Knowing Governance sets out to understand governance through the design and making of its models and instruments. What kinds of knowledge do they require and reproduce? How are new understandings of governance produced in practice, by scientists and policy makers and by the publics with whom they engage?

Through comparative analysis this book examines and explains the official rhetoric of agency reform across consensus and adversarial political cultures. It traces the trajectory of talk about agency reform in The Netherlands, Sweden and Australia and identifies the national styles of speaking that mediated the agency idea.

E-government and Public Sector Process Rebuilding: Dilettantes, Wheelbarrows, and Diamonds provides an input to rebuild and improve the processes in which the public sector perform activities and interact with the citizens, companies, and the formal elected decision-makers.
Through eleven chapters, the book emphasizes information systems (IS) as the vehicle for redirecting the public sector towards its key customers.
The book stresses serious capability challenges inhibiting the digital transformation using activity and customer centric applications.
The dilettantes in the public sector are in need of upgrading, rethinking, and refocusing their use of IS.
There is a need to revisit the extensive use of digital wheelbarrows to transmit data, and complement the transactional focus with IT-enabled analysis of the activities.
There is also a need to recognize that IS are not just flashy and shining diamonds to be shown off on special occasions.
IS are, as most diamonds, manufactured products, part of the activities and intended for replacement whenever the diamonds are no longer suitable for serving their purpose - diamonds do not last forever.

Linking Government Data provides a practical approach to addressing common information management issues. The approaches taken are based on international standards of the World Wide Web Consortium. Linking Government Data gives both the costs and benefits of using linked data techniques with government data; describes how agencies can fulfill their missions with less cost; and recommends how intra-agency culture must change to allow public presentation of linked data. Case studies from early adopters of linked data approaches in international governments are presented in the last section of the book. Linking Government Data is designed as a professional book for those working in Semantic Web research and standards development, and for early adopters of Semantic Web standards and techniques. Enterprise architects, project managers and application developers in commercial, not-for-profit and government organizations concerned with scalability, flexibility and robustness of information management systems will also find this book valuable. Students focused on computer science and business management will also find value in this book.

Motivation for the Book This book aims to describe a comprehensive methodology for service-oriented inf- mation systems planning, considered in particular, in eGovernment initiatives. The methodology is based on the research results produced by the Italian project "eG- ernment for Mediterranean Countries (eG4M)," granted by the Italian Ministry of University and Research from 2005 to 2008. The concept of service is at the center of the book. The methodology is focused on quality of services as a key factor for eGovernment initiatives. Since its grou- ing is in a project whose goal has been to develop a methodology for eGove- ment in Mediterranean countries it is called eG4M. Furthermore, eG4M aims at encompassing the relationships existing between ICT technologies and social c- texts of service provision, organizational issues, and juridical framework, looking at ICT technologies more as a means than an end. eG4M satis es a real need of constituencies and stakeholders involved in eGovernment projects, con rmed in the eG4M experimentations and in previous preliminary experiences in the Italian P- lic Administrations. A structured process is needed that provides a clear perspective on the different facets that eGovernment initiatives usually have to challenge and disciplines the complex set of decisions to be taken. The available approaches to eGovernment usually provide only one perspective to public managers and local authorities on the domain of intervention, either te- nological, organizational, legal, economic, or social.

Exploring three rich cases across three countries, this book shows how government organizations need their clients to contribute time and effort to co-producing public services, and how organizations can better elicit this work from them, by providing good client service and appealing to their intrinsic needs and social values.

Exploring the current state of relationships between public universities, government leaders, and the citizens who elect them, this book offers insight into how to repair the growing rift between higher education and its public. Higher education gets a bad rap these days. The public perception is that there is a growing rift between public universities and the elected officials who support them. In What's Public about Public Higher Ed?, Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee explore the reality of that supposed divide, offering qualitative and quantitative evidence of why it's happened and what can be done about it. Critical problems, Gavazzi and Gee argue, have arisen because higher education leaders often assumed that what was good for universities was good for the public at large. For example, many public institutions have placed more emphasis on research at the expense of teaching, learning, and outreach. This university-centric viewpoint has contributed significantly to the disconnect between our nation's public universities and the representatives of the people they are supposed to be serving. But this gulf can only be bridged, the authors insist, if people at the universities take the time to really listen to what the citizens of their states are asking of them. Gavazzi and Gee draw on never-before-gathered survey data on public sentiment regarding higher education. Collected from citizens residing in the four most populous states-California, Florida, New York, and Texas-plus Ohio and West Virginia, the authors' home states, this data reflects critical issues, including how universities spend taxpayer money, the pursuit of national rankings, student financial aid, and the interplay of international activities versus efforts to create "closer to home" impact. An unflinching, no-holds-barred exploration of what citizens really think about their public universities, What's Public about Public Higher Ed? also places special emphasis on the events of 2020-including the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst racial unrest seen in half a century-as major inflection points for understanding the implications of the survey's findings.

This book maps the latest developments in public procurement of innovation policy in various contexts and analyzes the evolution and development of the various policy solutions in broader institutional contexts. In doing so, it addresses significant theoretical and practical gaps: On the one hand, there is an emerging interest in public procurement as a policy tool for spurring innovation; yet on the other hand, the current theory, with some notable exceptions, is guided and often constrained by historical applications, above all in the defence industries. By carefully examining the cases of eleven countries, the book points to the existence of much more nuanced public procurement on the innovation policy landscape than has been acknowledged in the academic and policy debates to date.

The first serious study analysing Labour's impact on Whitehall. It offers a theoretical engaged, but empirically rich account drawing from an extensive set of primary interview material to examine a 'New Labour' effect on the Civil Service, including its reforms to improve policy delivery and whether it has politicised Whitehall. It concludes by arguing that New Labour's approach to Whitehall have been part of a broader strategy to reconstitute the power of the Westminster Model.

Understanding the governance of nations is a key challenge in contemporaneous political economy. This book provides new advances and the latest research in the field of political economy, dealing with the study of institutions, governance, democracy and elections. The volume focuses on issues such as the role of institutions and political governance in society, the working of democracy and the electoral performance in several case studies. The chapters involve cutting edge research on many different countries, including the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Spain and the Third World. The authors of the chapters are leading scholars in political economy from America, Europe and Asia.

This edited book approaches the threat and impact of environmental disasters on Asia's urban populations from a governance perspective. It adopts a multi-sector and multi-disciplinary approach to disaster governance that emphasises the importance of multiple stakeholders in preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters and their cascading impacts in Asia's cities. The contributors to this volume take a broad view of the multifaceted causalities and the interconnected threats and vulnerabilities of environmental disasters in urbanising Asia. As such, the book is an invitation to advance scholarship in the search for more effective, comprehensive and inclusive disaster preparedness agendas, recovery programs and development priorities.

This book includes a series of reports that mainly discuss the Middle Income Trap against the backdrop of population ageing in China. It also offers practical suggestions on how to avoid it properly. Concretely, it argues that the government should accelerate the transition of economic development modes, resolve concentrated social conflicts, promote a balanced rural and urban development during the process of urbanization, and mitigate the effects of population ageing by fostering strengths and avoiding weaknesses. As for the challenges posed by population ageing in China, it puts forward five core suggestions tailored to China's unique situation. Assessing a number of real-world challenges, the general report and the special reports combine theory and empirical findings, using primary data for their analyses. Given the wealth of essential information it provides, the book offers a valuable reference resource for decision-makers.

How does a multi-ethnic society resolve the contentious issue of shares and resource allocation without damaging the state? Arguing that ethnic divides in underdeveloped states are much more evident than in developed countries, this study examines inequality in relation to distributive justice, the adaptation of political structures and institutions, the role of symbols of recognition in representation and strategies of conflict management in power sharing, resource allocation and public policy.

This volume provides fresh empirical evidence of far reaching welfare state transformations in Europe and Japan that have changed the boundaries of the 'public' and 'private' domain within the mixed economies of welfare. Various modes of policy intervention are investigated, providing a nuanced account of reforms in the past decade.

Rescuing the Enlightenment from Itself: Critical and Systemic Implications for Democracy presents papers that make the case that good governance is about thinking and practice that can lead to a better balance of social, cultural, political, economic and environmental concerns to ensure a sustainable future for ourselves and for future generations. The work is inspired by the thinking of C. West Churchman and forms the first volume in a new series: C. West Churchman 's Legacy and Related Works. The book features contributions from a range of invited authors including Russell L. Ackoff, Ken Bausch, John van Gigch and Norma Romm. The volume is aimed at academics, post-graduate students and members of professional associations working in the fields of systems sciences, public policy and management, politics, and international relations.

This book examines the decade from 2004 to 2013 during which people in China witnessed both a skyrocketing number of food safety crises, and aggregating regulatory initiatives attempting to control these crises. Multiple cycles of "crisis - regulatory efforts" indicated the systemic failure of this food safety regime. The book explains this failure in the "social foundations" for the regulatory governance of food safety. It locates the proximate causes in the regulatory segmentation, which is supported by the differential impacts of the food regulatory regime on various consumer groups. The approach of regulatory segmentation does not only explain the failure of the food safety regime by digging out its social foundation, but is also crucial to the understanding of the regulatory state in China.

This book explores the complex relationship between public health research and policy, employing tobacco control and health inequalities in the UK as contrasting case studies. It draws on extensive qualitative data to demonstrate why it makes more sense to focus on ideas, rather than evidence, as the unit of analysis when studying public health knowledge exchange. The book goes on to outline a four-genre typology of ideas, inspired by the work of Max Weber and Bruno Latour, which helps explain both the disjuncture between health inequalities research and policy and the recent spate of policy activity in tobacco control. It argues that focusing on research-informed ideas usefully draws attention to the centrality of values, politics and advocacy for public health debates.

A Practical Guide to Government Management provides a comprehensive yet one-volume work on high-level government management and can be described as a management book, reference book, and textbook all in one. It is geared towards any upper level government manager, public administration student, or anyone interested in public sector management. Government managers receive limited or no management training, and at higher levels, focus more on policy than management, with negative consequences for the agencies they manage. This book seeks to address that dearth, written from the point of view of someone who successfully led government organizations, for an extended period, and faced a wide variety of managerial problems and issues. It covers a number of topics seldom discussed (and certainly not all in one volume), such as handling problem employees, cutback management, prioritization, making decisions, gaining control of an organization, and telling one's boss - the elected official-no. Leo Strine, Chief Justice of Delaware's Supreme Court and a former colleague, says that "In a time when many Americans are jaded about public service, it's refreshing to be reminded that there are talented people who devote their careers to making our government work for the governed. Vince Meconi always put the public first in his decades of service in all three branches of government, and anyone interested in making government more effective will benefit from his insights and experience." Former Delaware Medicaid Director Harry Hill says, "I have led government agencies, managed for multiple Fortune 500 Companies, and run my own business. Vince Meconi is the best manager I have ever encountered. As a student of management myself, I collected over 800 books on the subject. Most offered little new, just a new way of saying the same thing. This book has what the others lacked - written instructions, practical examples, and advice for public sector managers from someone who has actually faced all the challenges for a prolonged period. It is a management book, reference book, and textbook all in one."

This book is the first comprehensive, full-scale treatment of the law, politics and economics with regard to the policies and policy instruments for budget stabilization at the state level. Covering the period from 1946 through 2008 in the United States, it provides details on the methods and results of empirical tests of the effects of budget stabilization instruments on government operations, public service provision, and some other aspects of social and economic life. With the lingering effects of the most recent financial crisis and economic downturn, and the subsequent Tea Party movement advocating smaller government and deficit reduction, this book carries timely and important theoretical as well as practical implications, particularly in regard to the potential for counter-cyclical fiscal policy in mitigating negative impacts during a recession. The first contribution of the book is in public finance theory: it provides insights into the applications of the stabilization function in the context of strong government, thereby refining Keynesianism. The second aspect is in Public Choice: the creation and functioning of budget stabilization funds offer extra evidence to demonstrate that the general public provides input and voice in more than the conventional ways when it comes to policy making, even in an area dominated by strong government. The third aspect is in policy making, exploring the opportunities for refining policy tools in preparation for future downturns.

The author of this book believes passionately in the National Health Service and through his work offers the government recommendations for how its reform process can be saved from failure. The NHS will only survive and be true to its founding principles if the reform programme is driven forward - and if the book's recommendations are implemented.

This book presents insights from several countries in Latin America and beyond on how to organize critical sectors, such as education, roads and water, to improve quality, access and affordability. The innovative, multi-disciplinary studies in this volume discuss the outcomes of decentralization, school autonomy, participatory budgeting at the local level and other accountability mechanisms. Rich quantitative analyses are complemented and enhanced by insights from interviews and quotes from those on the front lines: politicians, bureaucrats and service providers; as well as a variety of case-studies focusing on wider political economy questions, on the intricacies of political competition and governance reform, and on public spending efficiency in countries as varied as Colombia, Peru, Chile and Uruguay. As the authors demonstrate, Latin America has much to share with the rest of the world in terms of governance and public service delivery experiments and learnings.

This book examines the role of bureaucracy in modern technologically advanced societies, the traditional models of governance, and the potential of information technology to fundamentally change and improve governance. In the area of public-domain governance, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have empowered public agencies to improve their activities and to strengthen the efficiency of their operations. Technology has enabled optimized transfer of knowledge and information between government agencies, more efficient supervision and control of relationships with citizens, and higher efficiency in law enforcement through better access to information. Throughout the last decades, technology has been used to strengthen the role of state bureaucracies and the relationship between the civil service and the citizens. We have witnessed the transformative powers of ICTs in private-sector enterprises in well-structured technological landscapes, which has produced new ecosystems comprised of software developers, providers, and consumers who provide and consume new products and services in ecosystems that are based on clear technological standards and shared modular generic artefacts, which allow for distributed peer production. ICTs will shape cultural and civic discourse and create products, services and tools, relying on the open toolsets, technologies and exchange of knowledge between peers. This book will be of particular interest to government CIOs, IT/IS managers, researchers, students, and practitioners in technical sciences, public administration, business management, public policy and IS management.

Is public transportation a right? Should it be? For those reliant on public transit, the answer is invariably "yes" to both. Indeed, when city officials propose slashing service or raising fares, it is these riders who are often the first to appear at that officials' door demanding their "right" to more service. Rights in Transit starts from the presumption that such riders are justified. For those who lack other means of mobility, transit is a lifeline. It offers access to many of the entitlements we take as essential: food, employment, and democratic public life itself. While accepting transit as a right, this book also suggests that there remains a desperate need to think critically, both about what is meant by a right and about the types of rights at issue when public transportation is threatened. Drawing on a detailed case study of the various struggles that have come to define public transportation in California's East Bay, Rights in Transit offers a direct challenge to contemporary scholarship on transportation equity. Rather than focusing on civil rights alone, Rights in Transit argues for engaging the more radical notion of the right to the city.

This book provides a defense of democratic politics in American public service and offers the political ethics of public service as a realistic and optimistic alternative to the cynical American view toward politics and public service. The author's alternative helps career public servants regain public trust by exercising constitutionally centered moral and political leadership that balances the regime values of liberty and equality in governing American society while contributing to the ethical progress of the nation. She identifies three distinct leadership styles of political ethics, enabling career public servants to reconcile their personal loyalties, morality, and consciences with the public and private morality of American society and their constitutional obligations to secure the democratic freedoms of Americans. Recognizing career public servants' moral and institutional struggles, the book proposes a rigorous leadership development program to acclimate individuals to workplace psychological, moral, and political challenges. The view offered here is that career public servants must be a part of, rather than isolated from, American politics to be effective on the job.

Public Administration has experienced a fundamental rethinking of its basic objectives, concepts and theories during the 21st century. This book examines the transformations happening in global societies, the economy and in politics, to trace the trajectory of public administration as an academic discipline as well as being a focus of social science research. It presents a reassessment of governance in heterogenous developing countries that goes beyond the traditional Weberian bureaucratic model, toward new models of organization and management, informed by their legal, constitutional, economic and political needs, aspirations and ground realities. This is especially important in relation to the marginalized sections of society that primarily rely on citizen entitlements through public service delivery systems. The author looks at widening the range and scope of public administrative agencies with the gradual cooperation of multiple actors, such as the civil society, people at large and even the private sector, in a partnering role. The author revisits the discipline to tackle intellectual dilemmas that current governance theories and practices are confronting, or will have to confront in future administrative situations. There will be key discussions on mandates and challenges for the state regarding the rising South; this book will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of politics, especially governance and public policy, sociology and development studies. It will also be of interest to bureaucrats, NGOs and government officials.