You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
"Provides scholarship on a wide range of essential issues related to how Americans govern themselves. Key topics include formal frameworks such as the various U.S. and state constitutions and federal, state, and local governments, as well as the formation and action of citizens"--
Central America constitutes a fascinating case study of the challenges, opportunities and characteristics of the process of transformation in today’s global economy. Comprised of a politically diverse range of societies, this region has long been of interest to students of economic development and political change. The Handbook of Central American Governance aims to describe and explain the manifold processes that are taking place in Central America that are altering patterns of social, political and economic governance, with particular focus on the impact of globalization and democratization. Containing sections on topics such as state and democracy, key political and social actors, inequ...
"Provides scholarship on a wide range of essential issues related to how Americans govern themselves. Key topics include formal frameworks such as the various U.S. and state constitutions and federal, state, and local governments, as well as the formation and action of citizens"--
Governing American communities becomes ever more challenging in the contemporary political and economic environment. People in communities seek to exercise local control of public programs as they confront powerful special interests and public demands for a smaller, more responsive public sector. Furthermore, they contend with an entrenched traditional view of public professionals as experts who control public agencies and provide services. Drawing on fundamental ideas about the relationship of citizens to the public sphere, Richard C. Box presents a model of "citizen governance." Recognizing the challenges in the community governance setting, he advocates rethinking the structure of local government and the roles of citizens, elected officials, and public professionals in the 21st century. His model shifts a large part of the responsibility for local public policy from the professional and the elected official to the citizen. Citizens take part directly in creating and implementing policy, elected officials coordinate the policy process, and public professionals facilitate citizen discourse, offering the knowledge of public practice needed for successful "citizen governance."
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families ...
Government and governance will be very different in the future than anticipated by the literature in the field.
Fourteen essays examine the unexpected relationships between government power and intimate life in the last 150 years of United States history. The last few decades have seen a surge of historical scholarship that analyzes state power and expands our understanding of governmental authority and the ways we experience it. At the same time, studies of the history of intimate life—marriage, sexuality, child-rearing, and family—also have blossomed. Yet these two literatures have not been considered together in a sustained way. This book, edited and introduced by three preeminent American historians, aims to close this gap, offering powerful analyses of the relationship between state power and...
Analyzes how rising party polarization, unequal representation, and economic inequalities affect the performance of American governing institutions.
For instructors who want to expose their students to the social, political, and historical context of the practice of public administration, this book provides a unique approach to the introductory PA course. The author's own text is skilfully interwoven with a collection of seminal readings and documents that illuminate the key issues of past and present for public service professionals in a democratic society. More than an overview of public administration, Public Administration and Society offers students a broad perspective on the American Founding Era, the relationship of citizens to government, and how the structure of government reflects societal values. The premise of the book is tha...
Economic reasoning has thus far dominated the field of public policy analysis. This new introduction to the field posits that policy analysis should have both a broader interdisciplinary base—including criteria from such fields as political science, sociology, law, and philosophy, as well as economics—and also a broader audience in order to foster democratic debate. To achieve these goals, MacRae and Whittington have organized their textbook around the construction of decision matrices using multiple criteria, exploring the uses of the decision matrix formulation more fully than other texts. They describe how to set up the matrix, fill in cells and combine criteria, and use it as an aid ...