The first comprehensive examination of how systems of government have emerged in the small and diverse developing island states of the Pacific Islands region, this study outlines the way in which government systems in the region have evolved from their pre-independence origins to their current political, constitutional, and public sector arrangements. Drawing on scholarship from the fields of law, history, anthropology, public policy, and public management, the author examines the ways in which culture, history, and the environment continue to influence contemporary policy challenges and policy processes in these states. Recognising the significant challenges that small states face in terms of human and economic development, as well as how they must navigate between autonomy and self-reliance in some sectors, yet supra-national collaboration in others, the author argues that the future prosperity of the Pacific Islands region and the countries within it is not yet assured. Their economies struggle to keep pace with population growth and public aspirations, and service delivery in key sectors is often inadequate. Indeed, the fundamental challenge facing the Pacific Islands' leaders and governments is ensuring the adoption of policies and methods of implementation that, ultimately, pave the way for their continued development within the emerging global order.

This proceedings volume examines the state-of-the art of productivity and efficiency analysis and adds to the existing research by bringing together a selection of the best papers from the 8th North American Productivity Workshop (NAPW). It also aims to analyze world-wide perspectives on challenges that local economies and institutions may face when changes in productivity are observed. The volume comprises of seventeen papers that deal with productivity measurement, productivity growth, dynamics of productivity change, measures of labor productivity, measures of technical efficiency in different sectors, frontier analysis, measures of performance, industry instability and spillover effects. These papers are relevant to academia, but also to public and private sectors in terms of the challenges 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 North American Productivity Workshop brings together academic scholars and practitioners in the field of productivity and efficiency analysis from all over the world. It is a four day conference exploring topics related to productivity, production theory and efficiency measurement in economics, management science, operations research, public administration, and related fields. The papers in this volume also address general topics as health, energy, finance, agriculture, utilities, and economic dev elopment, among others. The editors are comprised of the 2014 local organizers, program committee members, and celebrated guest conference speakers.

Interest in e-government, both in industry and in academia, has grown rapidly over the past decade, and continues to grow. ""Global E-Government: Theory, Applications and Benchmarking"" is written by experts from academia and industry, examining the practices of e-government in developing and developed countries, presenting recent theoretical research in e-government, and providing a platform to benchmark the best practices in implementing e-government programs. ""Global E-Government: Theory, Applications and Benchmarking"" provides helpful examples from practitioners and managers involving real-life applications, while academics and researchers in the fields of information systems and e-government contribute theoretical insights.

This volume accesses governance in public and non-profit organizations. Building on and challenging recent research in this area, this volume critically examines the contextual, behavioural and historical factors of governance.

Draws on previously inaccessible family archives to penetrate the anonymity and public reticence of one of Britains great twentieth century civil servants. Gowers was highly influential in public policy throughout his long civil service career, which began in 1903 and culminated in running Londons civil defence throughout the Second World War.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Whilst the prevailing orthodoxy of the expenditure retrenchment literature is that globalisation and neo-liberal ideas are leading to a downsizing of the state, empirical research - basing its conclusions on patterns of welfare state spending - does not support such a view. This book brings a new perspective to bear by looking at what has been happening to other areas of the state's activity. Edited by Francis G. Castles, a leading authority in the field, and bringing together an outstanding group of British, German and American scholars, it examines trends in non-social or 'core' spending on public administration, defence, public order, education, economic affairs and debt financing and in the regulatory ordering of the economic sphere. The book not only opens up new areas of comparative public policy research, but also demonstrates clearly that there have been real reductions in the reach of state in some areas, although patterns of causation are more complex and varied than generally presumed by the retrenchment literature. The research findings reported in The Disappearing State? provide pivotal, relevant and challenging core material for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses in public and social policy, political economy and the sociology of the modern state.

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.

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.

Contracting has become one of the tools that governments use to make their services more efficient and effective. This work studies the positives and negatives involved with the multiple elements of contracting. Contract culture is broken down into its many parts: rules and regulations, norms and values, local governments and the private sector. This allows the authors to examine the topic through a unique cross-cultural lens and provide a fresh take on this expanding topic. Sources such as survey data, in-depth case studies, and analysis of advocacy coalitions are used to shed new light on contract governance. Topics include: *Contracting on the Public Agenda. *Limits of the "New Contractualism." *The "hard" and "soft" elements of contracts. *Local Governments. *Contracting as part of the New Public Management.

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.

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.

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.

The progression of information and communication technology (ICT) eGovernment systems has substantial implications for the future of government as we know it. eGov presents major challenges and advantages for policy makers as fundamentally different nations are adopting ICT in public administration reforms in order to capitalize on the benefits of transformational government or electronic government technology. This book investigates the modern political, technological, economic, social, and cultural issues of transformational government. It discusses in detail how interaction through advancing technology such as e-participation, mobile government, social media, web 2.0, and cloud computing has been successfully incorporated into eGov practice. International in scope this book gives practical examples and case studies of eGov implementation in countries across the globe and is the essential reference text for this important topic.

This book describes and compares how semi-autonomous agencies are created and governed by 30 governments. It leads practitioners and researchers through the crowded world of agencies, describing their tasks, autonomy, control and history. Evidence-based lessons and recommendations are formulated to improve agencification policies in post-NPM times.

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.

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.

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.