You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This major new text assesses the main theoretical approaches and applies them to understanding real-world regulatory problems, encouraging students and practitioners in public management to think critically and creatively about the different tools available to them.
How to Do Public Policy offers a guide to students and practitioners on how to improve problem-solving with policies in a political world. It integrates insights from applied policy analysis and studies of the policy process to develop a framework that conceives policy-making as structured by two spheres of action - the 'engine room' of specialists and experts in government agencies, NGOs, research organizations etc., on the one hand, and the political 'superstructure' of politicians, key public stakeholders and the public, on the other hand. Understanding the different logics of the engine room and the superstructure is key for successful policy-making. The dual structure of policy-making p...
How to better coordinate policies and public services across public sector organizations has been a major topic of public administration research for decades. However, few attempts have been made to connect these concerns with the growing body of research on biases and blind spots in decision-making. This book attempts to make that connection. It explores how day-to-day decision-making in public sector organizations is subject to different types of organizational attention biases that may lead to a variety of coordination problems in and between organizations, and sometimes also to major blunders and disasters. The contributions address those biases and their effects for various types of public organizations in different policy sectors and national contexts. In particular, it elaborates on blind spots, or ‘not seeing the not seeing’, and different forms of bureaucratic politics as theoretical explanations for seemingly irrational organizational behaviour. The book’s theoretical tools and empirical insights address conditions for effective coordination and problem-solving by public bureaucracies using an organizational perspective.
Governance Challenges and Innovations examines the capacity of contemporary governments to act upon and address the pressing problems of our time. It highlights four basic administrative capacities that matter for governance and considers the way in which states have addressed particular governance challenges.
This volume presents a compelling package for anyone interested in public sector reform. It effectively combines a wide range of well-researched reviews of national experiences with state-of-the-art thematic chapters in key reform areas such as IT governance, public sector leadership and accountability. The result is a robust, insightful and sometimes sobering series of accounts of the promises and pitfalls of efforts to reform the institutions and practices of public governance around the world. A must-read. Paul t Hart, Australian National University This major Handbook provides a state-of-the-art study of the recent history and future development of international public management reform....
This book is based upon a comparative public administration research project, initiated by the Hertie School of Governance (Germany) and the Bertelsmann Foundation (Germany) and supported by a network of researchers from many EU countries. It analyzes both the regimes and the practices of local fiscal regulation in 21 European countries. The book brings together key findings of this research project. The regulatory discussion is not limited to the prominent issue of fiscal rules but focuses on every component of regulation. Beyond this, the book covers affiliated topics such as the impact of regulation for local governments, evolution of regulation, administrative costs and crisis prevention...
The study of public policy and the methods of policy analysis are among the most rapidly developing areas in the social sciences. Policy analysis has emerged to provide a better understanding of the policymaking process and to supply decision makers with reliable policy-relevant knowledge about pressing economic and social problems. Presenting a broad, comprehensive perspective, the Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics, and Methods covers the historical development of policy analysis, its role in the policy process, and empirical methods. The handbook considers the theory generated by these methods and the normative and ethical issues surrounding their practice. Written by le...
In order to achieve a transition from a transport system centred on the individual car to one centred on (electrified) rail a new focus in infrastructure planning is needed. The preparation of project proposals for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030 on the sub-national level in Germany provides an opportunity to study decision-making processes in ministries and compare their respective results in this respect. Using document analysis, expert interviews, qualitative content analysis as well as QCA, this thesis in political science analyses how decision-making processes within bureaucracies impact the decision output in transport infrastructure planning. It contributes to the discussion on bureaucracy-politics interactions that is relevant beyond the German case. One result is that ministries tend to use complex decision-making processes for topics deemed salient as long as the available capacity permits it. Consequently, in order to conduct legitimacy-enhancing steps – such as public participation – a well-funded bureaucracy is indispensable.
Increasing irrigation efficiency has been high on the political agenda in Spain for many years. However, the overarching aim to reduce agricultural water consumption has not been met so far. To explore this phenomenon, Nora Schütze investigates processes of coordination between the water and agricultural sector in three Spanish river basins in the context of the EU Water Framework Directive implementation. From the perspective of polycentric governance, she identifies multiple mechanisms which illustrate how and why actors interact in certain ways, and thus shows why environmental aims of the Water Framework Directive remain unachieved.
The Governance Report 2014 seeks to address the implications of the current state of the world in terms of "good governance", that is, the effective, efficient, and reliable set of legitimate institutions and actors dedicated to dealing with matters of public concern.