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.

Legislative term limits are reshaping the political landscape in numerous states; however, few of the effects are consistent across all states. Everything from the political environment to the level of legislative professionalism within a state influences the trends that are often attributed to term limits. To cut through these many trends and isolate the ones most likely created by term limits, this volume develops comparisons of states with term limits to similar states without term limits. The comparisons are organized by levels of legislative professionalism. The richness of the case study approach allows the contributors to Legislating Without Experience to offer valuable insights into the legislative process in each of the specific states. They also illuminate the individual idiosyncrasies that enhance or dilute the effects of term limits in a given state. Rarely does a case study book with multiple contributors offer apples-to-apples data comparisons. This project engaged nationally recognized scholars to collect and analyze comparable data in each state. The loss of major power brokers and their institutional memory makes the legislature a more chaotic place. Legislating Without Experience argues that on the whole, the legislature as an institution has been weakened by term limits. However, these effects vary from state to state based on the specifics of the limit and the degree of legislative professionalism. Importantly, legislative actors are adapting to the limits and making the best of a difficult situation. This book will be an excellent reference for students and scholars of state politics, legislative process, and term limits.

Over the past twenty years, a number of factors, including the attempts to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, have contributed to a growing concern over the federal government's ability to attract, motivate, and retain a talented and committed workforce. This book is devoted to exploring the question of what it takes to attract and maintain such employees, and does so by focusing on the Presidential Management Intern Program, which brings young people with graduate degrees into federal service. The study takes a close look at the program and its interns from 1978 to 1984, detailing the percentage who have remained in the federal workforce and the reasons that have prompted others to leave the public sector.

The work takes into consideration the current employment status of 1978-1984 interns, the factors that explain why interns have stayed in or left federal positions, and the conclusions that can be drawn concerning the recruitment and retention of a highly motivated federal workforce. Following an introductory history and description of the PMI program, Gail Johnson focuses on the particulars of the interns' employment, including the current status of PMIs in government, and when and where those who left went. She next concentrates on the met and unmet expectations that provide a link between what the interns expected, what they experienced, and their decisions to stay in or leave public service. These expectations are also contrasted with those of other federal employees. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the utility of the intern model as a recruitment vehicle, methods to improve the PMI program, and the larger implications for the federal government. This work will be a valuable resource for federal government and public service recruiters, as well as for students of public administration and public personnel. It will also be an important addition to public, college, and university libraries.

"Solving Problems Without Large Government" circumvents sterile discussions of federalism and privatization by discussing the potential role of sub-local government-assisted entities in providing effective and fair access to services. Some readers will be astonished at the numerous examples of vital social functions which have already been handled at this level, in a variety of societies throughout history. The proper use of small institutions, Liebmann argues, can actually serve to foster greater economic equity and political power.

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.

The UK public sector faces an unprecedented long-term challenge. A decade of plenty in the public finances has been followed by a decade and more of austerity. Public services are undergoing long-term annual spending cuts even as demographic changes create soaring demand in health, education and adult care. The challenge for the public sector is how to radically transform and adapt to the new era while avoiding the mistakes of previous reform programmes. In this first comprehensive 'bird's eye' account of public sector reform supported by studies from over 400 official sources, the book offers an invaluable practical guide to all those in the public, private and voluntary sectors grappling with the twin challenges of public spending austerity and the pressure to transform public services and ensure they are 'fit for purpose.'

This study, written by seasoned professionals and academics in the field of information management and public policy, presents a clear exposition of what makes up infostructures, how they are created and used, and how they affect the policy-making process. The only study to address both information management and technology and the policy process itself, it offers a balanced treatment of the numerous resources and activities required to generate and feed information into public sector decision-making.

Individual freedom and economic prosperity depend on clearly defined and secure private property rights. Without government to define and enforce such rights, a system of private property is not possible on a large scale. At the same time, government power and oversight can provide constant threats to private property rights, leading to a sometimes contentious relationship between the interests of the individual and the state. Based on the premise that private property is important to both individual welfare and the public interest, Private Property and State Power provides an intellectual framework, accessible to an educated lay audience including government officials, for the analysis and resolution of contemporary property rights disputes--detailing the best practices for a strong system of property rights in the context of effective government.

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.

"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.

The right to private property remains a compelling topic within American government, constitutional law, and both political and legal philosophy. Constitutional constraints and allowances regarding private property lead to the use - and sometimes abuse - of law in terms of ownership, individual liberty, and the needs of the state. With state and federal statutes allowing for vast oversight of private property, concerns over the proper use of authority abound on domestic and national levels. In Private Property and the Constitution, James L. Huffman outlines instances where police power, eminent domain law, and property rights have clashed in the courts. Addressing contemporary court cases, federal and state statutes, and the philosophical underpinnings of economic liberties, Huffman provides a careful analysis of private property rights within the framework of the Constitution - detailing how government interacts with public rights both successfully and unsuccessfully.

This is the only book that provides a comparative analysis of local government reforms in six developed Anglo-American countries: Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland, the United States and Canada. The authors provide important insights on the factors that have driven local government reforms and the effects of those reforms. The emphasis on these English-speaking common law democracies facilitates an analysis of the essential features of local government reform programs and the common factors driving them. The book is unique in that it provides a systematic comparative analysis of municipal reform by using an analytical framework that focuses on structural, functional, financial, jurisdictional and organizational/managerial reform in each of the six countries. It can be used as a valuable reading in advanced level undergraduate and graduate courses in local government and public administration politics, as well as in local government administration and policy making. Academics and students of local government and policy makers will be pleased with this thorough treatment of the subject.

"Riccards has written a unique account of the creation of and early experience with the US presidency. The author first explores the English and colonial experience that was relevant to structuring executive authority at the constitutional convention (as well as the theories supporting this experience). He then turns to familiar subjects--the decision-making in Philadelphia that led to a presidency and the role of the executive article in the ratification debate. All this is accomplished with clarity and economy of writing. The longer second part of the book is an analysis of George Washington's presidency, showing that Washington followed a federalist or strong executive model. Several brief chapters discuss the man and his popularity among the American people, the condition of the executive and bureaucracy before Washington became president, and events and policies that occupied the first president. The last chapter is an epilogue that all too briefly sets the Washington presidency in comparative and historical context. . . . The book is a useful contribution to presidential scholarship." Choice

Education reformers and policymakers argue that improved students' learning requires stronger academic standards, stiffer state tests, and accountability for students' scores. Yet these efforts seem not to be succeeding in many states. The authors of this important book argue that effective state reform depends on conditions which most reforms ignore: coherence in practice as well as policy and opportunities for professional learning. The book draws on a decade's detailed study of California's ambitious and controversial program to improve mathematics teaching and learning. Researchers David Cohen and Heather Hill report that state policy influenced teaching and learning when there was consistency among the tests and other policy instruments; when there was consistency among the curricula and other instruments of classroom practice; and when teachers had substantial opportunities to learn the practices proposed by the policy. These conditions were met for a minority of elementary school teachers in California. When the conditions were met for teachers, students had higher scores on state math tests. The book also shows that, for most teachers, the reform ended with consistency in state policy. They did not have access to consistent instruments of classroom practice, nor did they have opportunities to learn the new practices which state policymakers proposed. In these cases, neither teachers nor their students benefited from the state reform. This book offers insights into the ways policy and practice can be linked in successful educational reform and shows why such linkage has been difficult to achieve. It offers useful advice for practitioners and policymakers seeking to improve education, and to analysts seeking to understand it.

Since 1999, Tanzania has been actively pursuing reforms of how the central government finances local government activities. Although local government authorities play a significant role in the delivery of key government services such as primary education and basic health care, the central government tightly controls the resources which it provides to the local government level. The book presents a detailed overview and analysis of the issues involved in developing and implementing local government finance reform in Tanzania, including the introduction of a formula-based system of intergovernmental grants.

It is well established that the race and gender of elected representatives influence the ways in which they legislate, but surprisingly little research exists on how race and gender interact to affect who is elected and how they behave once in office. How do race and gender affect who gets elected, as well as who is represented? What issues do elected representatives prioritize? Does diversity in representation make a difference? Race, Gender, and Political Representation takes up the call to think about representation in the United States as intersectional, and it measures the extent to which political representation is simultaneously gendered and raced. Specifically, the book examines how race and gender interact to affect the election, behavior, and impact of all individuals. By putting women of color at the center of their analysis and re-evaluating traditional, "single-axis" approaches to studying the politics of race or gender, the authors demonstrate what an intersectional approach to identity politics can reveal. Drawing on original data on the presence, policy leadership, and policy impact of Black women and men, Latinas and Latinos, and White women and men in state legislative office in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, each chapter shows how the politics of race, gender, and representation are far more complex than recurring "Year of the Woman" frameworks suggest. An array of race-gender similarities and differences are evident in the experiences, activities, and accomplishments of these state legislators. Yet one thing is clear: the representation of those marginalized by multiple, intersecting systems of power and inequality is intricately bound to the representation of women of color.

Discusses the ambiguous nature of the state in Russia, focusing on elite networks and their role in policy processes. This book examines the paradoxical dualism of state institutions and ruling networks, providing answers as to why some decisions are not implemented, and why the state exists despite the systemic inefficiency of its institutions.

Local governments throughout the West are undergoing a transformation of their leadership styles and structures. Some countries have abandoned traditional systems of collective or committee based decision-making in favour of Cabinet models or, more radically, a directly-elected executive mayor, while others have strengthened existing mayoral systems. There are a few exceptions to this trend. Based on original research in eleven countries the book assesses these changes in terms of their implications for political accountability, the role of lay politicians, political recruitment, the professionalization of leadership, and relations with the bureaucracy.

Over the past fifty years, local government in Europe has been confronted with escalating scales of production, population migration and market pressures. These developments have complicated its performance, challenged its domain and even threatened its existence. A popular coping strategy is inter-municipal cooperation, a phenomenon that, despite its ubiquity, has not been subject to systematic comparative research. This book presents an overview of inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries. Each country study sketches its attendant forms, their institutional design, the tasks and competencies attributed to joint authorities of municipalities and the way inter-municipal cooperation operates in practice. Both performance and democratic aspects of cooperation are recurring topics. The last chapter of the book presents a comparative analysis and reflects on the future of inter-municipal cooperation.

Designed for local government managers and administrators, this pioneering work offers a clear and comprehensive guide to the use of strategic planning techniques in the public sector. The author presents a concise overview of the strategic planning process, defines the terms involved, and provides a step-by-step methodology for organizations ready to move into the actual implementation of strategic planning. In addition to differentiating between community-based, corporate, functional, and defined-purpose strategic planning processes, Mercer explains the delineation between strategic and tactical planning and offers practical approaches to overcoming barriers to the use of strategic planning in the public sector arena. Throughout, the author makes extensive use of case studies of strategic planning programs implemented by a variety of local government and public sector organizations.

Mercer begins by describing how strategic planning can be both an effective tool for dealing with change and a technique of organizational development. He goes on to provide detailed instructions on how to prepare to conduct strategic planning, how to determine strategic issues, the importance of a values audit, and how to develop an environmental scan or assessment. Subsequent chapters address determining organizational threats and opportunities, composing the mission statement, defining critical success factors and indicators, planning strategies, and assessing strategic risks and benefits. Finally, the author shows how to perform an internal assessment of ability to actually adopt and carry out strategies, the importance of contingency planning, and how to tie strategic planning to the budget and evaluate the process. The public sector manager experienced with strategic planning techniques can use the guide as a handy reference to particular aspects of the process, while those new to strategic planning will find this an indispensable aid in developing and implementing their own internal strategic planning processes.

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.

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.

This book explores the role of mayors in navigating the realities of living and governing under Nazi occupation. In Western Europe under Nazi occupation, mayors of villages and cities were forced into strategic cooperation with the occupier. Mayors had to provide good governance, mediate between occupier and populations, maintain personal legitimacy, and build local consensus. However, as national systems underwent authoritarian reform and collaborationists infiltrated administrations, local governments were gradually turned into instruments of Nazi control and repression. Nico Wouters uses rich new archival data to compare the realities of local government in three countries. Looking at topics such as food supply, public order and safety, forced labour, the repression of resistance, the persecution of the Jews and post-war purges, this book redefines our knowledge of collaboration, resistance and accommodation during Nazi occupation.