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"This book provides a critical look at the measures that leading cities in the global north and south are taking to meet the sustainability challenges of the 21st century. Bringing together local experts from around the world, the volume surveys these cities' efforts to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases, secure fresh drinking water supplies, and adapt to climate change"--
The Oxford Handbook of Danish Politics provides the most comprehensive and thorough English language book on Danish politics ever written. It features chapters by 50 leading experts who have contributed extensively to the field they write about. Why is Denmark an interesting topic for a Handbook? In some respects, Danish political institutions and political life are very similar to that of other small, North European countries such as the other Scandinavian countries and Netherland. However, in other respects, Danish politics is interesting in its own right. For instance, Denmark has a world record in minority governments. According to standard scholarly knowledge, this should result in unst...
This book explains the increasing demand for evaluation as a result of the increasing frequency of reforms to local services, influenced by the New Public Management doctrine, the severe austerity policy in many European countries, and the wish to increase quality and reduce costs of public services, especially at the local (sub-national) level. Positioned at the interface of local services and evaluation research, it will enable the utilization of evaluation-generated knowledge in evidence-based policy making by focusing on the lessons learned from evaluation of local service delivery. It encompasses local public and social services (including waste, water, public transport, healthcare, education and eldercare) and examines the hypothesis that there is a North-West–South-East divide in Europe in terms of the evaluation of local service reforms. Particular attention is devoted to the explanatory function of evaluation. Providing fresh insight into the functioning of local government machinery in contemporary Europe, this book will appeal in particular to practitioners and students of local government, public economy, public administration and policy.
In this book David E. McNabb and Carl R. Swenson blend their different experiences to outline the nature of the crises government leaders now face. Together they provide a foundation of knowledge from which current and future elected leaders, policy makers, and public managers can develop the knowledge and skills necessary to confront these challenges. Merging the historic, academic, and practical aspects of emergency planning and disaster response, the book fills in the missing pieces for creating a guide to understanding the nature and breadth of the work ahead. The authors focus on the principles, framework, and structure of emergency preparedness planning and disaster response and recove...
This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of territorial change on the municipal level across all European countries. Taking a thematic and comparative perspective, the book builds on extensive quantitative data and a large survey of academic experts in 33 European countries. Territorial organisation of the municipal level in Europe is strongly diversified and yet far from stable. Politically speaking, territorial reforms tend to be risky and difficult, as such changes affect vital interests and identities. Despite such difficulties, the last two decades have witnessed considerable changes in territorial divisions at the municipal level across a range of European countries. In this book, the authors describe and analyse these changes comprehensively, making a vital contribution to understanding the reasons and dynamics of territorial reform processes. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in local or sub-national government, institutional design and more broadly to political science, public administration/policy, human geography, sociology and economics.
The past quarter of a century has seen extensive change throughout Europe. There have been significant changes in local government, and the European Union has come to play an increasing role in relation to municipal government. This book offers a comparative analysis of recent developments in intergovernmental relations in twelve countries across Europe. Using the framework for analysis from Page and Goldsmith’s 1987 Central and Local Government Relations, each chapter examines changes in central-local relations in their respective country over the past 20 years. This book extends the coverage to include, for the first time, both federal systems and Eastern European countries. Offering detailed empirical studies, it assesses how far there have been changes in the functions, access and discretion of local government. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of local government, urban politics, EU studies and public administration.
This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to debates about expertise, policy-making and democracy. It uniquely combines an overview of recent research on the policy role of experts with discussions in political philosophy and the philosophy of expertise. Starting with the fact that well-functioning democracies require experts and expert knowledge, the book examines two types of objections against granting experts a larger role in policy-making: concerns that focus on the nature and limits of expert knowledge, and those that concentrate on tensions between expertization and democracy. With this, the book discusses how expert arrangements can be organized to ensure the epistemic qualities of policies and democratic credentials, at the same time. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of political theory and democracy, public policy and administration, and to anyone interested in the role of expertise in society.
This book advances novel tools for the study, analysis, and development of public policy, essential in a world of growing diversity, complexity, and accelerating change. Inspired by research in technology innovation, the book brings its forward applications into the studies of policy and institutional systems, answering, among others, the disciplinary need for a common model of change. Relating together the dynamics and the structure of policy evolution, the unified approach offers scholars important new insights into the logics and direction of policy development while advancing policy practitioners’ capacity for forecasting and optimizing designs. Analyzing social and labour market polic...
Globally Competent Governance explores promising policies and practices developed by local governments and other community leaders across the United States and beyond in their efforts to build welcoming and inclusive communities and globally competent governments. Cities of the future, be they large, regional metropolitan centers of commerce and political power, regional hubs that service central metropolitan regions, or smaller suburban or rural centers that cater to agriculture or regional commerce, will continue to evolve. Globalization and global mobility have greatly increased the cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity in cities and communities around the globe and demand...
How large should local governments be, and what are the implications of changing the scale of local governments for the quality of local democracy? These questions have stood at the centre of debates among scholars and public sector reformers alike fro