You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Manna explores the dynamics of forty years of education policymaking to answer a puzzling question: if state and local governments are the primary caretakers of elementary and secondary education, how have federal policymakers so greatly expanded their involvement in the country's schools since 1965? From Lyndon B. Johnson's signing of the carefully worded funding bill, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to George W. Bush's imposing but underfunded "No Child Left Behind" initiative, Washington's influence over America's schools has increased signficantly. At the same time, the states have developed more comprehensive, and often innovative education policies. A wide array of e...
Democratic government is about making choices. Sometimes those choices involve the distribution of benefits. At other times they involve the imposition of some type of loss—a program cut, increased taxes, or new regulatory standards. Citizens will resist such impositions if they can, or will try to punish governments at election time. The dynamics of loss imposition are therefore a universal—if unpleasant—element of democratic governance. The Government Taketh Away examines the repercussions of unpopular government decisions in Canada and the United States, the two great democratic nations of North America. Pal, Weaver, and their contributors compare the capacities of the U.S. presiden...
Local governments do not stand alone—they find themselves in new relationships not only with state and federal government, but often with a widening spectrum of other public and private organizations as well. The result of this re-forming of local governments calls for new collaborations and managerial responses that occur in addition to governmental and bureaucratic processes-as-usual, bringing locally generated strategies or what the authors call "jurisdiction-based management" into play. Based on an extensive study of 237 cities within five states, Collaborative Public Management provides an in-depth look at how city officials work with other governments and organizations to develop the...
Governments throughout the industrialized world make decisions that fundamentally affect the quality and accessibility of medical care. In the United States, despite the absence of universal health insurance, these decisions have great influence on the practice of medicine. In Medical Governance, David Weimer explores an alternative regulatory approach to medical care based on the delegation of decisions about the allocation of scarce medical resources to private nonprofit organizations. He investigates the specific development of rules for the U.S. organ transplant system and details the conversion of a voluntary network of transplant centers to one private rulemaker: the Organ Procurement ...
Metropolitan Governance is the first book to bring together competing perspectives on the question and consequences of centralized vs. decentralized regional government. Presenting original contributions by some of the most notable names in the field of urban politics, this volume examines the organization of governments in metropolitan areas, and how that has an effect on both politics and policy. Existing work on metropolitan governments debates the consequences of interjurisdictional competition, but neglects the role of cooperation in a decentralized system. Feiock and his contributors provide evidence that local governments successfully cooperate through a web of voluntary agreements an...
Although the linking of "ethics" and "politics" may seem more like the ingredients for a comedian's monologue, it is a sober issue and one that affects every American—especially when it comes to state politics, where the cynical might say ethics can never survive. To find examples of the latest corruption du jour, all one has to do is turn to the newspaper, or switch on the local newscast (think Illinois and New Jersey). Scandals have been ubiquitous since the beginning of the Republic, but it wasn't until 1954 that ethical self-regulation began to move legislatively beyond bribery statutes to address deeper issues—those which, in New York Governor Thomas Dewey's words, skulked in the "s...
In 2002 the No Child Left Behind Act rocked America's schools with new initiatives for results-based accountability. But years before NCLB was signed, a new movement was already under way by mayors to take control of city schools from school boards and integrate the management of public education with the overall governing of the city. The Education Mayor is a critical look at mayoral control of urban school districts, beginning with Boston's schools in 1992 and examining more than 100 school districts in 40 states. The authors seek to answer four central questions: • What does school governance look like under mayoral leadership? • How does mayoral control affect school and student perf...
This distinguished collection stands out from the recent flurry of books on health reform by its sustained and sophisticated analysis of the political dimension. In The Politics of Health Care Reform, some of America's best-known political scientists, historians, and legal scholars make sense of our most turbulent policy issue. They dig below the jargon and minutiae to explore the enduring questions of American politics, government reform, and health care. The Politics of Health Care Reform explains how successful reforms occur in the United States and shows what is unique about health care issues. Theoretically informed, politically astute, historically nuanced, this volume takes an invento...
Sarah B. Pralle takes an in-depth look at why some environmental conflicts expand to attract a lot of attention and participation, while others generate little interest or action. Branching Out, Digging In examines the expansion and containment of political conflict around forest policies in the United States and Canada. Late in 1993 citizens from around the world mobilized on behalf of saving old-growth forests in Clayoquot Sound. Yet, at the same time only a very few took note of an even larger reserve of public land at risk in northern California. Both cases, the Clayoquot Sound controversy in British Columbia and the Quincy Library Group case in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern Ca...
Even before the wreckage of a disaster is cleared, one question is foremost in the minds of the public: "What can be done to prevent this from happening again?" Today, news media and policymakers often invoke the "lessons of September 11" and the "lessons of Hurricane Katrina." Certainly, these unexpected events heightened awareness about problems that might have contributed to or worsened the disasters, particularly about gaps in preparation. Inquiries and investigations are made that claim that "lessons" were "learned" from a disaster, leading us to assume that we will be more ready the next time a similar threat looms, and that our government will put in place measures to protect us. In L...