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

"Hispanics in the United States" represents a collective exploration providing a basic foundation of the information available to understand Hispanics in the United States and create an effective policy agenda. Hispanics are projected to be the largest minority group in the United States in the twenty-first century. The contributions define an agenda which will be useful for students, scholars, service practitioners, political activists, as well as policy makers. The opening essays define the diversity of the Hispanic experience in America and put each of the other essays within a larger context. This edition adds a new introduction by the editors incorporating and evaluating the implications of the results of the national 2000 census. The book is organized into two sections: the first establishes the historical, demographic, religious, and cultural context of Hispanics in the United States. The second describes the major issues facing this population in the American social structure, specifically the areas of health care, the labor market, criminal justice, social welfare, and education. The work concludes with a discussion of the role played by Hispanics in the political life of the nation. The contributors, all of whom are scholars with demonstrated competence in the areas, include: Teresa A. Sullivan, David Maldonado, Melissa Roderick, Barry Chiswick, Michael Hurst, Zulema Suarez, Alvin Korte, Katie McDonough, Cruz Reynoso, and Christine Marie Sierra, as well as David Engstrom and Pastora San Juan Cafferty. Together they have produced a book which will be extremely useful to anyone developing public policies and creating social interventions at either the national or local levels during the coming decade. This new edition is a valuable contributor to discussions about the issues defining the population that will be the largest minority group in the United States in this century. Pastora San Juan Cafferty is professor, in the School of Social Service Administration, and a member of the Center for Latin America Studies at the University of Chicago. She is co-author of the "Dilemma of American Immigration: Beyond the Golden Door" and "The Politics of Language." She has written extensively on issues of race and ethnicity in America. David W. Engstrom is associate professor in the school of social work at San Diego State University and the author of "Presidential Decision Making Adrift." He has published in the areas of immigration, health care, and program evaluation.

This title was first published in 2001. Planning today has to deal with a completely different world from the one in which many of the basic ways of thought of the profession were founded. Many traditional planning approaches often seem less relevant when attention is increasingly being focused on sustainable development, deregulation and competitiveness in a global world. Focusing on the changes that are taking place in the realm of planning practice and spatial planning across Europe, this text examines the driving forces for institutional change. It brings together a team of leading planning academics with experience of planning practice and policies, from the UK, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy and Norway. Throughout the 12 chapters of the book, they examine and compare new approaches to planning across Europe at local, metropolitan, regional, national and international levels.

The past ten years have seen local government in the UK facing two major challenges: to survive in the face of Thatcher government hostility, and to adapt to enormously powerful forces of economic restructuring which have also been encouraged by government policies. The key aspects of these changing fortunes of British towns explored in this important new book is the ability of individual localities to exercise any control over their own growth and decline. Place, Policy and Politics examines local political initiatives seeking to influence economic and social development in seven sharply contrasting localities, ranging from the outer council estates of Merseyside to the boom towns of Cheltenham and Swindon. Throughout their analysis, the contributors, drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines, address the vital questions in the debate over local policy initiatives, including: To what extent are localities able to harness trends in the national and international economy to provide jobs and a better standard of living for their inhabitants? Why do local authorities vary in their capacity to initiate economic policy? To what extent do national urban and other policies inhibit or encourage their efforts? How might central government modify its policies to facilitate the prospering of localities?

Tensions between central authorities and subnational units over centralization and fiscal autonomy are on top of the political agenda in many developing federal countries. This book examines historical changes in the balance between the resources that presidents and governors control and the policy responsibilities they have to deliver. It focuses on Argentina and Brazil, the most decentralized federal countries in Latin America, with the most powerful sub-national governments in the region. Using formal modelling, statistical tools, and comparative historical analyses, it examines substantive shifts in the allocation of resources and the distribution of administrative functions and explains under which conditions these changes occur. In doing so, it presents theoretical and comparative implications for the study of fiscal federalism and the functioning of developing federal democracies. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of federalism, intergovernmental relations, decentralization, and sub-national politics and more broadly to those studying comparative politics, democratization, political elites, public policy and economics.

Creating metropolitan regions that are more efficient, equitable, and sustainable depends on the willingness of local officials to work together across municipal boundaries to solve large-scale problems. How do these local officials think? Why do they only sometimes cooperate? What kind of governance do they choose in the face of persistent problems? The Risk of Regional Governance offers a new perspective on these questions. Drawing on theory from sociology and anthropology, it argues that many of the most important cooperative decisions local officials make-those about land use planning and regulation-are driven by heuristic, biased reasoning driven by cultural values. The Risk of Regional Governance builds a sociocultural collective action framework, and supports it with rich survey and interview data from hundreds of local elected officials serving in the suburbs of Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is a story of the Rust Belt, of how local officials think about their community and the region, and-most importantly-of how we might craft policies that can overcome biases against regional governance.

Reissuing works originally published between 1952 and 1991, this collection presents a wide-ranging set of excellent texts across economics, geography, urban studies, planning, politics and industrial studies. Addressing problems and policy, development and demographics, these books together form a wealth of research and debate. Some volumes address specific areas such as industrialization, housing, property, city-systems, de-centralization, employment or rural resources. Other volumes present case studies in Australia, Britain, underdeveloped countries, South Africa and the USA while some are fully international in representation. Given the recent economic shifts around the world, this timely collection is an incredibly useful resource.

Competitive elections have become an institutionalized feature of contemporary Indonesia's politics. This, together with other considerations, makes it reasonable to call Indonesia the world's third largest democracy. Nonetheless, democratic elections in Indonesia are both more complex and interesting than is commonly understood. This book explores how local elections in Indonesia have affected the development and dynamics of Indonesia's fledgling democracy. Based on fine-grained analyses of elections in five localities, the book shows how Indonesia's transition to direct elections of local government executives has transformed party politics and elite development at local levels of governance. Employing the methods of political anthropology and informed by a critical reading of theories of democracy and decentralization, the book presents detailed analyses of elections in five localities across four Indonesian provinces. The book calls attention to the ambiguous relation between formal democratic reforms and political behavior. It illustrates how local elite politics has evolved within the context of political and administrative reforms, whose announced goals are to improve the representativeness and responsiveness of political institutions. This book provides a window onto local political processes that will be of interest to students and scholars of politics in Southeast Asia and beyond.

In this bestseller, Norman Fairclough gets behind the rhetoric of New Labour to uncover the real meaning. He examines a wide range of political speeches and texts, from Tony Blair's speech following the death of Diana to the 1997 Labour Party Manifesto and Bill Clinton's book Between Hope and History. New Labour, New Language? blows open the whole debate on the nature of the political discourse of New Labour and the 'Third Way'.
Written in a clear, non-technical style and including a glossary, New Labour, New Language? will appeal to anyone interested in language and politics.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203131657

Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe is an important survey of the complex relationships between urban politics and regional and national politics in Europe from 1500 to 1789. In an era when the national state was far less developed than today, crucial decisions about economic, religious and social policy were often settled at the municipal level. Cities were frequently the scenes of sudden tensions or bitter conflicts between ordinary citizens and the urban elite, and the threat of civic unrest often underlay the political dynamics of early modern cities.
With vivid descriptions of events in cities in central Europe, England, France, Italy and Spain, this book outlines the forms of political interaction in the early modern city. Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe takes a fascinating comparative approach to the nature of conflict and conflict resolution in early modern communities throughout Europe.

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

In this study, the author explains the inequalities that exist between U.S. states with respect to child social well-being outcomes by demonstrating that state level characteristics (which are structural in nature) can predict child social well-being outcomes. Child social well-being outcomes are quite variable in the United States. Children in states like Connecticut, Minnesota, and Vermont experience relatively good outcomes, while children in states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama experience poor outcomes. Although these inequalities suggest the need for strong federal child welfare policies to raise the well-being of all children to a minimum standard, such policies remain absent from the child welfare policy agenda.

Using data from the U.S. census and various child welfare and social welfare organizations, the study demonstrates that economic, population, and child welfare policy characteristics of states influence indicators of child social well-being, including child poverty rates, infant mortality rates, and out-of-home placement rates.

Offers an in-depth exploration of current topics in local government, including resiliency, emergency management and terrorism, climate change, smart cities, social media, and infrastructure funding. Written by top academics in the field and specifically aimed at policy makers, managers and administrators, as well as students. Provides thorough case examples from the contributors’ own extensive backgrounds in public service and public-private partnerships to illustrate each chapter.

Transitional societies struggling to build democratic institutions and new political traditions are faced with a painful dilemma. How can Government become strong and effective, building a common good that unites disparate ethnic and class groups, while simultaneously nurturing democratic social rules at the grassroots? Professor Fuller brings this issue to light in the contentious, multicultural setting of Southern Africa. Post-apartheid states, like South Africa and Namibia, are pushing hard to raise school quality, reduce family poverty, and equalize gender relations inside villages and townships. But will democratic participation blossom at the grassroots as long as strong central states so necessary for defining the common good push universal policies onto diverse local communities? This book builds from a decade of family surveys and qualitative village studies led by Professor Fuller at Harvard University and African colleagues inside Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.

Economists and political scientists deal with three major areas of concern: the effect of moving large numbers of welfare recipients into labor markets, the planned federal reforms in the health-care field that will shift costs to the state and local sectors, and trends in federal aid. Focusing on the impact of US devolution of responsibility and costs to the states, they find that the state economies can accommodate the challenges generally, but that the effect of welfare reform is too long-range to be adequately assessed in the near-term.

This study examines how the shared cultural values of employees in a Polish firm influence management attempts top transform organizational practices in a newly privatized factory. By introducing a foreign management approach, Total Quality Management (TQM), the management of this factory presents a potential conflict of values between the employees and the management philosophy. Tracing the historical and contemporary impact of traditional, political and religious influences in Poland and utilizing ethnographic techniques of observation, interviews, and secondary source data, the author identifies four patterns of shared mindsets. These mindsets, insecurity and instability, distrust, reluctance to assume responsibility and a struggle between individualism and collectivism generate resistance to the successful implementation of TQM in this factory.
Organizational studies research has identified cultural differences in values but previous studies have not examined the congruence assessment that employees make when confronted with a management intervention, such as TQM. The author finds that an incongruence between societal values and the values the employees perceive are embedded in the TQM approach produced actual outcomes that are not consistent with TQM objectives of empowerment, teamwork, visionary leadership and continuous improvement of quality. Employees demonstrated a reduced sense of empowerment, team goals that are counterproductive to organizational goals, autocratic leadership and an increased focus but not sustainable effort toward improving quality.
The book examines the reasons for these results through detailed description and extensive quotations from employees both inside the Polish firm and throughout Polish society.

The recent devolution to the states of responsibilities previously held by the federal government -- a key goal of the deficit-reduction, smaller-government agenda of the 1990s -- has far-reaching implications for state budgets. At the moment, a strong economy has put most states into a strong enough fiscal condition to shoulder such burdens as welfare reform and public investment. But beneath the current surpluses are structural problems that are unlikely to withstand the next economic downturn; as a result, any essential public needs will be left unmet. This book deal with three major areas of concern: first, the effect of moving large numbers of welfare recipients into labor markets; second, the planned federal reforms in the health care field that will shift costs to the state and local sector; and third, trends in federal aid. A basic finding of these essays is that state economies can accommodate these challenges generally speaking, but the effect of recent welfare reform presents a problem too long-range to be adequately assessed in the near-term.

In Japan, the main local administrative affairs are traditionally allotted to prefectures and municipalities, while communal disposal systems, fire-fighting and regional development takes secondary importance. However, two new changes to the frame of local governments have altered the main frameworks of national and provincial governance. With decentralization reforms taking effect, more local bodies are gaining autonomy and departing from uniformity. This has allowed methods of cooperation between governing bodies to diversify- trends which augur a dissolution of uniformity in Japanese local administration. If left alone, it may eventually lead to disparities between principal and peripheral bodies, and thus complicate the administrative systems further. How will these changes affect future community development? This book aims to address the dynamism of concepts of wide area public service in Japan. It advocates the use of flexible strategies to ensure service standards are best suited to each regional demand. This concept can be called "departure from uniformity". This book also examines the advantages and disadvantages of these shifts for the future of Japanese public policy, and suggests various strategies to prevent further complications; e.g. autonomous settlement zone. Regional Administration in Japan: Departure from uniformity will interest researchers of Japanese public policy and public administration. This book will also engage researchers of Japanese politics and Japanese studies in general.

This volume addresses the issues arising from the recent devolution referenda by exploring the historical development of the proposals, the importance of national and regional identities, the changing policies of the political parties and the approaches of business and other major groups towards devolution. It also looks at the impact on electoral reform coming from the proposal that proportional representation be used to elect the regional assemblies and how the new assemblies are to be financed. Finally the book discusses the implications of a devolved British state where different countries and regions achieve different levels of autonomy at different paces.

This volume addresses the issues arising from the recent devolution referenda by exploring the historical development of the proposals, the importance of national and regional identities, the changing policies of the political parties and the approaches of business and other major groups towards devolution. It also looks at the impact on electoral reform coming from the proposal that proportional representation be used to elect the regional assemblies and how the new assemblies are to be financed. Finally the book discusses the implications of a devolved British state where different countries and regions achieve different levels of autonomy at different paces.

This collection shifts the focus away from this to examine the conflicts and realities of development at a local, empirical level. It provides a series of case studies which illuminate the attitudes and actions of those involved in local development schemes. The material is drawn from Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. All the contributors use rigorous anthropological methods of analysis to shed light on the place of feelings of personal sentiment and identity in reactions to planned development schemes. In a world where direct action and public protest are routine responses to local development schemes, they show how protesters, developers and politicians often hold very different fundamental views about the environment, society, government and development which go beyond partisan economic and political interests. This collection provides a comparative perspective on the context of development, and should be of interest to social anthropologists, planners, development workers and specialists in development studies.

There is a wealth of published material which analyzes large-scale international development plans and policies. This collection shifts the focus away from this to examine the conflicts and realities of development at a local, empirical level. It provides a series of case studies which illuminates the attitudes and actions of those involved in local development.
The material is drawn from Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. All the contributors use rigorous anthropological methods of analysis to shed light on the place of personal sentiment and identity in reactions to planned development schemes. In a world where direct action and public protest are routine responses to local development plans, they show how protesters, developers and politicians often hold very different fundamental views about the environment, society, government and development which go beyond partisan economic and political interests.

An original work on American cities and the ongoing "urban crisis". Using the metaphor of the socially constructed organization of space, Bartlett takes a broad view of the evolution of urban America, from its historical roots to the present; he then examines the way in which current policies have responded to, and affected the organization of space (covering housing, transportation, government and other urban problems). He concludes with a look to the future of American cities, how they will impact and be impacted on by changing commercial and labor markets, by the problems of poverty and cultural change. In an epilogue, he explores possible ways to overcome the "social dilemmas", while recognizing the difficulty of this undertaking.

A thoroughly unique perspective to the study of cities, this book is about how space is used in America and how it changes as the "logic of location" evolves historically. Starting with the assumption that cities are fundamentally unnatural" phenomena, it unravels the interactions of technological advances that have made them possible and policies that have given them shape.

Following on from Introducing Town Planning andImplementing Town Planning, this third volume in the series examines the scope and nature of modern town planning in greater depth. It investigates the theories and preoccupations which inform the current planning agenda, compares this with earlier objectives, and discusses likely future trends. Written by a team of expert contributors under the general editorship of Clara Greed, the book begins with a review of town planning and then goes on to discuss the major themes in five parts: the economic context of town planning planning for housing planning for sustainability planning for city centres or decentralisation changing agendas and agencies Within this contextualising framework the contributors investigate many of the current, and often conflicting, urban policy issues challenging the planning profession. Over and above a commitment to traditional, physical land use matters, planning practitioners nowadays must take on board new priorities, deriving from the environmental movement, the European Union, the economic climate, changing local authority structures, and legislative frameworks. The contributors discuss these new agendas, and demonstrate how they link to inner city regeneration, city centre management, sustainability issues, and wider social policy and urban governance questions. This volume incorporates a more discursive and reflective approach to studying, and thus constitutes a valuable text for final year undergraduate and postgraduate courses in town planning, surveying, building, architecture, and housing, as well as RTPI, RICS, CIOH, CIOB, ASI, ISVA and RIBA courses. It will be of interest to a wider readership studying urban economics, urban sociology, social policy and urban geography, and to young professionals in both the public and private sector of the property world.

Mafia-type organizations generate several distorting effects on the economy. In Italy their presence is endemic, and not only in Southern regions such as Sicily, Campania or Calabria. Such organizations endure the fierce and continuous pressure exerted by Italian anti-mafia policy, maybe the most articulate and effective such policy in the world. Nevertheless, they have survived by submerging, transforming, and relocating their operations. The analysis of the different Mafias of today benefits from a huge amount of empirical data produced by investigators. This allows us to outline more reliable indexes of the penetration of Mafiosi in given territories, as well as to estimate the size of their activities in a transparent and empirically testable way. The contributions gathered in this book stem from the application of an innovative methodology originally introduced by the Fondazione Rocco Chinnici, and they enlarge our understanding of such a complex and dynamic phenomenon. After the presentation of the approach, the chapters are devoted to the Camorra's present situation, to an estimate of the size of extortion, to a comparison between Cosa Nostra and Camorra, to the analysis of wiretapped conversations and, finally, to the delocalization of Mafias and the perspectives of a European anti-mafia policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Crime.