Bøger i Studies in Government and Public Policy serien

Speaking of cabinet appointments hed made as governor, presidential candidate Mitt Romney famously spoke of having whole binders full of women to consider. The line was much mocked; and yet, Kaitlin Sidorsky suggests, it raises a point long overlooked in discussions of the gender gap in politics: many more women are appointed, rather than elected, to political office. Analyzing an original survey of political appointments at all levels of state government, All Roads Lead to Power offers an expanded, more nuanced view of women in politics. This book also questions the manner in which political ambition, particularly among women, is typically studied and understood.In a deep comparative analysis of appointed and elected state positions, All Roads Lead to Power highlights how the differences between being appointed or elected explain why so many more women serve in appointed offices. These women, Sidorsky finds, are not always victims of a much-cited lack of self-confidence or ambition, or of a biased political sphere. More often, they make a conscious decision to enter politics through what they believe is a far less partisan and negative entry point. Furthermore, Sidorskys research reveals that many women end up in political appointmentsat all levelsnot because they are ambitious to hold public office, but because the work connects with their personal lives or careers.With its groundbreaking research and insights into the ambitions, recruitment, and motivations of appointed officials, Sidorskys work broadens our conception of political representation and alters our understanding of how and why women pursue and achieve political power.

As the recent shake-up at GM underscores, the new global economy has widened the cracks and stresses in the American auto industry. But, as this new edition of the highly regarded Sustaining Hand reminds us, the auto industry remains a central if volatile player in American urban politics. In this significantly revised update, Bryan Jones and Lynn Bachelor have extended and refined their analysis of Detroit-area automakers and political leaders negotiating the selection of new factory sites (and thus the addition of thousands of jobs to the local economy). Their thorough revision develops a crucial new concept--solution sets--updates all plant location decisions reported in the first edition, and adds an instructive new case study--the Chrysler Jefferson Avenue plant in Detroit. This book seeks to uncover the linkages between business leaders(motivated by profit) and political decision makers (motivated by electoral gain) by examining the responses of public officials in three Michigan "auto cities"--Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac--to plant-location choices made by General Motors and Chrysler. Throughout, the authors focus on three issues-the relationship between the local industrial economy and the local political system, the structure of urban politics, and the degree of independence of political decision makers in urban affairs. As Jones and Bachelor show, urban regimes, in their efforts to shore up sagging economies, develop characteristic solution-sets that are applied almost routinely to superficially similar situations. In fact, they contend, it's rare for a regime to start with a problem and search for a policy solution. Instead, through a pattern of interactions among politicians, business executives, labor unions, and other interested parties, a "package" of problem-definitions and preferred solutions emerges. But if applied indiscriminately, these solutions can become dysfunctional, which in turn may attract new participants to the policy process and ultimately alter the regime's character.

If you think your job is hopelessly difficult, you may be right. Particularly if your job is public administration. Those who study or practice public management know full well the difficulties faced by administrators of complex bureaucratic systems. What they don't know is why some jobs in the public sector are harder than others and how good managers cope with those jobs. Drawing on leadership theory and social psychology, Erwin Hargrove and John Glidewell provide the first systematic analysis of the factors that determine the inherent difficulty of public management jobs and of the coping strategies employed by successful managers. To test their argument, Hargrove and Glidewell focus on those jobs fraught with extreme difficulties--"impossible" jobs. What differentiates impossible from possible jobs are (1) the publicly perceived legitimacy of the commissioner's clientele; (2) the intensity of the conflict among the agency's constituencies; (3) the public's confidence in the authority of the commissioner's profession; and (4) the strength of the agency's "myth," or long-term, idealistic goal. Hargrove and Glidewell flesh out their analysis with six case studies that focus on the roles played by leaders of specific agencies. Each essay summarizes the institutional strengths and weaknesses, specifies what makes the job impossible, and then compares the skills and strategies that incumbents have employed in coping with such jobs. Readers will come away with a thorough understanding of the conflicting social, psychological, and political forces that act on commissioners in impossible jobs.

In recent decades Washington has seen an alarming rise in the number of revolving door lobbyistspoliticians and officials cashing in on their government experience to become influence peddlers on K Street. These lobbyists, popular wisdom suggests, sell access to the highest bidder. Revolving Door Lobbying tells a different, more nuanced story. As an insider interviewed in the book observes, where the general public has the impression that lobbyists actually get things done, I would say 90 percent of what lobbyists do is prevent harm to their client from the government.Drawing on extensive new data on lobbyists biographies and interviews with dozens of experts, authors Timothy M. LaPira and Herschel F. Thomas establish the facts of the revolving door phenomenonfacts that suggest that, contrary to widespread assumptions about insider access, special interests hire these lobbyists as political insurance against an increasingly dysfunctional, unpredictable government. With their insider experience, revolving door lobbyists offer insight into the political process, irrespective of their connections to current policymakers. What they provide to their clients is useful and marketable political risk-reduction. Exploring this claim, LaPira and Thomas present a systematic analysis of who revolving door lobbyists are, how they differ from other lobbyists, what interests they represent, and how they seek to influence public policy. The first book to marshal comprehensive evidence of revolving door lobbying, LaPira and Thomas revise the notion that lobbyists are inherently and institutionally corrupt. Rather, the authors draw a complex and sobering picture of the revolving door as a consequence of the eroding capacity of government to solve the public's problems.

In this volume, the author discusses the widely-discussed, but poorly-understood phenomenon of presidential ""lightning rods"" - administration officials who, either through intent or circumstances, divert criticism and deflect blame away from their president.

Provides an overview of American federal Inspectors General and analyzes their development and capacity to contribute to new forms of democratic legitimacy.

Specialization and coordination have presented governments with a conundrum: specialized programme might be best for delivering one service to the public, but combining such programmes for all public services inevitably produces redundancies and inefficiencies. In this book, Guy Peters brings his expertise to bear on the problem of administrative and policy coordination.

A study of negativity in presidential campaigns since 1960. It includes a chapter on the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. It systematically analyzes negative campaigning and offers an overview of modern presidential races. It is suitable for those interested in the vagaries of those campaigns.

Reappraises the tumultuous history of educational progress in Chicago, revealing that the persistent lack of improvement is due not to the extent but rather the type of reform. This book chronicles how Chicago's corporate actors led, abetted, or restrained nearly every attempt to transform the city's school system.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been hailed as a triumph for civil rights and as a catalyst for the election of minorities to public office in both the Deep South and the urban North. This text examines its effect on local governance over forty years in Dallas.

"Empowering the White House" examines how Richard Nixon entered the Oval Office in 1969 and managed to change it in a way that augmented the power of presidency and continues to influence into the 21st century how his successors have governed.

Offering a case study of how the American political system operated during the 1990s and of the criminal factors underpinning the political process, this book aims to expand our understanding of a particular constitutional crisis and a dynamic that still prevails in congressional politics.

This text encourages civil servants to reflect on specific constitutional principles and events and learn to apply them to the decisions they make. It includes 20 articles which seek to legitimate public service by grounding its ethics in constitutional practice.

Professional organizations that advocate on behalf of environmental issues have become a permanent part of the American political landscape, representing 11 million members, and with 3.5 billion dollars in assets., Christopher Bosso considers how organizations that once contested the Establishment have become an establishment of their own.

Many of the basic issues of political science have been addressed by pluralist theory, which focuses on the competing interests of a democratic polity, their organization, and their influence on policy. Andrew McFarland shows that this approach still provides a promising foundation for understanding the American political process.

This text demonstrates how and why public administration in the USA is inevitably and strongly bound up with constitution-making and constitutional governance. The author makes a comparative study of cases found in four countries spanning three centuries.

Compact, timely, well-researched, and balanced, this institutional history of Social Security's seventy years shows how the past still influences ongoing reform debates, helping the reader both to understand and evaluate the current partisan arguments on both sides.

In this study of clergy and politics, five social scientists tell how and why the technological orthodoxy and modernism that divides American Protestants into two camps increasingly correlates with today's political climate.

Recalling Tocqueville's exhortation for the French to ""look to America"" for a better understanding of their own government, this book reveals how much can be learned about American constitutionalism from a close study of French governance.

While environmental advocacy groups have become bigger in recent years, so have the corporate interests that compete with them for the attention of public and politicians. This study looks at environmental advocacy that focuses on contemporary lobbying, electioneering and agenda setting.

Politicians are polarized. Public opinion is volatile. Government is gridlocked. Or so journalists and pundits constantly report. But where are we, really, in modern American politics, and how did we get there? Those are the questions that Byron E. Shafer aims to answer in The American Political Pattern. Looking at the state of American politics at diverse points over the past eighty years, the book draws a picture, broad in scope yet precise in detail, of our political system in the modern era. It is a picture of stretches of political stability, but also, even more, of political change, one that goes a long way toward explaining how shifting factors alter the content of public policy and the character of American politicking.Shafer divides the modern world into four distinct periods: the High New Deal (19321938), the Late New Deal (19391968), the Era of Divided Government (19691992), and the Era of Partisan Volatility (19932016). Each period is characterized by a different arrangement of the same key factors: party balance, ideological polarization, issue conflict, and the policy-making process that goes with them.The American Political Pattern shows how these factors are in turn shaped by permanent aspects of the US Constitution, most especially the separation of powers and federalism, while their alignment is simultaneously influenced by the external demands for governmental action that arise in each period, including those derived from economic currents, major wars, and social movements. Analyzing these periods, Shafer sets the terms for understanding the structure and dynamics of politics in our own turbulent time. Placing the current political world in its historical and evolutionary framework, while illuminating major influences on American politics over time, his book explains where this modern world came from, why it endures, and how it might change yet again.

This work looks at the controversial social programme ""Aid to Families with Dependent Children"" (AFDC). It includes an examination of the role of the courts in AFDC, the rise of welfare waivers, and the failure of the Clinton welfare plan. The book also discusses how AFDC will fare in the future.

By considering key issues important to a more effective understanding and use of regulation in the future, this book makes a vital case for restoring debate about regulation's rightful role within the republic and offers hope that a better understanding of that role can help lift us out of the crisis.

Aims to bring together the work of some of the young scholars in the field of national education policy studies, focusing on the federal role in reform efforts. This book addresses such issues as desegregation, education choice, Title I, National Defense Education Act, politics of pre-K education, and Supreme Court decisions on equal opportunity.

As an avenue for progressive politics in a nation still skeptical of change, community organizing faces significant challenges. This book assesses that activity within the context of political, cultural, social, and economic changes in cities - from World War II onwards - to show how community-based organizations have responded.

Drawing on a sample of ten cities, Elaine Sharp explains how municipalities respond to sex business, abortion clinics, legalized gambling, gay rights and drug use. Analyzing the relative importance of subculture, economics, and institutional arrangements in the disputes, she offers an understanding of how cities respond differently to these issues.

Why do most neighbourhoods in the United States continue to be racially divided? In this work, author Mara Sidney offers a fresh explanation for the persistent colour lines in America's cities by showing how weak national policy has silenced and splintered grassroots activists.

With the collapse of national health care reform efforts in the early 1990s, states emerged as a focal point for new policy and administrative developments in US health care. This work provides an overview of key issues facing states as they have responded to this challenge.

An examination of the fundamental role of politics in funding American public schools. Kenneth Wong underscores constitutional stalemate and the lack of political will to act as important factors that affect legislative deadlock in school finance reform.

This work tells the story of how cultural politics and economic greed transformed the New York's physical and social environment with an ongoing multibillion-dollar redevelopment programme, changing the district from a symbol of urban decay to one of urban renaissance.