Asset-based policies are becoming an increasingly important form of public and social policy globally. This sees individual assets - such as savings or housing--as crucial aspects of a new form of welfare provision emerging in countries such as the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. In this book, the first of its kind, Rajiv Prabhakar provides a theoretical perspective on the emerging asset agenda as well as examining specific policies, including the British Child Trust Fund.

Theories heralding the rise of network governance have dominated for a generation. Yet, empirical research suggests that claims for the transformative potential of networks are exaggerated. This topical and timely book takes a critical look at contemporary governance theory, elaborating a Gramscian alternative. It argues that, although the ideology of networks has been a vital element in the neoliberal hegemonic project, there are major structural impediments to accomplishing it. While networking remains important, the hierarchical and coercive state is vital for the maintenance of social order and integral to the institutions of contemporary governance. Reconsidering it from Marxist and Gramscian perspectives, the book argues that the hegemonic ideology of networks is utopian and rejects the claim that there has been a transformation from 'government' to 'governance'. This important book has international appeal and will be essential reading for scholars and students of governance, public policy, human geography, public management, social policy and sociology.

This book interrogates Conservative government penal policy for adult and young adult offenders in England and Wales between 2015 and 2021. Government penal policy is shown to have been often ineffective and costly, and to have revived efforts to push the system towards a disastrous combination of austerity, outsourcing and punishment that has exacerbated the penal crisis. This investigation has meant touching on topical debates dealing with the impact of resource scarcity on offenders' experiences of the penal system, the impact of an increasing emphasis on punishment on offenders' sense of justice and fairness, the balance struck between infection control and offender welfare during the government handling of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and why successive Conservative governments have intransigently pursued a penal policy that has proved crisis-exacerbating. The overall conclusion reached is that penal policy is too important to be left to governments alone and needs to be recalibrated by a one-off inquiry, complemented by an on-going advisory body capable of requiring governments to 'explain or change'. The book is distinctive in that it provides a critical review of penal policy change, whist combining this with insights derived from the sociological analysis of penal trends.

The Trump administration's war on asylum and what Congress and the Biden administration can do about it Donald Trump's 2016 campaign centered around immigration issues such as his promise to build a border wall separating the US and Mexico. While he never built a physical wall, he did erect a legal one. Over the past three years, the Trump administration has put forth regulations, policies, and practices all designed to end opportunities for asylum seekers. If left unchecked, these policies will effectually lead to the end of asylum, turning the United States-once a global leader in refugee aid-into a country with one of the most restrictive asylum systems. In The End of Asylum, three experts in immigration law offer a comprehensive examination of the rise and demise of the US asylum system. Beginning with the Refugee Act of 1980, they describe how Congress adopted a definition of refugee based on the UN Refugee Convention and prescribed equitable and transparent procedures for a uniform asylum process. The authors then chart the evolution of this process, showing how Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses tweaked the asylum system but maintained it as a means of protecting victims of persecution-until the Trump administration. By expanding his executive reach, twisting obscure provisions in the law, undermining past precedents, and creating additional obstacles for asylum seekers, Trump's policies have effectively ended asylum. The book concludes with a roadmap and a call to action for the Biden administration and Congress to repair and reform the US asylum system. This eye-opening work reveals the extent to which the Trump administration has dismantled fundamental American ideals of freedom from persecution and shows us what we can do about it.

The recent global financial and economic crisis has had surprising effects on several economies worldwide. This global event has promoted the discussion on how ethical, transparent, and rigorous the accountability of public sector institutions is. However, public manager accountability is translated into a vision that goes beyond its sphere of activity, demanding information on how public resources have been managed based on the maximization of social welfare and sustainable development. Tools, Strategies, and Practices for Modern and Accountable Public Sector Management is an essential reference source that discusses the process behind how public resources are managed as well as how they are coordinated to achieve collective success. Featuring research on topics such as corporate responsibility, fiscal accountability, and public administration, this book is ideally designed for researchers, managers, financial authorities, auditors, public managers, public administrators, regulatory authorities, accountants, professionals, and students involved with the accountability and reform of public management in local governments.

This collection examines the leadership training of public administration in 19 countries and provides information on where, what, and how the training occurs as well as the up-to-date cultural, political, economic background for each. Factors affecting perceived importance, quality and robustness of top civil servant training are examined.

Digitization, the global networking of individuals and organizations, and the transition from an industrial to an information society are key reasons for the importance of digital government. In particular, the enormous influence of the Internet as a global networking and communication system affects the performance of public services. This textbook introduces the concept of digital government as well as digital management and provides helpful insights and strategic advice for the successful implementation and maintenance of digital government systems.

Even today, many people think of social problems as involving poor and powerless individuals in society. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy seeks to improve the balance by adding a focus on important and powerful institutions. Such organizations often play key roles in managing, and mismanaging, the ways in which some of today's most important social problems are handled by the public policy system. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy is now available online at ScienceDirect - full-text online of volumes 8 onwards. Elsevier book series on ScienceDirect gives multiple users throughout an institution simultaneous online access to an important compliment to primary research. Digital delivery ensures users reliable, 24-hour access to the latest peer-reviewed content.

African nations are seeking ways to build strong institutions that are development-oriented and people-centred. Extant literature has reported the negative consequences of ineffective government communications with the public. In response, this book - the first of a two-volume edited work - focuses on marketing communication themes related to branding, public relations, trade fairs and exhibitions, and public sector communications. Public sector marketing communication plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between society and the government. Building a relationship with the public through appropriate communication tools and platforms is sacrosanct to restoring public sector image and trust. The book supports this effort by sharing conceptual and theoretical research towards the marketisation of Africa's public sector as it strives to become an effective partner with the public it serves. Together with the second volume, which focuses on traditional and digital perspectives, this collection fills an existing information gap that is evident in Africa's public sector.

This book rethinks the public - along with public communication and public action - in a globalizing and mediated world. Web-based interactions, community empowerment initiatives, participation experiments, transnational struggles, and new ways of understanding and occupying public space offer a range of promising speculations about the renewal of publics and 'publicness.' The book offers a rich set of methodological resources on which researchers can draw, demonstrating the need to interrogate the boundaries between theory, research, and politics. It develops novel theoretical perspectives for investigating the formation of publics, using four themes as key processes to rethinking how publics are brought into being and how to develop research agendas into their formation.

The UN has suffered from its earliest days as a result of persistent financial problems, which left it on the edge of apparent bankruptcy. This book looks at the history of the regular and peace-keeping budgets. It focuses on the role of the United States, simultaneously the UN's biggest contributor of funds and its largest debtor. It examines possible solutions against the background today of the UN attempting to reform itself to meet the challenges posed by globalization and an increasing number of civil wars.

Collaboration is a ubiquitous yet contested feature of contemporary public policy. This book offers a new account of collaboration's appeal to human actors drawing on empirical examples across time and space. It provides a novel and comprehensive framework for analysing collaboration, that will be of use to those interested in understanding what happens when human actors collaborate for public purpose.

This book provides a broad, interdisciplinary analysis of events impacting on North Macedonia since its independence, particularly during the last decade. In the past thirty years, the country has gone through a series of tremendous changes, including a name change from 'Macedonia' to the 'Republic of North Macedonia' following the Prespa Agreement, which ended a long-lasting name dispute. The contributors consider Macedonia's challenges, its multi-ethnic/multi-cultural background and its ambition to enter the European mainstream through the auspices of the European Union and NATO, amidst a raft of other issues. The volume includes chapters on international politics and North Macedonia's place in the region's security architecture.

The Hawks of Peace. Notes of the Russian Ambassador is a unique analytical edition where Russian Deputy Premier Dmitry Rogozin shares his notes on personalities and events that shaped the history of post-Communist Russia, believing that without those it would be impossible to understand the past and envisage the future of his country. Permanent Representative of Russia to NATO until recently, in his political diary Dmitry Rogozin contemplates on the complex relationship between Russia and the West. In his behind-the-scenes account, Rogozin opens up about certain mysteries of political stand-offs, military conflicts of the last two decades, terrorist acts and hostage situations. The book contains unique documents directly related to Chechen Wars, inside information from Brussels on the events in Georgia and other records that have been hidden from the public eye. The Western reader now has a rare opportunity to look at Russian current affairs through the eyes of a Russian.

This book challenges the role of scientists in policy making and the idea of deliberative democracy. The author argues that awareness must increase among both politicians and the citizens who elect them. We must revitalise the decision-making processes in representative democracy. The book proposes new institutional structures.

Building public sector image and trust in Africa requires judicious use of appropriate marketing communications tools and platforms. Contributing authors to this second volume of a two-volume work offer insights into how the selection and strategic utilisation of marketing tools will facilitate interactions between the government and the citizens, improve inter-governmental and inter-agency collaboration, and boost a citizen-oriented public sector. Traditional marketing communications tools continue to play a key role in citizen and public sector relationships; however, given mega-trends of demographic change, urbanisation, and digitalisation in Africa, it is important to consider how public institutions, including government agencies, local government, universities, and football associations, respond and adapt to these changes. The digital revolution presents an opportunity for public sector institutions to align their communication plans with new technologies, particularly leveraging social media platforms. Together with the first volume, which focuses on public relations and brand communication perspectives, this collection fills an existing information gap evident in Africa’s public sector literature. The text serves as a decision making, teaching, and learning guide for practitioners, faculty, and students interested in applying marketing principles and practices to the public sector.  

From the 'Third Way' reforms of the 1990s to today's prospect of a post-bureaucracy era, the management of the UK's public services has been radically overhauled in recent decades. This important new text provides a complete introduction to the key themes and developments in public management and the changing relationship between governments, public service providers and the public. June Burnham and Sylvia Horton examine the key components of public management in the UK, including strategic management and the introduction of new performance management techniques as well as financial and human resources management. The book assesses how wider forces such as Europeanization, globalization and the global economic crisis have affected both the structure and role of the state and the way public services are managed. It also looks back to examine the transition from public administration to public management and considers how different ideologies have influenced and driven reform. Distinctively, the authors provide a full assessment of how devolution has affected public services across all parts of the UK. Providing an insightful and accessibly written introduction, this book will be ideal reading for all students of public management.

This is the first technical book that considers tests as public tools and examines how to engineer and process test data, extract the structure within the data to be visualized, and thereby make test results useful for students, teachers, and the society. The author does not differentiate test data analysis from data engineering and information visualization. This monograph introduces the following methods of engineering or processing test data, including the latest machine learning techniques: classical test theory (CTT), item response theory (IRT), latent class analysis (LCA), latent rank analysis (LRA), biclustering (co-clustering), and Bayesian network model (BNM). CTT and IRT are methods for analyzing test data and evaluating students' abilities on a continuous scale. LCA and LRA assess examinees by classifying them into nominal and ordinal clusters, respectively, where the adequate number of clusters is estimated from the data. Biclustering classifies examinees into groups (latent clusters) while classifying items into fields (factors). Particularly, the infinite relational model discussed in this book is a biclustering method feasible under the condition that neither the number of groups nor the number of fields is known beforehand. Additionally, the local dependence LRA, local dependence biclustering, and bicluster network model are methods that search and visualize inter-item (or inter-field) network structure using the mechanism of BNM. As this book offers a new perspective on test data analysis methods, it is certain to widen readers' perspective on test data analysis.

A comprehensive guide to future-proofing public sector communication and increasing citizen satisfaction How to communicate with the citizens of the future? Why does public sector communication often fail? Public Sector Communication combines practical examples from around the world with the latest theoretical insights to show how communication can help bridge gaps that exist between public sector organizations and the individual citizens they serve. The authors--two experts in the field with experience from the public sector--explain how public entities, be they cities, governments, foundations, agencies, authorities, municipalities, regulators, military, or government monopolies and state owned businesses can build their intangible assets to future-proof themselves in a volatile environment. The book examines how the recent digitalization has increased citizen expectations and why one-way communication leaves public sector organizations fragile. To explain how to make public sector communication antifragile, the authors map contributions from a wide variety of fields combined with illustrative examples from around the world. The authors propose a research-based framework of different intangible assets that can directly improve communication in the public sector. This important resource: Helps explain the sector-specific conditions and why communication is often challenging in the public sector Summarizes all relevant literature on the topic across disciplines and includes the most popular management ideals of the recent decades Explores how public sector organizations can increase citizen satisfaction with effective communication Presents new approaches to both the study and practice of communication in the public sector Provides international examples of successful public sector communication Offers realistic guides to building intangible assets in practice Written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as public managers and leaders, Public Sector Communication offers an illustrative, research-based guide to improving communication and engaging citizens of today and the future.

Drawing on field-based data and experiences from the practice of democratic decentralization and local governance over the last three decades in Ghana, this book examines whether and how democratic decentralization and local governance reforms in developing countries have produced the anticipated development outcomes. In seventeen related contributions, the authors present four relevant focal themes, including conceptual and historical trajectories of decentralization and local governance; institutional choice, democratic representation, and poverty reduction; local governance, resource capacity, and service delivery; and non-state actors, local governance and sustainable development. The book blends perspectives of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to provide a holistic analysis of linkages between decentralization, local governance, and sustainable development efforts, presenting a novel and useful guide for science, policy, and practice of bottom-up governance and development. It provides relevant lessons and experiences for scholars, policy-makers, and development practitioners in Africa in particular and developing countries in general.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the entire world experienced a health, humanitarian, and economic crisis with no record in the present century, leading to the paralysis of activities by voluntary or mandatory quarantines. There is great uncertainty about how long the crisis will last and how recovery will be achieved, because of this paralysis and the contraction of demand, auguring a slow recovery. Research in Administrative Sciences under COVID-19 examines the context surrounding organizations in the face of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Detailing various aspects related to companies and their competitiveness in the face of the global health crisis, chapters cover topics on intellectual capital, burnout (professional exhaustion), stress and technostress, as well as pandemic effects on the human capital of organizations. Developing upon the issues of Corporate Social Responsibility, E-commerce in times of COVID-19 and Design Thinking as a strategy for the economic reactivation of start-ups in Mexico, this volume is the result of research efforts carried out by 23 outstanding researchers from 12 Mexican and Latin American higher education institutions.

This book explains Europol's online sharing platforms efforts in three major cybercrime areas: ransomware, money laundering with cryptocurrencies, and online child sexual exploitation that Europol has already pushed private and public actors to cooperate. Since the global financial crisis, online sharing economy platforms have made a significant impact on use of under-utilized resources. People who have a car (Uber) or a spare room (Airbnb) began to share their under-used assets with others for extra income. The success achieved by these online platforms that enable efficient use of limited resources raised a new discussion on whether a similar governance model can be implemented by public administrations where public resources are insufficient. Cybercrime is one of these fields where most law enforcement agencies have not got enough resources to tackle these crimes. They need the human and technical resources of the private sector for a safer society. This book, for the first time, seeks the answers to this question. It examines the feasibility of online sharing economy platforms to enhance public-private partnerships to tackle cybercrime. The European Union Policing Agency, Europol, is the first police organization to adopt a similar model to interact with policing agencies and private industry. Drawing on extensive research, the book offers crucial insights for policymakers, researchers, and the public interested in new trends in sharing economy, innovative governance models, public-private partnerships, and cybercrime investigations.

This two-volume book offers a broad range of discussions on the immense challenge of climate change, one confronting every country on the planet and forcing them to find a path towards a sustainable future that will not have disastrous consequences in relation to our chances of survival. It also presents a snapshot of the status quo, which reflects all the decisions and measures taken to date. Analyzing the consequences of the steps that will shape our future, the two volumes also reflect on important decisions at a global level that have already been taken. This second volume on risks assessment and the political and social dimension of the green energy transition is structured into 14 chapters. International renowned scholars discuss the inherent risks that arise in consequence of the transition to the intensive use of low carbon energy sources and global warming, risks related to food and water security, as well as risks of social and political conflicts. They further examine the dependence on individual countries' industrial structures and on their socio-economic development level as challenges to climate change solutions and to the global energy policy agenda. This book is a must-read for scholars, researchers and students, as well as policymakers interested in a better understanding of climate change, present scenarios, and alternative solutions and measures.

This monograph evaluates public policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic through a public choice lens. The book compares two prominent, albeit mutually exclusive, theories in social sciences-public interest theory and public choice theory-and explores how their predictions perform within the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapters present different pandemic policies alongside empirical data in order to draw conclusions about their efficacy, and, in turn, draw conclusions about the veracity of each theory. By the end of the volume, the reader will be able to draw their own conclusions about whether the pandemic policy responses served the public interest, as public interest theory suggests, or the personal interests of the politicians who implemented them, as public choice theory holds.