The study of Prime Ministers and the reform of British central government in any era is fascinating. The interaction between the temporary, often inexperienced but largely elected ministers and the experienced but theoretically subservient senior civil servants provides enormous interest. This book concentrates on the years of Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Alec Douglas Home and Edward Heath--years when the battle between Civil Service and Government was most intense. What makes this book more compelling is that many of the key players, including Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle and Tony Benn, wrote their own published accounts. Eighteen months after he came to power, Harold Wilson commissioned the Fulton Committee to look at the recruitment, training and management of civil servants. The Fulton report emerged in 1968 and became legendary for its difficult gestation and for the mini civil war, which developed within Whitehall over its implementation. This is but one episode in the history of British Prime Ministers' attempts to reform the Civil Service. The Fulton report remains a landmark in the administrative history of Britain.

This book analyzes e-participation in smart cities. In recent decades, information and communication technologies (ICT) have played a key role in the democratic political and governance process by allowing easier interaction between governments and citizens, and the increased ability of citizens to participate in the production chain of public services. E-participation plays and important role in the development of smart cities and smart communities , but it has not yet been extensively studied. This book fills that gap by combining empirical and theoretical research to analyze actual practices of citizen involvement in smart cities and build a solid framework for successful e-participation in smart cities. The book is divided into three parts. Part I discusses smart technologies and their role in improving e-participation in smart cities. Part II deals with models of e-participation in smart cities and the organization issues affecting the implementation of e-participation; these chapters analyze the efficiency of governance models in relation to the establishment of smart cities. Part III proposes incentives to motivate increased participation by governments and cititzenry within the smart cities context. Written by an international panel of experts and practitioners, this book will be a convenient source of information on e-participation in smart cities and will be valuable to academics, researchers, policy-makers, public managers, citizens, international organizations and anyone who has a stake in enhancing citizen engagement in smart cities.

The Yearbook on Space Policy, edited by the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), is the reference publication analysing space policy developments. Each year it presents issues and trends in space policy and the space sector as a whole. Its scope is global and its perspective is European. The Yearbook also links space policy with other policy areas. It highlights specific events and issues, and provides useful insights, data and information on space activities. The first part of the Yearbook sets out a comprehensive overview of the economic, political, technological and institutional trends that have affected space activities. The second part of the Yearbook offers a more analytical perspective on the yearly ESPI theme and consists of external contributions written by professionals with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise. The third part of the Yearbook carries forward the character of the Yearbook as an archive of space activities. The Yearbook is designed for government decision-makers and agencies, industry professionals, as well as the service sectors, researchers and scientists and the interested public.

This book uses sound theoretical frameworks and econometric techniques to rigorously analyze and explain the conditions of sustainable growth in agriculture. It further investigates how management of natural resources and technological advances can enhance productivity and ensure sustainable growth in agriculture. Optimal control theory, dynamic optimization problems and theory of risk and uncertainty are extensively used to create theoretical models for analyzing agricultural growth. The results demonstrate that crop diversification, rainwater harvesting and the use of organic fertilizers can ensure growth in agriculture from a dynamic perspective. Further, they show how excessive depletion of ground water, intensive farming and overuse of chemicals in connection with the adoption of modern technology in agriculture have placed tremendous strains on natural resources like land and water, and have called into question the sustainability of growth in the farming sector.

The theme of this book is the political practices by Zhejiang Government under the guidance of "China Dream" policy. It reviews the political facets of governance, The People's Congress System, the consultative system, grassroots democracy, rule of law, government function, restriction and supervision of power and the united front. These areas are the foundations of Chinese government, and are currently discussed in detail from the point of view of the Zhejiang local administration. As China has its unique political system, this book could help scholars and policy makers around the global better understand the operation of Chinese government and political goals for the future under the guidance of the statecraft.

This book presents the state-of-the-arts application of digital watermarking in audio, speech, image, video, 3D mesh graph, text, software, natural language, ontology, network stream, relational database, XML, and hardware IPs. It also presents new and recent algorithms in digital watermarking for copyright protection and discusses future trends in the field. Today, the illegal manipulation of genuine digital objects and products represents a considerable problem in the digital world. Offering an effective solution, digital watermarking can be applied to protect intellectual property, as well as fingerprinting, enhance the security and proof-of-authentication through unsecured channels.

E-Government in Asia offers a thorough examination of e-governance in Asia, including the uses of the Internet to mediate interactions between Asian governments and their citizens. The book examines how the Internet is reshaping these interactions in the region and summarizes the nature of e-government, the growth of the Internet in Asia, issues of the digital divide, and how the Internet is affecting the ways in which public services are provided, how Asians acquire information, and other issues.

Governments worldwide struggle to remove policy deadlocks and enact much-needed reforms in organizational structure and public services. In this book, Jacob Torfing explores collaborative innovation as a way for public and private stakeholders to break the impasse. These network-based collaborations promise to multiply the skills, ideas, energy, and resources between government and its partners across agency boundaries and in the nonprofit and private sectors. Torfing draws on his own pioneering work in Europe as well as examples from the United States and Australia to construct a cross-disciplinary framework for studying collaborative innovation. His analysis explores its complex and interactive processes as he looks at how drivers and barriers may enhance or impede the collaborative approach. He also reflects on the roles institutional design, public management, and governance reform play in spurring collaboration for public sector innovation. The result is a theoretically and empirically informed book that carefully demonstrates how multi-actor collaboration can enhance public innovation in the face of fiscal constraint, the proliferation of wicked problems, and the presence of unsatisfied social needs.

The United States, as well as most of the world, is sitting upon a precipice of economic collapse, which will likely lead not only to the loss of our affluence but of our freedoms.

When I was a child in the fifties, despite the problems that existed, our nation was more honest, unified and free. Although we were far less affluent back then, most people felt connected and life had meaning. This book is a memoir of the 1950s when people believed in the Golden Rule, even if we could not always live by it. It is a personal recollection of the moral you-turn we took in the late 1960s and the consequences that change has had on how we live today.

For the past fifty years we have increasingly embraced the "me first' mentality that is the underlying cause of our decline. We cannot really love others, nor can we fix the problems of our nation if all we think about is ourselves.

When we, with God's help, find a place in our hearts for each other's needs, the resulting honesty, good will and unity will be the foundation upon which we begin to rebuild America.

As today's world develops and evolves, so does its economics. New economic approaches have begun to emerge, but traditional methods are still being implemented. As both systems provide different solutions to society's economic issues, thoughtful research and analysis is required regarding the tactics and strategies that both theories utilize. Comparative Approaches to Old and New Institutional Economics is an essential reference source that discusses the sequential history of these two economic theories as well as their application to global fiscal disputes. Featuring research on topics such as international relations, business management, and institutionalism, this book is ideally designed for economists, analysts, managers, researchers, practitioners, academicians, and students seeking coverage on the parallel methods of these economic philosophies.

This book offers new perspectives on global phenomena that play a major role in today's society and deeply shape the actions of individuals, organizations and nations. In a complex and rapidly changing environment, decision-makers need to gain a better understanding of global phenomena to adapt and to anticipate the evolution of the global context. The authors-ten renowned international scholars of anthropology, economics, law, management and political science-propose an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to social sciences. They analyse how international phenomena, such as globalisation or transnationalisation, transform the disciplines of social sciences from an epistemological standpoint. Explaining what 'global' means in difference disciplines, the authors analyse several global phenomena that characterise today's international environment such as the circulation of norms and ideas, the linkages between war and globalization, corporate governance, and the impact of multinational enterprises on sustainable development and poverty reduction. Providing examples of analytical disciplinary approaches and guidelines for decision-makers in a fast-changing global context this book will be useful to scholars and students of anthropology, economics, law, management and political science as well as practitioners in the private and public sectors.

The book specifies infrastructure construction achievements and the present development situation in China in the 30 years after the reform and opening up in the fields of architecture, energy, transportation, environmental protection, water conservancy, telecommunications, urban arts and sports. The book also summarizes the experiences and lessons in the course of the construction and puts forward the development requirements and prospects in the hope of providing reference and enlightenment for African people in their infrastructure construction and offering certain help for their smooth construction work in order to avoid disadvantages and achieve better economic and social benefits.

This volume focuses on the evolution of public policy and the role of agenda setting with regard to policymaking in countries of the Global South. The authors illustrate the emergence of public policy research as an academic discipline, and highlight various aspects of history, governance, politics, and economics as components of public policy theory development. By offering a cross-national perspective, the papers contribute to a better understanding of when, how, and by whom a given policy agenda is designed, which is essential to grasping how policy is implemented. In turn, the authors investigate how the development of public policy research has influenced policymaking in fields such as democratization, migration, corruption, agriculture, environment, education, and entrepreneurship and, more specifically, agenda setting in selected countries of the Global South.

This groundbreaking volume documents a comprehensive peacebuilding initiative in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reviews the broad theoretical base underlying these efforts. Theory chapters discuss intrinsic peace-related concepts, including the nature of conflict, elements of individual and group identity, the long-term psychological effects of prolonged political hostilities, and the mechanisms of reconciliation and inclusiveness. Central to the coverage is the ambitious Building Peace through Knowledge Project, a four-year multidisciplinary program featuring a diverse palette of professional and community interventions to reduce the occurrence and trauma of political violence. The author reveals powerful insights connecting knowledge to peacebuilding by analyzing:   ·         The relationships between attitudes and ideology in intergroup conflict. ·         The psychosocial impact of political violence among Israelis and Palestinians. ·         The literature on people-to-people interventions (P2Ps) in conflict reduction. ·         The roles of forgiveness, reconciliation, and fairness in conflict resolution. ·         The methodology and findings of the Building Peace through Knowledge Project. ·         The potential of knowledge-based interventions in building sustainable peace in other regions.   Practitioners, mental health professionals, and scholars with interests in multicultural mental health, cross-cultural psychology, political violence, and peace education will look to Building Peace through Knowledge as an ideabook, a mission statement, and a road map toward a more stable world.                              

The traditional understandings that structure the relationships between public servants and the wider political system are said to have undergone considerable change. But what are these formalized and implicit understandings? What are the key dimensions of such bargains? In what conditions do bargains rise and fall? And has there been a universal and uniform change in these bargains? The Politics of Public Service Bargains develops a distinct perspective to answer these questions. It develops a unique analytical perspective to account for diverse bargains within systems of executive government. Drawing on comparative experiences from different state traditions, this study examines ideas and contemporary developments along three key dimensions of any Public Service Bargain - reward, competency and loyalty and responsibility. The Politics of Public Service Bargains points to diverse and differentiated developments across national systems of executive government and suggests how different 'bargains' are prone to cheating by their constituent parties. This study explores the context in which managerial bargains - widely seen to be at the heart of contemporary administrative reform movements - are likely to catch on and considers how cheating is likely to destabilize such bargains.

With the collective knowledge of expert contributors in the field, The International Handbook on Ageing and Public Policy explores the challenges arising from the ageing of populations across the globe.With an expansive look at the topic, this comprehensive Handbook examines various national state approaches to welfare provisions for older people and highlights alternatives based around the voluntary and third-party sector, families and private initiatives. Each of these issues are broken down further and split into six comprehensive sections: - Context - Pensions - Health - Welfare - Case Studies - Policy Innovation and Civil Society Academics interested in policy challenges for mature societies will find this Handbook a highly relevant reference tool. It also offers an important message for policy makers and practitioners in the field of public policy. Contributors include: J. Atanackovic, D.E. Bloom, I. Bode, A. Boersch-Supan, I.L. Bourgeault, R. Canning, B.A. Carnes, L. Carter-Edwards, T. Chen, E. Collom, R. Edlin, A. Elissen, M. Eloundou-Enyegue, M. Erlinghagen, J. Field, V. Galasso, R. Gauld, K. Hank, S. Harper, J. Hoffman, R. Holzmann, K. Howse, J.H. Johnson Jr., M. Kaplan, M. Kautto, H.G. Koenig, D. Lain, R. Lee, G.W. Leeson, E. Le , Z. Li, P. Lloyd-Sherlock, B.L. Lowell, A. Lusardi, A. Mason, R. McKinnon, A.M. Parnell, P. Profeta, N. Redondo, M. Sanchez, C. Saraceno, K. Spencer-Suarez, M.Tenikue, V. Timonen, F.M. Torres-Gil, S. Vickerstaff, B. Vriehoef, J. Warburton, A. Webb, E. Westerhout

This book discusses current theories and practices in the field of public procurement. Over the past few decades, public procurement has had to evolve conceptually and organizationally in the face of unrelenting budget constraints, government downsizing, public demand for increased transparency in public procurement, as well as greater concerns about efficiency, fairness and equity. Procurement professionals have also had to deal with a changeable climate produced by emerging technology, environmental concerns, and tension between complex regional trade agreements and national socioeconomic goals. This volume presents sixteen case studies focusing on the themes of public procurement as a policy tool and performance-based public procurement. The first section discusses public procurement as a policy tool and the challenges involved in balancing the competing interests of market forces, legal requirements, political pressures, and environmental concerns. The second section discusses performance-based public procurement, highlighting the frameworks used to assess procurement systems, the gaps between policy and practice, and strategies for bridging those gaps. The final section of the book discusses current issues in procurement, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, risk mitigation, and procurement as a profession. By combining theory and analysis with evidence from the real world, this book is of equal use to academics, policy makers, and procurement professionals.

The creation of a new public realm through the use of the Internet and ICT may positively promote political liberties and freedom of speech, but could also threaten the political and public autonomy of the individual. Human Rights and the Impact of ICT in the Public Sphere: Participation, Democracy, and Political Autonomy focuses on the new technological era as an innovative way to initiate democratic dialogue, but one that can also endanger individual rights to freedom, privacy, and autonomy. This reference book focuses on the new opportunities technology offers for political expression and will be of use to both academic and legal audiences, including academics, students, independent authorities, legislative bodies, and lawyers.

This edited volume examines key questions about evidence-informed policymaking in Indonesia. It draws on insights and evidence acquired through the implementation of the Knowledge Sector Initiative, a donor-funded programme that aims to increase the demand for and use of evidence in policymaking in Indonesia. Featuring contributions from academics, policy researchers, policymakers and development practitioners, the volume will deepen readers' understanding of how knowledge and politics shape the policymaking process in Indonesia. As such, it will be of interest to Indonesian and international researchers, academics, students, practitioners and policymakers concerned with various aspects of evidence-informed policymaking research and processes. In particular, regional and international development practitioners and development partners interested in learning from Indonesia's efforts to improve how evidence is used to address key development challenges will find this volume valuable.

This edited collection examines various facets of governance - the organization and steering of political processes within society - for a better understanding of the complexities of contemporary policy making.