This book examines the process, policies, and politics of urban development in China, with particular attention to city region governance, urban redevelopment, and urban-rural interaction through intensive theoretical discussions and extensive case studies. It offers ample data, pictures, and illustrations to provide readers with a deep understanding of urban policies and policies in China. The regional and metropolitan perspective is emphasized to analyze the urban-rural transition and how it affects urban governance. This book develops a well-grounded political economy analysis to examine how city region development and governance evolve in China. Such development is the focal point of China's continuing urbanization, and its impact needs to be carefully analyzed. In the end, this book aims to foster discussions that may lead to serious consideration on China's future urbanization route.

This book provides an examination of e-Government frameworks and maturity stages in governments around the world, including an overview of the legal frameworks that have supported them. Divided into three sections, the first part of this book analyses the theoretical context of current policies, codes of best practice and their implementation. The second section presents case studies which bring key issues to the fore including open government, privacy protection, social media, democracy, systems failures, innovations in inter-organizational e-government projects, and open data systems. The authors demonstrate the importance of the successful implementation of e-Government for improving managerial efficiency, public service delivery and citizen engagement, with special attention given to developing countries. The book concludes by drawing out the lessons learned from the latest research and recommending solutions for improving the implementation of e-Government in the future, thereby helping to achieve more transparent, participative and democratic societies. This book will provide an invaluable resource for researchers, policy-makers, public managers, international organizations and technical experts.

This book examines security and defence cooperation between the EU and third countries, in particular the United Kingdom and Norway. Brexit has placed the question of third-party engagement firmly back in the spotlight, especially given the UK's significance as a security and defence actor, and the failure of both sides to agree terms for cooperation in this area. The book explains why the seemingly obvious need for cooperation and shared strategic interests alone does not lead to frictionless cooperation or integration between the EU and like-minded third countries. Adding a theoretical and conceptual depth to what is still largely an empirical topic, it draws important conclusions about the possibilities and limits of European security and defence cooperation during challenging times. It also raises key questions about the nature and suitability of the pre-existing security and defence architecture in Europe, and the place of non-EU members within it. The book will appeal to academics and students interested in European politics, EU security, and security and defence studies.

While the ambitious objectives outlined in the EU's Green Deal aim at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, national implementation greatly varies depending on local geographies, history, culture, economics, and politics. This book analyses Member States' and EU neighbours' national efforts to combat climate change. It subsequently draws on these factors to highlight local challenges, tensions, and opportunities on the road towards climate neutrality. In the context of inter-country dependencies following Russia's war against Ukraine, it addresses strategic questions regarding EU integration, the transformation of our economies, the reduction of energy dependencies, and public perception of the above. The book also makes concrete recommendations, in various policy areas, on how individual countries and the EU as a whole should deal with the climate crisis.

Efficiency, Equality and Public Policy provides compelling arguments for the exclusive concern with efficiency in all specific areas of public economic policy, leaving the objective of equality to be achieved through the general tax/transfer system. Public policies, the author argues, should ultimately maximize the sum of individual welfares which should be individual happiness rather than preferences. The flip side is that relative-income and environmental disruption effects cause a bias in favor of private spending which is no longer conducive to social happiness.

Formal systems of comprehensive planning and performance-based management have a long if disappointing history in American government. This is illustrated most dramatically by the failure of program budgeting (PPB) in the 1960s and resurrection of that management technique in a handful of agencies over the past decade. Beyond its present application, the significance of PPB lies in its relationship to the goals and assumptions of popular reforms associated with the performance movement.

"Program Budgeting and the Performance Movement" examines PPB from its inception in the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara to its limited resurgence in recent years. It includes an in-depth case study of the adoption and effects of PPB at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The fact that program budgeting is subject to the same limitations today that led to its demise four decades ago speaks to the viability of requirements, such as those imposed by the Government Performance and Results Act, that are designed to make government more businesslike in its operations.

This volume discusses the importance of adopting entrepreneurial and innovation practices in the public sector, as mechanisms for detecting, dealing with and including citizens' social needs, with a reflection on positive determination of their quality of life. It focuses on critical reflection and rethinking the articulation between the dimensions of transformation - entrepreneurship and innovation - of New Public Management (NPM). In this way the book contributes to deepening knowledge about the implications of this change in the organizational paradigm of the public sector for citizens' quality of life, which is treated multi-dimensionally here, including citizens' well-being, purchasing power, happiness, trust, safety, experience and satisfaction. The volume constitutes a reference guide for decision makers, managers and policy makers engaged in the public sector who want to differentiate their performance by fostering entrepreneurial and innovative practices in the scope of public administration that can enhance citizens' quality of life. This volume is also a reference guide for scholars, policy makers and practitioners interested on public innovation.

In the United States, it is quite common to lay claim to the benefits of society by appealing to ""taxpayer citizenship-the idea that, as taxpayers, we deserve access to certain social services like a public education. Tracing the genealogy of this concept, Camille Walsh shows how tax policy and taxpayer identity were built on the foundations of white supremacy. From the origins of unequal public school funding after the Civil War through school desegregation cases from Brown v. Board of Education to San Antonio v. Rodriguez in the 1970s, this study spans over a century of racial injustice, dramatic courtroom clashes, and white supremacist backlash to collective justice claims. Incorporating letters from everyday individuals as well as the private notes of Supreme Court justices as they deliberated, Walsh reveals how the idea of a ""taxpayer"" identity contributed to the contemporary crises of public education, racial disparity, and income inequality.

This book addresses why, whether and how the existing legal framework on water management in China could make climate change adaptation a mainstream issue. The book uses a table to illustrate the distinctions and similarities between IWRM and water-centered adaptation to analyze the possibilities of mainstreaming adaptation. The new water-planning processes and EIA are also illustrated in the form of figures showing the differences after factoring in adaptation considerations. Interviews with water managers to obtain their perception and attitudes towards climate change adaptation offer new perspectives for readers. The adaptation- mainstreaming approach, which finds a way to balance various interests and tasks, will arouse the interests of those readers who argue that climate change is only one of the issues challenging water management, and that poverty reduction, environmental protection and living standard improvement are even more important. Readers will also be interested to discover that the adaptation mainstreaming approach could be applied in water management institutions such as water planning and EIA. In addition, the book offers a clear explanation of the challenges of adaptation to the existing water-related legal framework from a theoretical perspective, and provides theoretical and practical recommendations.

This book examines the process of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in Brazil through the lens of community involvement. The author argues that the implementation of controversial projects, such as the Volta Grande mining project, demonstrate the failure of the current system to acknowledge the interests of local communities. Using international comparisons of public policy on environmental issues, the author proposes a model which aims to improve public participation in Brazilian environmental decisions.

This book provides a detailed analysis of the economic and political implications of the introduction of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics into the service sector of economies that have so far relied on service jobs to sustain levels of employment. It examines how reliance on coercive measures for enforcing low-paid service work attempts to postpone this third Industrial Revolution, and analyses the struggles that must still take place if we are to achieve a future of freedom and social justice for all. While automation and globalisation have made human solidarities of traditional kinds more difficult to sustain, they have also made new kinds possible. Experiments in social policy, and especially the pilot projects with unconditional Universal Basic Incomes, offer a possible model for a new kind of society. The author argues that it is politics which will determine whether we can achieve these new human solidarities.

This book examines the progress of institutionalisation of evaluation in American countries from various perspectives. It presents prior developments of evaluation and current states of 11 American countries and three transnational organisations concerning three dimensions, namely the political, social and professional system. These detailed country reports, which have been written by selected researchers and authors of the respective countries, lead to a concluding comparison and synthesis. This is the second of four volumes of the compendium The Institutionalisation of Evaluation. The first volume on 'Europe' was published in 2020. After the publication of the 'Americas' - volume in 2021 it will be followed by two more volumes on 'Asia and Pacific', and 'Africa'. The overall aim is to target an interdisciplinary audience and offer cross-country learning as it enables to better understand the institutionalisation of evaluation in different national states and world regions as well as in different sectors.

Chapters How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root: Local Governments & Refugees in Turkey by Elif Durmus and Human Rights Localisation and Individual Agency: From 'Hobby of the Few' to the Few Behind the Hobby by Tihomir Sabchev, Sara Miellet, and Elif Durmus are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com This book seeks to explore, from a multidisciplinary perspective, whether human rights are, in fact, a myth or a lived reality. Over the years much has been said about their effectiveness or, rather, their ineffectiveness. This perceived ineffectiveness relates not only to institutional challenges at the international level, but also to national implementation mechanisms and processes. In addition, questions have arisen as to whether individuals or groups of individuals actually benefit from the normative guarantees contained in human rights law and whether human rights as legal constructs can be effectively translated into better outcomes. This volume can be distinguished from the existing literature by virtue of the fact that it not only brings together scholars at different stages of their careers, but also that it incorporates contributions that adopt different methodological perspectives and cover a variety of topics. The book should prove of great benefit to human rights researchers, human rights practitioners, NGOs and students. Claire Boost is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Maastricht University. Andrea Broderick is an Assistant Professor at the Department of International and European Law, Maastricht University. Fons Coomans is a Professor at the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Peace, Department of International and European Law, Maastricht University. Roland Moerland is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Maastricht University.

This book focuses on the inherent contradiction between bureaucracy, hierarchy, and the vision inspired by the architecture of modern information technology of a more egalitarian culture in public organizations. We agree with Evans and Wurster and others who have argued that, in the future, knowledge-based productive relationships will be designed around fluid, teambased collaborative communities, either within organizations (i.e., deconstructed value chains), or in collaborative alliances such as those with ""amorphous and permeable corporate boundaries characteristic of companies in the Silicon Valley"" that is, deconstructed supply chains. In such relationships everyone can communicate richly with everyone else on the basis of shared standards and, like the Internet itself, these relationships will eliminate the need to channel information, thereby eliminating the trade-off between information bandwidth and connectivity. ""The possibility (or the threat) of random access and information symmetry,"" they conclude, ""will destroy all hierarchies, whether of logic or power

This study investigates how and why group ranch members in Kajiado District, Kenya, supported the subdivision of their collective landholdings into individual, titled units, and what outcomes resulted from this transition to individual rights. Viewed over a longer time scale, the author finds that politics is at the core of institutional change: land-owners increasingly seek exclusive rights in an effort to defend their land claims against threats of appropriation by the state, by Maasai elite, and by non-Maasai.

The volume highlights the state-of-the-art knowledge (including data analysis) of productivity, inequality and efficiency analysis. It showcases a selection of the best papers from the 9th North American Productivity Workshop. These papers are relevant to academia, but also to public and private sectors in terms of the challenges that firms, financial institutions, governments, and individuals may face when dealing with economic and education related activities that lead to increase or decrease of productivity. The volume also aims to bring together ideas from different parts of the world about the challenges those local economies and institutions may face when changes in productivity are observed. These contributions focus on theoretical and empirical research in areas including productivity, production theory and efficiency measurement in economics, management science, operation research, public administration, and education. The North American Productivity Workshop (NAPW) brings together academic scholars and practitioners in the field of productivity and efficiency analysis from all over the world, and this proceedings volume is a reflection of this mission. The papers in this volume also address general topics as education, health, energy, finance, agriculture, transport, utilities, and economic development, among others. The editors are comprised of the 2016 local organizers, program committee members, and celebrated guest conference speakers.

On the basis of systematically summarizing and sorting out the significant achievements made since China's rural reform, this book comprehensively explains the theoretical basis, principles and strategies of the road to rural revitalization of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Through in-depth research on nine aspects of rural basic management system, rural deepening reform, food security, modernization of agriculture and rural areas, integrated development of urban and rural areas, poverty alleviation, new rural construction, ecological civilization construction and rural governance, this book puts forward the development direction and strategic choice of China's rural revitalization by the middle of this century. It not only enriches and develops the theory of development economics, but also provides experiences for rural development in developing countries.

This volume presents the history and current state of the public-private partnership (PPP) sector in Russia. It analyzes the legal and institutional framework of PPPs as well as approaches and best practices for public administrations at federal and regional level to promote PPPs. Special attention is given to the management of PPP projects in different phases of their life cycle and to the legal and financial structuring of PPP projects. In addition, the contributions highlight best PPP practices in various sectors - from transport infrastructure to information technology - and also discuss international aspects of PPP. The volume is aimed at scholars in economics and public administration as well as public decision-makers interested in modern trends in the Russian economy and the development of successful business development.

Intergovernmental councils have emerged as the main structures through which the governments of a federation coordinate public policy making. In a globalized and complex world, federal actors are increasingly interdependent. This mutual dependence in the delivery of public services has important implications for the stability of a federal system: policy problems concerning more than one government can destabilize a federation, unless governments coordinate their policies. This book argues that intergovernmental councils enhance federal stability by incentivizing governments to coordinate, which makes them a federal safeguard. By comparing reforms of fiscal and education policy in Australia, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland, this book shows that councils' effectiveness as one of federalism's safeguards depends on their institutional design and the interplay with other political institutions and mechanisms. Federal stability is maintained if councils process contentious policy problems, are highly institutionalized, are not dominated by the federal government, and are embedded in a political system that facilitates intergovernmental compromising and consensus-building.

This book provides a comprehensive approach for colleges rethinking their community policy connections. From a 'pracademic' perspective, it introduces a new paradigm for contemporary college and community connections through the evolution of research, scholarship and experience, and the application of the Public Affairs discipline from Higher Education Leadership. The book explains how the public affairs forces of Community, Organization, and Administration offer a unique combination of concepts and theory that can transform practice, develop innovation, strengthen communities, and transform lives through a college partnering in a variety of community projects. The book's defined ethical composition institutes leadership in the public realm, within the Public Affairs Triumvirate; and its discussion of the 'science to service to philosophy' will advance higher education strategy scholarship, creating new ideas for how academia and communities can create sustained connections and partnerships for solving problems in any community.

This book considers a range of contemporary approaches to public policy studies. These approaches are based on a number of theoretical perspectives on decision-making, as well as alternative perspectives on policy instruments and implementation. The range of approaches covered in the volume includes punctuated equilibrium models, the advocacy-coalition framework, multiple streams approaches, institutional analyses, constructivist approaches, behavioural models, and the use of instruments as an approach to public policy. The volume concludes with a discussion of fundamental issues of democracy in public policy.

This book discusses the phenomena of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) across several African countries. There are 40 million IDP worldwide; of these, an estimated 12.6 million are in 37 of Africa's 55 countries. Written by a team of fifteen scholars across four continents, this book uses both quantitative and qualitative data to analyze the causes and consequences of this displacement, the role of the state in creating and mitigating these situations, and potential policy solutions. The volume is divided into three sections. Chapters in Section 1 discuss the causes of displacement. Chapters in Section 2 discuss refugees in their regional context. Chapters in Section 3 discuss IDP camps in Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana. Bringing scholarly analysis to address two humanitarian crises, this book will be useful to students and researchers interested in African politics, forced migration, and policy as well as members of the diplomatic corps, governmental, and non-governmental organizations actively working towards solving these challenges.

This book revises the existing account of the first Rudd Government's engagement with China, placing Australian foreign direct investment screening policy at the centre of the story. At the time, the Rudd Government was accused of holding an unnecessarily interventionist approach to Chinese Sovereign-Owned Enterprise investments into the Australian mining sector. This book claims that the Australian Government had a deep and coherent understanding of the problem posed by Chinese investments that went well-beyond any simplistic 'China Inc.' or geopolitical threats. The key policymakers believed that the Chinese state-directed investments threatened the integrity of the liberal governance structures on which the Australian state is founded, and so Australian sovereignty itself. While the response of the Rudd Government was largely ineffectual, the logic underpinning it remains the best framework for guiding Australia's engagement with China into the 2020s, as well as the engagement of other liberal states coming to grips with China's rise.

This book offers new ways of thinking about corruption by examining the two distinct ways in which policy approaches and discourse on corruption developed in the UN and the OECD. One of these approaches extrapolated transnational bribery as the main form of corrupt practices and advocated a limited scope offense, while the other approach tackled the broader structure of the global economic system and advocated curbing the increasing power of multinational corporations. Developing nations, in particular Chile, initiated and contributed much to these early debates, but the US-sponsored issue of transnational bribery came to dominate the international agenda. In the process, the 'corrupt corporation' was supplanted by the 'corrupt politician', the 'corrupt public official' and their international counterpart: the 'corrupt country'. This book sheds light on these processes and the way in which they reconfigured our understanding of the state as an economic actor and the multinational corporation as a political actor.

This book examines the impacts of fiscal decentralization reforms on the efficiency of local governments in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. By offering a comparative perspective and by applying econometric methods and regression models, it analyses various reform trajectories and their effects on individual CEE countries. Furthermore, the book discusses input and output indicators for evaluating the efficiency of municipalities. Readers will learn about the common features of these countries, the impact of path dependence, and future prospects for decentralization reforms. In closing, the book discusses modern management and administration methods, opportunities for cooperation between municipalities, co-creative service delivery, and other measures that could improve the efficiency of public service provision.