You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In recent years, consumers, professional organizations, government officials, and third-party payers have become increasingly concerned about how to assess the quality of the services provided by organizations in both the private and the public sectors. One new approach is the organizational report card, which compares the performance of organizations such as public schools, colleges, hospitals, and HMOs. This book offers the first comprehensive study of such instruments. It discusses the circumstances under which they are desirable alternatives to other policy instruments, such as regulation; how they should be designed; who is likely to use them and for what purpose; and what role, if any, government should have in their creation. Informed by cases drawn from education, health, and other policy areas, this book develops a conceptual framework for analyzing these issues. It explores the tradeoffs in measuring performance, the methods of communicating results effectively to mass and elite audiences, and the ways in which organizations respond to the data gathered.
In The Critical Advantage, noted scholar and early childhood expert William T. Gormley, Jr. takes a wide-ranging look at the important role of critical thinking in preparing students for college, careers, and civic life. Drawing on research from psychology, philosophy, business, political science, neuroscience, and other disciplines, he offers a contemporary definition of critical thinking and its relationship to other forms of thinking, including creative thinking and problem solving. When defined broadly and taught early, he argues, critical thinking is a "potential cure for some of the biggest problems we face as a nation," including education deficits, employment deficits, and the recent...
The United States spends more on programs for the elderly than it does on programs that enhance child development and improve child welfare. Why has public policy neglected the development phase of young Americans' lives not only in substantive dollars spent, but also in program design and implementation? Noted child care and education policy expert William Gormley highlights the portrayal of children's issues in both the mass media and in public policymaking to explain why children have gotten short shrift. A key explanation is the limited mass media coverage of strong arguments in support of children's programs. After documenting changes in rhetoric on children and public policy over time ...
Gormley offers a balanced, comprehensive analysis of market, government, and societal failures to ensure quality child care in the United States.
Given the influence of public bureaucracies in policymaking and implementation, Steven J. Balla and William T. Gormley assess their performance using four key perspectives—bounded rationality, principal-agent theory, interest group mobilization, and network theory—to help students develop an analytic framework for evaluating bureaucratic accountability. The new Fourth Edition of Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance provides a thorough review of bureaucracy during the Obama and Trump administrations, as well as new attention to state and local level examples and the role of bureaucratic values. ? New to this Edition: Interviews with two new cabinet secretaries—Chris...
Americans are just emerging from one of the great reform eras in our historyan era in which we attempted to control public bureaucracies through interest representation, due process, management, policy analysis, federalism, and oversight. The United States has, in fact, undergone an institutional realignment and has emerged with a weaker, less autonomous bureaucracy. In a book that will interest not only public administration specialists but students of American government generally, William Gormley examines the consequences of the reform efforts of the 1970s and 1980s and seeks to understand why, despite an astonishing number of these efforts, we remain dissatisfied with the results. "The A...
Break with convention - An original look at policymaking Policymaking is a messy business. It entails more than the traditional policy cycle discussed in most textbooks. And it involves more than presidents and members of Congress. Judges, bureaucrats, corporate leaders, journalists, and voters all influence and participate in the process, and at all levels of government. Each group practices a different kind of politics, which very often results in different policies and outcomes. By looking at six distinct, yet connected, policy domains, your students will see a more comprehensive and realistic view of policymaking: Boardroom Politics - decisions by professional and business leaders Bureau...
In the flush of enthusiasm to make government work better, reformers from both left and right have urged government to turn as many functions as possible over to the private sector and to allow market competition instill efficiency and choice. In fact, government has been doing just this for years: every major policy initiative launched since World War II has been managed by public-private partnerships. Yet such privatization has not solved government's problems. While there have been some positive results, thee has been far less success than advocates of market competition have promised. In a searching examination of why the "competition prescription" has not worked well, Donald F. Kettl fi...
In recent years, government's primary response to the emergent problems of homelessness, hunger, child abuse, health care, and AIDS has been generated through nonprofit agencies funded by taxpayer money. As part of the widespread movement for privatization, these agencies represent revolutionary changes in the welfare state. Steven Smith and Michael Lipsky demonstrate that this massive shift in funds has benefits and drawbacks. Given the breadth of government funding of nonprofit agencies, this first study of the social, political, and organizational effects of this service strategy is an essential contribution to the current raging debates on the future of the welfare state. Reviews of this...
Ten years after one of the most polarizing political scandals in American history, author Ken Gormley offers an insightful, balanced, and revealing analysis of the events leading up to the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. From Ken Starr’s initial Whitewater investigation through the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit, to the Monica Lewinsky affair and Brett Kavanaugh's role in the subsequent inquiry, The Death of American Virtue is a gripping chronicle of an ever-escalating political feeding frenzy. In exclusive interviews, Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, and many more key players offer candid reflections on that period. Drawing on never-before-released records and documents—including the Justice Department’s internal investigation into Starr, new details concerning the death of Vince Foster, and evidence from lawyers on both sides—Gormley sheds new light on a dark and divisive chapter, the aftereffects of which are still being felt in today’s political climate.