During 2008, the Democrats achieved in Florida a goal that had eluded them in all but three of the national elections since 1964: victory in the presidential race. Despite this success, the Republicans retained their dominance in the U.S. Congress and in the Florida State Legislature. The 2008 Elections in Florida utilizes multiple types of data to provide an explanation for the disparate outcomes of these elections. The book chronicles changes in voter registration and turnout over time and compares the electoral behavior of groups in Florida to that in the nation as a whole. It examines the importance of legislative apportionment, term limits and incumbency to the outcome of congressional and state legislative races and provides important clues to the future of electoral behavior in one of the nation's most important states.

To see like a city, rather than seeing like a state, is the key to understanding modern politics. In this book, Magnusson draws from theorists such as Weber, Wirth, Hayek, Jacobs, Sennett, and Foucault to articulate some of the ideas that we need to make sense of the city as a form of political order. Locally and globally, the city exists by virtue of complicated patterns of government and self-government, prompted by proximate diversity. A multiplicity of authorities in different registers is typical. Sovereignty, although often claimed, is infinitely deferred. What emerges by virtue of self-organization is not susceptible to control by any central authority, and so we are impelled to engage politically in a world that does not match our expectations of sovereignty. How then are we are to engage realistically and creatively? We have to begin from where we are if we are to understand the possibilities. Building on traditions of political and urban theory in order to advance a new interpretation of the role of cities/urbanism in contemporary political life, this work will be of great interest to scholars of political theory and urban theory, international relations theory and international relations.

Focusing on Karnataka in India, this study examines the implications of the model of development sought to be introduced in the entire country through the governance reforms of the post-1991 period a model that bypasses Panchayat Raj institutions (PRIs), resulting in a majority of the population being left outside the purview of development.

These changes in governance resulted in, among other things, the prolific growth of NGOs in the country, particularly in Karnataka. Explaining how community-based organizations (CBOs) set up by these NGOs have made their way into rural Karnataka, this book expresses concern over how they now perform functions that rightly belong to PRIs following the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution which devolves 29 functions to local self-government, passing on the funds they receive from the centre to their district and village branches, though these should actually go to PRIs.

The book argues that elected representatives have been put in place by the people at all levels, and it is they who should take decisions regarding the development of this country. In the post-liberalisation period, governance through institutions that eschew political decentralisation is fraught with hazards. Not only will avenues for the expression of people 's wishes be lacking in such a scenario, but there will also be increasing inequality, resulting in a skewed development. The inclusiveness which the present government seeks will elude them unless they restore and strengthen Panchayat Raj institutions.

The remarkable changes in China over the past three decades are mostly considered at the national level, whereas local government which has played and continues to play a key role in these developments is often overlooked. The themes of China s local administrative hierarchy, and its historical evolution, have until now received scant attention; this book fills that gap, and presents a comprehensive survey of China s local administration, from the province down to the township. It examines the political and functional definitions and historical origins of the nine local administrative levels or categories in contemporary China: the province, the centrally-administered municipality, the ethnic minority autonomous region, the special administrative region, the deputy-provincial city, the prefecture, the county, township and urban district. It investigates how each of the different levels of China s local administration has developed historically, both before and after 1949; and it explores the functions, political and economic, that the different levels and units carry out, and how their relationships with superior and subordinate units have evolved over time. It also discusses how far the post-Mao reforms have affected local administration, and how the local administrative hierarchy is likely to develop going forward.

Examining the genral character and key issues of local politics, People, Power and Place discusses the effect of local government policieson the general population and identifies those who gain or lose under them. Based on a comparitive investigation of Britain and the United States, the book explores the changing influences of institutions and individuals in local political systems and activity. This perspective, first published in 1991, illustrates the role of national, international and historical factors in the evolution of local government as well as outlining the practice of local politics in both countries.

This book provides a balanced assessment of China's communist rule, its viability as well as its prospect of democracy. The People's Congresses and Governance in China presents a complex but convincing analysis of the transformation of governance in China. As the first systemic and theoretical study of China's provincial legislatures, it draws our attention to one of the most promising growth points in China's changing constitutional order. Through in depth and first hand research, the author provides a comprehensive explanation about why the provincial legislatures have acquired institutional maturation and expanded power in the context of Chinese transitional political economy. The book portrays an innovative pattern of legislative development, sums up pragmatic local strategies for market creation, and identifies multiple dynamics for promoting accountability and democracy. Based upon the case study of provincial legislatures, Ming Xia reveals the formation of a new mode of governance in China's national politics: the network structure featuring institutional arrangements and the mohe (co-operation through competition) pattern of interaction abided by the major power players. This volume will be of interest to parliamentary scholars and parliamentarians who are concerned with the role of parliaments in transitional politics and economies of both post-communist and developing countries. It will also appeal to students and researchers of Chinese politics, governance and Asian studies.

Analyzes the extent to which the voters of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah are concerned about problems associated with development and the extent to which state senators respond to voters' concerns. Originally published in 1980

The Kurdish question remains one of the most important and complicated issues in ethnic politics in contemporary times, with the Kurds being one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state of their own. This comprehensive volume brings together a group of distinguished scholars to address the Kurdish question in its centennial year with a fresh analytical lens, to demonstrate that the study of Kurdish politics has developed beyond a narrow focus on the state-minority antagonism. It addresses a series of interrelated questions focusing on Kurdish politics as well as broader themes related to nationalism, ethnic mobilization, democratic struggles, and international security. The authors examine the agency of Kurdish political actors and their relations with foreign actors; the relations between Kurdish political leaders and organizations and regional and great powers; the dynamics and competing forms of Kurdish political rule; and the involvement of Kurdish parties in broader democratic struggles. Using original empirical work, they place the scholarship on Kurdish politics in dialogue with the broader scholarship on ethnic nationalism, self-determination movements, diaspora studies, and rebel diplomacy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnopolitics.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are arrangements between government and private actors with the objective of providing public infrastructure, facilities and services. Three fundamental questions frame the use of PPPs at the local level: What do PPPs look like? What gives rise to the use of PPPs? And, what are the outcomes of PPPs? The articles in this book provide insightful answers to these questions. In addition, the contributions in the book identify lines of research that invite further investigation, namely: problems related to the degree of risk transfer; the challenges posed by renegotiation; and evaluation of PPPs' results. The content of this book will be of interest for scholars, policy analysts, and policy makers. This book was published as a special issue of Local Government Studies.

This book reflects on the role and task perception as well as the behaviour of councillors in the changing context of local democracy. Political leadership at the local level has attracted growing attention in recent years in parallel with reforms of local government and of the municipal administration as well as the debate on a shift from government to governance. But this debate is mainly focused on single leaders, i.e. mayors or executive officers. Considering the power triangle of (i) the mayor, (ii) the municipal administration (executive officers) and (iii) the council, it is surprising that councillors have gained little interest so far. The chapters start from a common conceptual framework. They start from the hypothesis that the role perception as well as the behaviour of councillors cannot be conceived of being determined directly by (i) both formal and informal institutional structures as well as by (ii) personal characteristics. Instead, this collection argues that the perceptions and behaviour of councillors are depending on their notion of democracy. Whilst the understanding of democracy can be affected by institutional structures, it also depends on the personal characteristics of the councillors. This book was published as a special issue of Local Government Studies.

As the economic crisis of 2008/09 unfolded, it became apparent that the huge mountains of debt being built up by central governments were unsustainable and that savage cuts would be needed to balance budgets. It also became clear that the public sector would be one of the first in line when the axe started swinging. Yet, at the very same time, green advocates from business, academia and civil society were making calls for greater investment at the local level in the big sustainability issues of the day such as fostering sustainable consumption or educating communities on making the transition to a low-carbon economy. The upshot is that leaders in local government are going to be asked to do a lot more work on environmental and social sustainability but with much less money. To make matters worse, increasing public scepticism about why we should deal with these dilemmas in the first place has been exacerbating the problem, notably exemplified by concerns over the robustness of the science of climate change. Local sustainability faces a perfect storm. Sustainability in Austerity has been written to provide local leaders with a lifebelt in these turbulent times. It empowers local authorities to address the challenges they now face - by offering a treasure chest of cost-neutral and powerful ways for leaders in local government to advance sustainability as nations emerge from the global recession. The book sets out the required rules for leadership and proposes a myriad of innovative strategies for self-help achieved through habit-forming behaviour change among council members, staff and local communities alike. Packed with international case studies, anecdotes and management tips derived from a wealth of learning by like-minded peers across the world - all of whom have faced and overcome serious sustainability challenges - the book will be a touchstone for professionals working in areas such as: democracy and decision-making; corporate assets and resources; economic development and planning; waste and environmental services; fleet and logistics; and community management. There is an impressive array of books that provide fresh and innovative thinking on sustainability, but the vast majority have ignored or overlooked inspirational stories of positive change in local government. Sustainability in Austerity is a game-changing book and will be essential reading for managers and councillors in local government across the world, in either emerging or developed economies; managers in central government; community organisation leaders; academics; and management consultants who work with this sector on policy and performance.

The first comprehensive biographical information source to the 191 American governors who served during the period 1788-1959. Historical and political analysis accompanies each entry.

"Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects," the third in a series, sets out to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. The chapters analyze responses to five key policy challenges that most metropolitan areas and local communities face:

- Creating quality neighborhoods for families
- Governing effectively
- Building human capital
- Growing the middle class
- Enlarging a competitive economy through industry-based strategies
- Managing the spatial pattern of metropolitan growth and development

Each chapter discusses a specific topic under one of these challenges. The authors present the essence of what is known, as well as its likely applications, and identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy.

In this new authoritative collection The Environment and Transport, the editors have selected the most important articles published in the last twenty years concerning pollution, the effects of traffic on the environment and the development of controls on both a regional and national level. This important new reference work will prove an invaluable source to both practitioners and students in the field of environmental studies.

This volume brings together for the first time a significant body of Professor Barnes' scholarly writing on Japanese early state formation, brought together so that successive topics form a coherent overview of the problems and solutions of ancient Japan. The writings are, in some cases, the only studies of these topics available in English and they differ from the majority of other articles on the subject in being anthropological rather than cultural or historical in nature.

A multi-chapter book, first of its kind, that identifies, describes, and analyzes FBI documents revealing the hidden history of surveillance of Mexicans and Chicanos in the United States of America.

This book examines federalism and regional and local politics in Russia. Many commentators have alluded to the unique nature of Russia's dual transition and its difficult task of simultaneously reforming its economy and polity. But there is in fact a third transition under way in Russia that is of no less importance, the need to reconfigure central-local relations and to create a stable and viable form of federalism. Federal states are much more difficult to set up than unitary ones, and forging a new federal system at the same time as privatising the economy and trying to radically overhaul the political system has clearly made Russia's transition triply difficult. The book discusses how Vladimir Putin has re-asserted the power of the centre in Russia, and tightened the federal government's control of the regions. It shows how, contrary to his rhetoric about developing Russia as a free and democratic state, authoritarianism has been extended - through his reorganisation of the Federation Council, his usurpation of powers to dismiss regional assemblies and chief executives, and his creation of seven unelected super-governors. The book explores a wide range of issues related to these developments, including a comparative study of Russian federalism and local politics, ethnic federalism, the merging of federal units, regional governors, electoral and party reforms, and regional and local politics. It also includes case studies of local and regional politics in specific regions.

Offering new insights into the political economy of contemporary India, this book considers how and why unequal patterns of economic growth have taken shape within the context of a democratic and decentralising political system, and how this has impacted upon the processes of economic development.

The death of Georgia governor-elect Eugene Talmadge in late 1946 launched a constitutional crisis that ranks as one of the most unusual political events in U.S. history: the state had three active governors at once, each claiming that he was the true elected official. This is the first full-length examination of that episode, which wasn't just a crazy quirk of Georgia politics (though it was that) but the decisive battle in a struggle between the state's progressive and rustic forces that had continued since the onset of the Great Depression. In 1946, rural forces aided by the county unit system, Jim Crow intimidation of black voters, and the Talmadge machine's "loyal 100,000" voters united to claim the governorship. In the aftermath, progressive political forces in Georgia would shrink into obscurity for the better part of a generation. In this volume is the story of how the political, governmental, and Jim Crow social institutions not only defeated Georgia's progressive forces but forestalled their effectiveness for a decade and a half.

Is the 'golden age' of democracy really over due to the pressures of globalisation and the erosion of the nation state?

Within this book, Heinelt seeks to address the democratic deficit in political systems linked to limited Citizen Participation reflecting on the notion of democracy and participatory governance and how they relate to each other. Exploring democracy beyond the governmental structures and focusing on participatory governance in particular this book demonstrates that common notions of democracy have to be re-conceptualised without neglecting its key ideas. By arguing that it is a political task to turn the inevitability of governance into a participatory form, Heinelt develops a model of different 'worlds of democratic actions' which shows that democratic political systems have to be considered as a complex and broad web of various forms of interest articulation and intermediation as well as decision-making.

Making an important contribution to the 'third transformation of democracy', this book will be of interest to students and scholars of governance, democracy, policymaking & European studies.

Drawing from workers' applications, testimonies, and other primary documents, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service recreates the white-collar world of middle-class workers from the Civil War to 1900. It reveals how men who worked in federal agencies moved from being self-employed to salaried workers, in the process placing at risk the independence that lay at the core of middle-class male values; while women assumed the kind of independence that threatened their positions as delicate, middle-class ladies deserving the protection and care of men. Introducing a cast of characters who worked as federal clerks in Washington, Arons examines the nature of being a civil servant--from the hiring, firing, and promotion procedures, the motivations for joining the federal workforce, and the impact of feminization on the workplace to the interpersonal aspects of office life such as attitude towards sex, manners, and money-lending--and provides an imaginative look at what it meant to be among the ladies and gentlemen who formed part of the first white-collar bureaucracy in the United States.

Over the last decade, the oil and gas industry has garnered a lot of support from the United States federal and state governments in the name of energy independence and economic prosperity. More specifically, hydraulic fracturing or fracking is said to not only make the production of affordable energy possible but also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by substituting coal with natural gas in the utility sector. Behind the facade of many socio-economic and political benefits, the process of fracking causes serious environmental concerns. Dismissing the negative externalities of fracking simply raises the question, to what extent have communities close to fracking sites been adversely impacted by it? In this book, Sarmistha R. Majumdar studies four communities close to fracking well sites in Texas to help illustrate to what extent fracking regulations have been developed in Texas and how effective these regulations have been in safeguarding the interests of individuals in local communities amidst the lure of economic gains from the extraction of oil and natural gas from shale formations. Majumdar has developed a model to show stage by stage community actions to regain their quality of life and the consequences of their actions, if any, on state and local regulations and ordinances, and the oil and gas industry. This book will be an important resource for scholars of environmental and natural resource politics and policy in the United States.

While government provides the structure of public leadership, governance is the art of public leadership. This timely book examines current trends in metropolitan governance issues. It analyzes specific cases from thirteen major metropolitan regions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, all woven together by an overall framework established in the first three chapters. The distinguished contributors address such governance issues as city-county consolidation, local-federal coordination, annexation and special districting, and private contracting, with special attention to lessons learned from both successes and failures. As urban governance innovations have clearly outpaced urban government structures in recent years, the topics covered here are especially relevant.

The remarkable changes in China over the past three decades are mostly considered at the national level, whereas local government - which has played and continues to play a key role in these developments - is often overlooked. The themes of China's local administrative hierarchy, and its historical evolution, have until now received scant attention; this book fills that gap, and presents a comprehensive survey of China's local administration, from the province down to the township. It examines the political and functional definitions and historical origins of the nine local administrative levels or categories in contemporary China: the province, the centrally-administered municipality, the ethnic minority autonomous region, the special administrative region, the deputy-provincial city, the prefecture, the county, township and urban district. It investigates how each of the different levels of China's local administration has developed historically, both before and after 1949; and it explores the functions, political and economic, that the different levels and units carry out, and how their relationships with superior and subordinate units have evolved over time. It also discusses how far the post-Mao reforms have affected local administration, and how the local administrative hierarchy is likely to develop going forward.

From "Reefer Madness" to legal purchase at the corner store.With long-time legal and social barriers to marijuana falling across much of the United States, the time has come for an accessible and informative look at attitudes toward the dried byproduct of Cannabis sativa. Marijuana: A Short History profiles the politics and policies concerning the five-leaf plant in the United States and around the world. Millions of Americans have used marijuana at some point in their lives, yet it remains a substance shrouded by myth, misinformation, and mystery. And nearly a century of prohibition has created an enforcement system that is racist, and the continuing effects of racially-targeted over criminalization limit economic and social opportunities in communities of color. Marijuana: A Short History tells this story, and that of states stepping up to enact change. This book offers an up-to-date, cutting-edge look at how a plant with a tumultuous history has emerged from the shadows of counterculture and illegality. Today, marijuana has become a remarkable social, economic, and even political force with a surprising range of advocates and opponents. Over the past two decades marijuana policy has transformed dramatically in the United States, as dozens of states have openly defied the federal government. Marijuana: A Short History provides a brief yet compelling narrative that discusses the social and cultural history of marijuana but also tells us how a once-vilified plant has been transformed into a serious, even mainstream, public policy issue. Focusing on politics, the media, government, racism, criminal justice, and education, the book describes why public policy has changed, and what that change might mean for marijuana's future place in society.