You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Setting a new benchmark for studies of technocracy, this book shows that a solution to the challenge of populism will depend as much on a technocratic retreat as democratic innovation. Esmark examines the development since the 1980s of a new 'post-industrial' technocratic regime and its complicity in the populist backlash against politics and political elites that is visible today. The new technocracy – a combination of network governance, risk management and performance management – has, the author argues, abandoned the overtly anti-democratic sentiments of its industrial predecessor and proclaimed a new partnership with democracy. The rise of populism, however, is a clear sign that the inherent problems of this partnership have been exposed and that technocracy posing as democracy will only serve to exacerbate existing problems.
This is a book about a contemporary transformation in democratic politics: the rise of a new political field, techno-populism.
Since 2010 the UK has enacted radical welfare reforms that have led to greater poverty, homelessness, indebtedness, and foodbank use. It has diverged from other European countries experiencing similar economic and social trends, who have not enacted such dramatic cuts and reforms. Until recently, however, the changes proved very popular with the public, who increasingly hated the welfare system and viewed its users as lazy, undeserving, and likely to be cheating. In this book, Tom O'Grady focuses on policies that provide relief from unemployment, poverty, and disability to uncover why Britain's welfare system has been reformed so radically and why, until recently, the public enthusiastically...
What makes a magazine in South Africa promote Scandinavian unity among its immigrant readers and why does a Swedish king endorse attempts to influence pan-Scandinavian opinion through a transnational media event in Sweden, Norway and Denmark? Can portraits of exotic Lapplanders in the British press, enthusiastic accounts of the welfare state in post-war travel literature and descriptions of the liberal Nordic woman as a metaphor for a freer society in Franco Spain really be bundled together under a joint label of 'Nordicness'? How is it that despite the variety of images of the Nordic region that are circulating, we still find this recurring idea of a shared Nordic identity? These are some o...
This textbook provides a concise and accessible introduction to the principles and elements of policy design in contemporary governance. Howlett seeks to examine in detail the range of substantive and procedural policy instruments that together comprise the toolbox from which governments select specific tools expected to resolve policy problems. Guiding students through the study of the instruments used by governments in carrying out their tasks, adapting to, and altering, their environments, this book: Discusses several current trends in instrument use often linked to factors such as globalization and the increasingly networked nature of modern society. Considers the principles behind the s...
Observing International Relations draws upon the modern systems theory of society, developed by Niklas Luhmann, to provide new perspectives on central aspects of contemporary world society and to generate theoretically informed insights on the possibilities and limits of regulation in global governance. The authors develop a Luhmannian theory of world society by contrasting it with competing notions of international society, critically discussing the use of modern systems theory in international relations theory and assessing its treatment of central concepts within international relations, such as power, sovereignty, governance and war.
øThe New Regulatory Space is an interdisciplinary discussion and will appeal to scholars and researchers as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students of public administration and regulation, political economy, law and society and law and reg
This volume demonstrates that television comedies are conduits through which we might resist normative ways of thinking about cultural crises. By drawing on Gramscian notion of crisis and the understanding that crises are overlapping, interconnected, and mutually constitutive, the essays in this collection demonstrate that situation comedies do more than make us laugh; they also help us understand the complexities of our social world’s moments of crisis. Each chapter takes up the televisual representation of a modern cultural crisis in a contemporary sitcom and is grounded in the extensive body of literature that suggests that levity is a powerful mechanism to make sense of and cope with these difficult cultural experiences. Divided into thematic sections that highlight crises of institutions and systems, identity and representation, and speculation and futurism, this book will interest scholars of media and cultural studies, political economy, communication studies, and humor studies.
What makes a magazine in South Africa promote Scandinavian unity among its immigrant readers and why does a Swedish king endorse attempts to influence pan-Scandinavian opinion through a transnational media event in Sweden, Norway and Denmark? Can portraits of exotic Lapplanders in the British press, enthusiastic accounts of the welfare state in post-war travel literature and descriptions of the liberal Nordic woman as a metaphor for a freer society in Franco Spain really be bundled together under a joint label of 'Nordicness'? How is it that despite the variety of images of the Nordic region that are circulating, we still find this recurring idea of a shared Nordic identity? These are some o...
A thorough update to this well-regarded political history of American public administration. In this new edition of his provocative book Bureaucracy and Self-Government, Brian J. Cook reconsiders his thesis regarding the inescapable tension between the ideal of self-government and the reality of administratively centered governance. Revisiting his historical exploration of competing conceptions of politics, government, and public administration, Cook offers a novel way of thinking constitutionally about public administration that transcends debates about “big government.” Cook enriches his historical analysis with new scholarship and extends that analysis to the present, taking account o...