This volume provides bridges from the social sciences to business ethics and from the latter to the quality of life, by connecting the research themes of quality of life, social sciences, including public policy-making, and business ethics or corporate responsibility. It builds on the premise that public policy making is essentially a species of good decision making, as explained in the first volume. It shows that, because most developed countries function as market economies whose governments depend on taxation to pay for their services and because a large proportion of government revenue comes from well-regulated, responsible corporations, the quality of people's lives is highly dependent upon good public policies, taxation and business ethics. The volume presents and examines ethical/moral problems arising in market economies since the first century BCE, including the first appearance of the business case for business ethics, fourteen arguments concerning the neglect of business ethics, business ethics issues for the 1990s and beyond, the loyal agent's argument, advertising, the importance of trust, public opinion polling, public program evaluation, and a critique of the relatively new monster of super-capitalism. In addition, it deals with connections among the concepts of efficiency, morality, and rationality related to decision making in general and public policy making in particular. Finally, it explains relationships between outcomes measurement and performance indicators in general and performance-based management in public administration, the taxation of net wealth and financial transactions.

"Change (Transformation) in Government Organizations" discusses recent efforts to bring about change in government organizations. The book brings together contributions by a number of managers, practitioners, academics and consultants in the study of international, federal, state, and local government efforts to respond to increased calls for change (transformation) in public sector organizations. Each contributor describes their work in this area using as a backdrop the fact that public sector organizations continue to be under new and substantial pressures to change and transform themselves. Hence a collection of current contributions such as those in this book are intended to add to the ongoing debates and rewriting of the success and failures of change in public sector organizations. The ultimate purpose of this book is to further our knowledge about the related issues and current efforts to bring about change or transformation in public sector organizations. The contributors, all experts with extensive experience as change agents in both public and private sector organizations not only support their analyses and discussions of specific cases and change (transformation) management issues but also provide practical tools, ideas and lessons learned, intended to be generalizable to other public sector agencies and helpful to those responsible for developing, implementing and evaluating similar efforts in the years to come. The audience for the book will be government managers, scholars and others interested in undertaking or learning about such efforts.

This book charts the significant increase in Britain over the last 25 years in the deployment of contract as a regulatory mechanism across a broad spectrum of social relationships. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the trend has accelerated, the use of contract spreading beyond the sphere of economics into public administration and social policy. The 'new public contracting' is the term given this distinctive mode of governance, characterized by the delegation of contractual powers and responsibilities to public agencies in regulatory frameworks preserving central government controls and powers of intervention. In many cases the contracts are not legally enforceable, their power as regulatory instruments deriving from the hierarchical authority relations in which they are embedded. Examples of the new public contracting include the regulation of relationships between government departments through Public Service Agreements and Framework Documents; the regulation of relationships between individual citizens and the state through Youth Offender Contracts, Parenting Contracts, and Jobseekers Agreements; the funding of public infrastructure projects through Public Private Partnerships; and the restructuring of key public service sectors such as health, social care and education through contracts in competitive quasi-markets, reflecting the Government's privatization agenda. The book critically analyzes and evaluates such contractual arrangements with reference to theories of relational contract and responsive regulation. It argues that while in business and other private relations contract routinely enables the parties to regulate and adjust their on-going relationships to mutual benefit, this is often not the case in the new public contracting. In many instances crucial elements of trust, voluntariness, and reciprocity are shown to be lacking. This and other weaknesses in regulatory design are likely to impede the attainment of the Government's policy objectives. The book demonstrates the problems of ineffectiveness and lack of legitimacy generally associated with this mode of regulation, and specifies institutional and other conditions that need to be satisfied for the more responsive governance of these public service functions.

"The Devil Inside the Beltway." This chilling and personal story that reveals, in detail, how the Federal Trade Commission repeatedly bungled a critically important cybersecurity investigation and betrayed the American public.

Michael J. Daugherty, author and CEO of LabMD in Atlanta, uncovers and details an extraordinary government surveillance program that compromised national security and invaded the privacy of tens of millions of online users worldwide.

Background: The FTC, charged with protecting consumers from unfairness and deception, was directed by Congress to investigate software companies in an effort to stop a growing epidemic of file leaks that exposed military, financial and medical data, and the leaks didn't stop there. As a result of numerous missteps, beginning by "working directly with" malware developers, such as Limewire, instead of investigating them, the agency allowed security leaks to continue for years. When summoned before Congressional Oversight three times since 2003, the agency painted a picture of improving security when in fact leaks were worsening. Then, rather than focus on the real problem of stopping the malware, the FTC diverted Congress' attention from the FTC's failure to protect consumers by playing "get the horses back in the barn." How? By attacking small business.

"The Devil Inside the Beltway" is riveting. It begins when an aggressive cybersecurity company, with retired General Wesley Clark on its advisory board, downloads the private health information of thousands of LabMD's patients. The company, Tiversa, campaigns for LabMD to hire them. After numerous failed attempts to procure LabMD's business, Tiversa's lawyer informs LabMD that Tiversa will be handing the downloaded file to the FTC. Within this page turner, Daugherty unveils that Tiversa was already working with Dartmouth, having received a significant portion of a $24,000,000 grant from Homeland Security to monitor for files. The reason for the investigation was this: Peer to peer software companies build back doors into their technology that allows for illicit and unapproved file sharing. When individual files are accessed, as in the case of LabMD, proprietary information can be taken. Tiversa, as part of its assignment, downloaded over 13 million files, many containing financial, medical and top secret military data.

Daugherty's book exposes a systematic and alarming investigation by one of the US Government's most important agencies. The consequences of their actions will plague Americans and their businesses for years.

As a way of improvising on the study of civilizations in world politics, the volume focuses on those social and political "practices "through which notions of civilizational identity are reproduced in a variety of contexts ranging from the global credit regime to theological debates about modernity to the 'war on terrorism'. The contributors to the volume explore the ways in which practices of civilizational identity give rise to the "effect "of a solid object called a 'civilization, ' even though this object is itself nothing more than an ensemble of social practices.

Everywhere we turn in Canadian local politics - from policing to transit, education to public health, planning to utilities - we encounter a peculiar institutional animal: the special purpose body. These "ABCs" of local government - library boards, school boards, transit authorities, and many others - provide vital public services, spend large sums of public money, and raise important questions about local democratic accountability. In Fields of Authority, Jack Lucas provides the first systematic exploration of local special purpose bodies in Ontario. Drawing on extensive research in local and provincial archives, Lucas uses a "policy fields" approach to explain how these local bodies in Ontario have developed from the nineteenth century to the present. A lively and accessible study, Fields of Authority will appeal to readers interested in Canadian political history, urban politics, and urban public policy.

Digital innovations are often non-linear, non-incremental, and perhaps at times, disruptive processes that have transformed private as well as public service delivery. The rise of digitization has not only overhauled the governance system and enabled greater government-citizen engagement but has also revolutionized public administration. For public organizations to thrive, it is imperative to understand the challenges and applications that digitization can create for the development, deployment, and management of public service processes. Leveraging Digital Innovation for Governance, Public Administration, and Citizen Services: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a comprehensive research book that combines theory and practice, reflecting on public administrative governance and citizen engagement implications of digital innovations and strategies, and how and when they can make a difference in the area of digital application in public administration. Highlighting topics such as e-government, electronic payments, and text mining, this publication is ideal for public administrators, policymakers, government officials, executives, administrators, researchers, academicians, and practitioners in the fields of computer science, information technology, citizen engagement, public management, and governance.

Open government initiatives have become a defining goal for public administrators around the world. However, progress is still necessary outside of the executive and legislative sectors. Achieving Open Justice through Citizen Participation and Transparency is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the implementation of open government within the judiciary field, emphasizing the effectiveness and accountability achieved through these actions. Highlighting the application of open government concepts in a global context, this book is ideally designed for public officials, researchers, professionals, and practitioners interested in the improvement of governance and democracy.

The twin objectives of this book are to identity the determinants and to explore the implications of Third World military expenditure. Beginning with a descriptive profile of Third World military expenditure, the study uses cross-national and longitudinal data to explore the determinants and implications across a range of issues areas. On the basis of this analysis, the book concludes with an empirical theory of military expenditure and a critical appraisal of the general implications.

The contributors discuss the links between ethnicity, inequality and governance. Their findings suggest that it is not the existence of diversity" per se," but "types of diversity" that explain potentials for conflict or cohesion in multiethnic societies. Relative equality has been achieved in the public sectors of countries that are highly fragmented or those with ethnicity-sensitive policies, but not in those with ethnicity-blind policies. The book is critical of approaches to conflict management that underplay background conditions in shaping choices.

During the past decade, globalization and democratization have been the major forces that helped transform the structures, functions, and processes of Asian public sectors. Nevertheless, these transformation efforts of Asian countries vary considerably depending on local context, and have met with different degrees of success. Some countries experienced smooth transformations. For others, the reform process has been more volatile. These issues were explored at a conference July 7-9, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand, hosted by the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, and co-sponsored by the International Public Management Network, the Asia-Pacific Governance Institute, and Thailand Democracy Watch. This book presents some of the works contributed by participating scholars and practitioners at the conference. The contents fall into three categories: corruption and anti-corruption initiatives, public financial management reforms, and public management reforms with emphasis on performance and results.

In our reforming public institutions it sometimes feels as though the very ground of social and political contracts is shifting. The economic revolution embraced by neo-liberals and neo-conservatives is paralleled by a governance revolution in those same institutions which were designed to protect us from historical swings and ideological roundabouts. Our public institutions - for the most part the public sector and its professional groups - in the eyes of some provided stability, while for others they were a brake on change. Now, however, they have become conduits for political change and reform. We live in an institutional world now dubbed the New Public Management (NPM). In this new landscape evaluators might have to think afresh about how to position ourselves in relation to institutional ethics and the pursuit of social justice. In this volume contributors give us a start in thinking through such a repositioning, some within the values framework of NPM, others as external observers.

This volume investigates the interdisciplinary and cross-cutting challenges in the risk analysis of natural hazards. It brings together leading minds in engineering, science, philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Parts I and II of this volume explore risk assessment, first by providing an overview of the interdisciplinary interactions involved in the assessment of natural hazards, and then by exploring the particular impacts of climate change on natural hazard assessment. Part III discusses the theoretical frameworks for the evaluation of natural hazards. Finally, Parts IV and V address the risk management of natural hazards, providing first an overview of the interdisciplinary interactions underlying natural hazard management, and then exploring decision frameworks that can help decision makers integrate and respond to the complex relationships among natural events, the built environment, and human behavior.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th IFIP TC 9 International Conference on Human Choice and Computers, HCC10 2012, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in September 2012. The 37 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the volume. The papers are organized in topical sections on national and international policies, sustainable and responsible innovation, ICT for peace and war, and citizens' involvement, citizens' rights and ICT.

Hong Kong is at the heart of modern China's position as a regional - and potential world - superpower. In this important and original history of the region, Steve Tsang argues that its current prosperity is a direct by-product of the British administrators who ran the place as a colony before the handover in 1997.The British administration of Hong Kong uniquely derived its practices from the best traditions of Imperial Chinese government and its philosophical, Confucian basis. It stressed efficiency, honesty, fairness, benevolent paternalism and individual freedom. The result was a hugely successful colony, especially in industry and finance, and it remains so today with its new status of Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.Under British imperial administration, Hong Kong grew from a collection of fishing villages to an international entrepot, an industrial power and an international financial centre. British and Chinese interests dovetailed and the Chinese population was satisfied by the welfare reform and economic advancement perpetuated by Britain's administrative officers. Demand for constitutional reform and a sense of Hong Kong Chinese identity grew only as the handover to China approached.This definitive history of the colourful individuals who administered the colony on behalf of the British government sheds light on two empires inextricably linked in nature and on the philosophy of government.

This primer succinctly summarises key theoretical concepts in fiscal choice for both practitioners and scholars. The author contends that fiscal choice is ultimately a choice of both politics and economics. The book first introduces budget institutions and processes at various levels of government, which restrict budget decision makers' discretion. It also explains budget decision makers' efforts to make rational resource allocations. It then shows how and why such efforts are stymied by the decision makers' capacity and institutional settings. The book's unique benefit is its emphasis on all the essential topics, with short, module-type chapters which can be read in any order.

Between 1789 and 1848, clerks modified their occupational practices, responding to political scrutiny and state-administration reforms. Ralph Kingston examines the lives and influence of bureaucrats inside and outside the office as they helped define nineteenth-century bourgeois social capital, ideals of emulation, honour, and masculinity.

The behaviour of politicians and public servants often strikes outside observers as erratic, inconsistent and sometimes foolish. One way of understanding their behaviour is political anthropology. This book focuses on the everyday life of ministers and senior public servants in different countries, describing their world through their eyes. It analyses how such practices are embedded in political and administrative traditions. It explores how their beliefs, practices and traditions create meaning in politics and public policy making. It provides unique data on the everyday life government elites and practical advice on how to conduct such fieldwork.

This book is concerned with a large question in one small, but highly problematic case: how can a prime minister establish control and coordination across his or her government? The Greek system of government sustains a 'paradox of power' at its very core. The Constitution provides the prime minister with extensive and often unchecked powers. Yet, the operational structures, processes and resources around the prime minister undermine their power to manage the government. Through a study of all main premierships between 1974 and 2009, Prime Ministers in Greece argues that the Greek prime minister has been 'an emperor without clothes'. The costs of this paradox included the inability to achieve key policy objectives under successive governments and a fragmented system of governance that provided the backdrop to Greece's economic meltdown in 2010. Building on an unprecedented range of interviews and archival material, Featherstone and Papadimitriou set out to explore how this paradox has been sustained. They conclude with the Greek system meeting its 'nemesis': the arrival of the close supervision of its government by the 'Troika' - the representatives of Greece's creditors. The debt crisis challenged taboos and forced a self-reflection. It remains unclear, however, whether either the external strategy or the domestic response is likely to be sufficient to make the Greek system of governance 'fit for purpose'.

To be successful in the 21st century, governments must make use of digital and communication technologies in order to coordinate resources and collaborate with their citizens. IT in the Public Sphere: Applications in Administration, Government, Politics, and Planning evaluates current research and best practices in the adoption of e-government technologies in developed and developing countries, enabling governments to keep in constant communication with citizens, constituents, corporations, and other stakeholders in modern societies. Within these chapters, scholars, administrators, managers, and leaders will find the latest information on utilizing digital technologies in their e-governance projects.

E-Procurement Management for Successful Electronic Government Systems enhances the understanding and collaboration in e-government and the role of information technologies in supporting the development of improved services for citizens. By analyzing recent developments in theory and practices as well as providing fresh ideas and research, this reference source aims to bridge the gap between academia, industry, and government.

The first detailed analysis of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) influence on global public sector reform. Based on extensive interviews and internal documents, this book explores the evolution of the OECD's approach to governance issues over the last 50 years and what its future agenda should be.

This book examines the role governments play in managing policy challenges such as religion, romance, gender relations, same-sex marriages and privacy protection in response to social changes in marriage. Elizabeth van Acker asks whether governments can or should intervene in this personal sphere.