end of Nutter's tenure, homicides were at an almost fifty-year low, high-school graduation and college-degree attainment rates increased significantly, and Philadelphia's population had grown every year. Nutter also recruited businesses to open in Philadelphia, motivating them through tax reforms, improved services, and international trade missions. Mayor begins with Nutter's early days in politics and ultimate run for mayor, when he formed a coalition from a base of support that set the stage for a successful term. Transitioning from campaigning to governing, Nutter shares his vast store of examples to depict the skills that enable a city politician to lead effectively and illustrates how problem-solving pragmatism is essential for success. With a proven track record of making things work, Nutter asserts that mayoring promises more satisfaction and more potential achievements-for not only the mayor but also the governed-than our fractious political system would have us believe. Detailing the important tasks that mayoral administrations do, Nutter tells the compelling story of a dedicated staff working together to affect positively the lives of the people of Philadelphia every day. His anecdotes, advice, and insights will excite and interest anyone with a desire to understand municipal government.

Roots of Entanglement offers an historical exploration of the relationships between Indigenous peoples and European newcomers in the territory that would become Canada. Various engagements between Indigenous peoples and the state are emphasized and questions are raised about the ways in which the past has been perceived and how those perceptions have shaped identity and, in turn, interaction both past and present. Specific topics such as land, resources, treaties, laws, policies, and cultural politics are explored through a range of perspectives that reflect state-of-the-art research in the field of Indigenous history. Editors Myra Rutherdale, Whitney Lackenbauer, and Kerry Abel have assembled an array of top scholars including luminaries such as Keith Carlson, Bill Waiser, Skip Ray, and Ken Coates. Roots of Entanglement is a direct response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's call for a better appreciation of the complexities of history in the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.

The impact of legacies and memories on social movements has been paid only limited attention in what is now a sizeable literature. While there is a growing interest in memory, there is little systematic theory or comparative research on the long-lasting institutional consequences of important events-or how they are remembered by future generations. In Legacies and Memories in Movements, Donatella della Porta and her collaborators examine the concepts of historical legacy and memory, suggesting ways to apply them in analyses of the long-term effects of movements, movement participation, and movement strategies and tactics. In particular, they explore a critical juncture, rich with consequences for social movements: the transition to democracy. Through a comparative-historical study of social movements in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the authors tease out the complex and varied ways different modes of transition can produce new types and uses of memories for social movements. To do so, they analyze how moments of transition create institutional change that impacts future movements and consider how past protests enhance and constrain social movements today. Focusing on the reverberation of events and how past events serve as guides for the future, Legacies and Memories in Movements brings together the literature on collective memory and social movements for the first time.

India's cities are in the midst of an unprecedented urban expansion. While India is acknowledged as a rising power, poised to emerge into the front rank of global economies, the pace and scale of its urbanisation calls for more effective metropolitan management if that growth is not to be constrained by gathering urban crisis. This book addresses some key issues of governance and management for India's principal urban areas of Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. As three of the greatest Indian cities, they have evolved in recent decades into large metropolitan regions with complex, overlapping and often haphazard governance arrangements. All three cities exemplify the challenges of urbanisation and serve here as case studies to explore the five dimensions of urban governance in terms of devolution, planning, structures of delivery, urban leadership and civic participation. London, with its recent establishment of a directly elected Mayor, provides a reference point for this analysis, and signifies the extent to which urban leadership has moved to the top of the urban governance agenda. In arguing the case for reform of metropolitan governance, the book demonstrates that it would be too simplistic to imagine that London's institutional structure can be readily transposed on to the very different political and cultural fabric of India's urban life. Confronting India's urban crisis with a comparative analysis that identifies the limits of policy transfer, the book will be particularly valuable to students and scholars of Politics, Governance, and Urban studies.

How, in the absence of institutional mechanisms, do Maoist rebels in India quit an ongoing insurgency without getting killed? How do rebels give up arms and return to the same political processes that they had once sought to overthrow? The question of weaning rebels away from extremist groups is highly significant in counterinsurgency and in the pacification of insurgencies. In Farewell to Arms, Rumela Sen goes to the rebels themselves and breaks down the protracted process of rebel retirement into a multi-staged journey as the rebels see it. She draws on several rounds of interviews with current and former Maoist rebels as well as security personnel, administrators, activists, politicians, and civilians in two conflict zones in North and South India. The choice to quit an insurgency, she finds, depends on locally embedded, informal exit networks. The relative weakness of these networks in North India means that fewer rebels quit than in the South, where more feel that they can disarm without getting killed. Sen shows that these networks grow out of the grassroots civic associations in the gray zone of state-insurgency interface. Correcting the course for future policy, Sen provides a new explanation of rebel retirement that will be essential to any policymaker or scholar working to end protracted insurgencies.

Few men have been more important to the life of Kentucky than three of those who governed it between 1930 and 1963 -- Albert B. Chandler, Earle C. Clements, and Bert T. Combs. While reams of newspaper copy have been written about them, the historical record offers little to mark their roles in the drama of Kentucky and the nation. In this authoritative and sometimes intimate view of Bluegrass State politics and government at ground level, John Ed Pearce -- one of Kentucky's favorite writers -- helps fill this gap.

In half a century as a close observer of Kentucky politics -- as reporter, editorial writer, and columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal -- Pearce has seen the full spectacle. He watched "Happy" Chandler vault into national prominence with his flamboyant campaign style. He was shaken by Earle Clements for asking an awkward question. He joined in the laughter when a striptease artist was commissioned a Kentucky Colonel during the Combs administration. And he watched as the successive governors struggled to move the state forward, each in his own way.

Yet this is more than a newsman's account of events. Pearce probes for the roots of the troubles that have slowed Kentucky's progress. He traces the divisions that have plagued the state for almost two centuries, divisions springing from the nature of Kentucky's beginnings. He studies the lack of leadership that has hampered the always dominant Democratic party and the bitter factionalism that has kept the party from developing a cohesive philosophy. When the candidate of one faction has taken office, he shows, the losing faction has usually made political hay by bolting to the opposition party or torpedoing the governor's efforts in the legislature instead of uniting behind a progressive party program. The outcome of such long-term factionalism is a state that must now run fast to catch up.

American Indian nations are sovereign political entities within the United States. They have complex relationships with the federal government and increasingly with state governments. Regulatory conflict between Native nations and states has increased as Native nations have developed their own independent economies and some states have sought to assert their control over reservation territory. This book explores the intergovernmental conflict between Native nations and states, with a focus on the tension over the enforcement of state cigarette taxes for on-reservation sales. Anne F. Boxberger Flaherty asks: when do states and Native nations come to agreement, when do they disagree, and why are states sometimes willing to extend great efforts to assert their taxes on reservations? Flaherty uses a multi-method approach, with a historical review of expanding state involvement on reservations, a quantitative analysis of state enforcement of cigarette taxes on reservations, and a qualitative analysis of several specific case studies, including the potential for intergovernmental conflict over marijuana cultivation and sales on reservations to answer these questions. This book will be interest to scholars and researchers of Indigenous Politics, Native American Indian Politics, State Politics, and Intergovernmental Politics.

Sheriffs were among the most important local office-holders in early modern England. They were generalist officers of the king responsible for executing legal process, holding local courts, empanelling juries, making arrests, executing criminals, collecting royal revenue, holding parliamentary elections, and many other vital duties. Although sheriffs have a cameo role in virtually every book about early modern England, the precise nature of their work has remained something of a mystery. The Tudor Sheriff offers the first comprehensive analysis of the shrieval system between 1485 and 1603. It demonstrates that this system was not abandoned to decay in the Tudor period, but was effectively reformed to ensure its continued relevance. Jonathan McGovern shows that sheriffs were not in competition with other branches of local government, such as the Lords Lieutenant and justices of the peace, but rather cooperated effectively with them. Since the office of sheriff was closely related to every other branch of government, a study of the sheriff is also a study of English government at work.

The Rise of Big Government chronicles the phenomenal growth of local, state, and federal government over the last 100 years. The authors explain this growth by arguing that public and social acceptance of government intervention has allowed government to maintain a presence at all levels of the economy. The authors take issue with the opposing argument that government has grown by itself and by the bureaucracy's constant push for its own expansion.

Originally published in 1981 but now with a new preface, this volume provided the first detailed comparative analysis of how local authorities in the UK and W. Germany faced up to the challenge of trying to help local industry and improve employment prospects. Based on the results of case-studies the book considers the powers and resources available to local authorities and examines how the authorities are organized for this type of economic activity. The authors' analysis of the interplay of political and administrative factors will be particularly important for student and professionals in comparative public policy and public finance. The study shows how economic policy making in local government is constrained both by the higher levels of government in both countries and by the conditions in the economy operating both locally and nationally.

What do nude beaches and catfish have to do with the federal budget? Quite a bit, it turns out. Working the Federal Budget fills the need for an unvarnished, readable guide to how the federal government collects money and spends it. Centuries of political struggles over the size and funding of government have produced a dense set of budget-related laws, procedures, court decisions and outright improvisations. The resulting rules are legion, complex, and remain a secret to many. In this book, author George D. Krumbhaar unravels the complexity with a journalist's eye for clarity and a lawyer's eye for detail, explaining the system, plainly laying out the laws that lie behind it, and identifying the players that are central to decision making at various stages in the process. With chapters covering the grandiose (why we have such big deficits) and the picayune (PAYGO and its importance) in fascinating and often entertaining detail, Working the Federal Budget provides an invaluable and critical exploration of the who, the what, and the why of the budget process for readers with an interest in government relations and how the government functions-whether from Capitol Hill, the executive branch, "K Street," postgraduate studies or even civic concern.

Framing Borders addresses a fundamental disjuncture between scholastic portrayals of settler colonialism and what actually takes place in Akwesasne Territory, the largest Indigenous cross-border community in Canada. Whereas most existing portrayals of Indigenous nationalism emphasize border crossing as a site of conflict between officers and Indigenous nationalists, in this book Ian Kalman observes a much more diverse range of interactions, from conflict to banality to joking and camaraderie. Framing Borders explores how border crossing represents a conversation where different actors "frame" themselves, the law, and the space that they occupy in diverse ways. Written in accessible, lively prose, Kalman addresses what goes on when border officers and Akwesasne residents meet, and what these exchanges tell us about the relationship between Indigenous actors and public servants in Canada. This book provides an ethnographic examination of the experiences of the border by Mohawk community members, the history of local border enforcement, and the paradoxes, self-contradictions, and confusions that underlie the border and its enforcement.

This unique collection combines historical accounts with current socio-political analysis to present an agenda for social-spacial justice for the people of the Eastern Cape. The title explores economics, the environment, development and service delivery, and includes a series of case studies. The contributors' areas of expertise range from political science, social policy, economics, geography, anthropology, biology and education. The Fate of the Eastern Cape not only provides a biography of the post-1994 region, but also makes an important contribution to debates about future policy prescriptions to tackle the wider questions about the future of provinces in South Africa.

Summer in the City takes a clear look at John Lindsay's tenure as mayor of New York City during the tumultuous 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson launched his ambitious Great Society Program. Providing an even-handed reassessment of Lindsay's legacy and the policies of the period, the essays in this volume skillfully dissect his kaleidoscope of progressive ideas and approach to leadership - all set in a perfect storm of huge demographic changes, growing fiscal stress, and an unprecedented commitment by the federal government to attain a more equal society. Compelling archival photos and a timeline give readers a window into the mythic 1960s, a period animated by civil rights marches, demands for black power, antiwar demonstrations, and a heroic intergovernmental effort to redistribute national resources more evenly. Written by prize-winning authors and leading scholars, each chapter covers a distinct aspect of Lindsay's mayoralty (politics, race relations, finance, public management, architecture, economic development, and the arts), while Joseph P. Viteritti's introductory and concluding essays offer an honest and nuanced portrait of Lindsay and the prospects for shaping more balanced public priorities as New York City ushers in a new era of progressive leadership. The volume's sharp focus on the controversies of the Mad Men era will appeal not only to older readers who witnessed its explosive events, but also to younger readers eager for a deeper understanding of the time. A progressive Republican with bold ideals and a fervent belief in the American Dream, Lindsay strove to harness the driving forces of modernization, democratization, acculturation, inclusion, growth, and social justice in ways that will inform our thinking about the future of the city. Contributors: Lizabeth Cohen, Paul Goldberger, Brian Goldstein, Geoffrey Kabaservice, Mariana Mogilevich, Charles R. Morris, David Rogers, Clarence Taylor, and Joseph P. Viteritti.

"This book will inspire people to work with and for their neighbors in all kinds of ways!" --Bill McKibben, author of Falter Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take an active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! And tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines isn't the sleepy town it appears to be. Yes, the assembly must stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street, but there is also a bitter debate about the fishing boat harbor and a vicious recall campaign that targets three assembly members, including Lende. In Of Bears and Ballots we witness the nitty-gritty of passing legislation, the lofty ideals of our republic, and the way our national politics play out in one small town. With her entertaining cast of offbeat but relatable characters, the writer whom the Los Angeles Times calls "part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott" brings us an inspirational tale about what living in a community really means, and what we owe one another.

Devoted to exploring elections as the central act in a democracy, Duty and Choice: The Evolution of the Study of Voting and Voters is animated by a set of three overarching questions: Why do some citizens vote while others do not? How do voters decide to cast their ballots for one candidate and not another? How does the context in which citizens live influence the choices they make? Organized into three sections focused on turnout, vote choice, and electoral systems, the volume seeks to provide novel insights into the most pressing questions for scholars of vote choice and voting behaviour. In addition to featuring several prominent Canadian scholars, the collection includes chapters by leading scholars from the United States and Europe.

Keen Johnson was governor of Kentucky from 1939 to 1943 -- years that spanned the end of the Depression and the initial involvement of this country in the Second World War. The account of Johnson's administration is chronicled here through a collection of his public papers. The material, organized by subject and arranged chronologically within each area, presents a rather clear picture of Governor Johnson's plans and concerns for Kentucky and of the actions he took as chief executive on behalf of the state. In contrast to contemporary procedures concerning the preservation of governors' papers in university and state archives, many of the Johnson papers were difficult to locate and, apart from a few complete speech manuscripts, were reconstructed in large part from cards containing outlines and notes for speeches, along with many state and local newspaper accounts of speeches he made and of events in which he participated. Many speeches have been extensively footnoted by the editor to provide the reader with supplementary information. Also included in this volume is a perceptive evaluation of the Johnson administration by H. Clyde Reeves, who served in it as a commissioner of revenue. The appendix offers as complete a listing as was possible to reconstruct of the speeches delivered by Governor Johnson during his term of office.

Why do some governments try to limit immigrants' access to social benefits and entitlements while others do not? Through an in-depth study of Sweden, Canada, and the Netherlands, Immigration and the Politics of Welfare Exclusion maps the politics of immigrants' social rights in Western democracies. To achieve this goal, Edward A. Koning analyzes policy documents, public opinion surveys, data on welfare use, parliamentary debates, and interviews with politicians and key players in the three countries. Koning's findings are three-fold. First, the politics of immigrant welfare exclusion have little to do with economic factors and are more about general opposition to immigration and multiculturalism. Second, proposals for exclusion are particularly likely to arise in a political climate that incentivizes politicians to appear "tough" on immigration. Finally, the success of anti-immigrant politicians in bringing about exclusionary reforms depends on the response of the political mainstream, and the extent to which immigrants' rights are protected in national and international legal frameworks. A timely investigation into an increasingly pressing subject, Immigration and the Politics of Welfare Exclusion will be essential reading for scholars and students of political science, comparative politics, and immigration studies.