Debating Public Administration


Book Description

Dialog between practitioners and academics has increasingly become the exception rather than the rule in contemporary public administration circles. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, Debating Public Administration: Management Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities tackles some of the major management challenges, choices, and opportunities of the twenty-first century facing public managers across various subfields of public administration. Informed by contemporary pressures on public managers to reconceptualize purpose, redefine administrative rationality, recapitalize human assets, reengage resources, and revitalize democratic constitutionalism, the book offers students, practitioners, and researchers an opportunity to take stock and ponder the future of practice and research in public administration. Organized by three sets of major management challenges facing the field—Rethinking Administrative Rationality in a Democratic Republic, Recapitalizing Organizational Capacity, and Reconceptualizing Institutions for New Policy Challenges—the book takes an uncommon approach to the study of these topics. In it, leading practitioners and academics comment on condensed versions of articles appearing in the Theory to Practice feature of Public Administration Review (PAR) from 2006 through 2011. The authors and commentators focus on some of the best current research, draw lessons from that literature for practice, and identify gaps in research that need to be addressed. They expertly draw out themes, issues, problems, and prospects, providing bulleted lessons and practical takeaways. This makes the book a unique one-stop resource for cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and cross-professional exchanges on contemporary challenges.




Debating Public Administration


Book Description

Dialog between practitioners and academics has increasingly become the exception rather than the rule in contemporary public administration circles. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, Debating Public Administration: Management Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities tackles some of the major management challenges, choices, and opportunities of the twenty-first century facing public managers across various subfields of public administration. Informed by contemporary pressures on public managers to reconceptualize purpose, redefine administrative rationality, recapitalize human assets, reengage resources, and revitalize democratic constitutionalism, the book offers students, practitioners, and researchers an opportunity to take stock and ponder the future of practice and research in public administration. Organized by three sets of major management challenges facing the field—Rethinking Administrative Rationality in a Democratic Republic, Recapitalizing Organizational Capacity, and Reconceptualizing Institutions for New Policy Challenges—the book takes an uncommon approach to the study of these topics. In it, leading practitioners and academics comment on condensed versions of articles appearing in the Theory to Practice feature of Public Administration Review (PAR) from 2006 through 2011. The authors and commentators focus on some of the best current research, draw lessons from that literature for practice, and identify gaps in research that need to be addressed. They expertly draw out themes, issues, problems, and prospects, providing bulleted lessons and practical takeaways. This makes the book a unique one-stop resource for cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and cross-professional exchanges on contemporary challenges.




CONTEMPORARY DEBATES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION


Book Description

Public administration is reeling under complex challenges and pressures in the face of the changing trends in liberalization, privatization and globalization. As a pertinent area of social sciences, it is in search of a new identity in the form of theoretical bases, conceptual clarity and contextual applicability. The development of the discipline is characterized by failed, semi-developed and recycled narratives, which are unable to provide any well-defined epistemological parameters. Whatever one finds in the form of conceptual and applied growth in public administration, especially pertaining to the Third World, appears to be borrowed, imitated and implemented out of context. The discipline of public administration must therefore reinvent itself in the wake of new developments in the areas of theory building, organizational reforms, information technology, participatory development, corporate ethics, humane governance, responsive administration, non-state organizations and administrative capability. This book makes an attempt to grapple with some of these contemporary concerns in order to generate a debate on the impact of globalization on public administration. A collection of diverse topics that address various facets of public administration, the overall thrust is on developing indigenous approaches for meeting the growing demands of the changing scenario. The wide range of issues covered in the volume makes for a comprehensive view of the various perceptions within the discipline of public administration. The book will be of immense use to students, academicians, researchers, policy makers and practitioners in public administration.




Public Administration


Book Description




Debating Islam in the Jewish State


Book Description

Covers Israel's policy toward Islamic institutions within its borders, 1948-2000.




Why Public Service Matters


Book Description

Why Public Service Matters conveys the importance, purpose, and nobility of a career as a civil servant in the United States. It does so, however, with an unflinching eye on the realpolitik that drives public administration in America's "compensatory state" and on the pitfalls of reformers' focus on bureaucratic, rather than democratic, administration. The book links the nation's ability to handle contemporary policy problems with the strategic, tactical, and normative quality of public management. In doing so, it offers newcomers a rare, concise, and accessible overview of the field. Readers will gain an appreciation for the challenges, choices, and opportunities facing public managers as they help advance a sense of common purpose informed by democratic constitutional values in twenty-first century America.




Debating Governance


Book Description

Leading scholars in the field of governance examine the effectiveness of the different non-institutional strategies at the disposal of modern governments in tackling issues of urban decline, public administrations, governmental regionalization, budget deficits and global economics. The governance approach to political science yields a new perspective on the role of the state, domestically as well as in the international arena. Globalization, internationalization, and the growing influence of networks in domestic politics means that the notions of state strength and the role of the state in society must re-examined.




By the People


Book Description

Challenge your students to ENGAGE in the conversation and process; THINK about the ideas, history, structure, and function; and DEBATE the merits of American government and politics in the 21st century. In a storytelling approach that weaves contemporary examples together with historical context, By the People: Debating American Government, Brief Second Edition, explores the themes and ideas that drive the great debates in American government and politics. It introduces students to big questions like Who governs? How does our system of government work? What does government do? and Who are we? By challenging students with these questions, the text gets them to think about, engage with, and debate the merits of U.S. government and politics. Ideal for professors who prefer a shorter text, By the People, Brief Second Edition, condenses the content of the comprehensive edition while also preserving its essential insights, organization, and approach. Approximately 20% shorter and less expensive than its parent text, the full-color Brief Second Edition features a more streamlined narrative and is enhanced by its own unique supplements package. ENGAGE * -By the Numbers- boxes containing fun facts help frame the quizzical reality of American politics and government * -See For Yourself- features enable students to connect with the click of a smart phone to videos and other interactive online content THINK * Chapter One introduces students to seven key American ideas, which are revisited throughout the text * -The Bottom Line- summaries conclude each chapter section, underscoring the most important aspects of the discussion DEBATE * -What Do You Think?- boxes encourage students to use their critical-thinking skills and debate issues in American government * Four major themes, in the form of questions to spark debate, are presented to students in Chapter One and appear throughout the text




Debating the American State


Book Description

The New Deal left a host of political, institutional, and economic legacies. Among them was the restructuring of the government into an administrative state with a powerful executive leader and a large class of unelected officials. This "leviathan" state was championed by the political left, and its continued growth and dominance in American politics is seen as a product of liberal thought—to the extent that "Big Government" is now nearly synonymous with liberalism. Yet there were tensions among liberal statists even as the leviathan first arose. Born in crisis and raised by technocrats, the bureaucratic state always rested on shaky foundations, and the liberals who built and supported it disagreed about whether and how to temper the excesses of the state while retaining its basic structure and function. Debating the American State traces the encounter between liberal thought and the rise of the administrative state and the resulting legitimacy issues that arose for democracy, the rule of law, and individual autonomy. Anne Kornhauser examines a broad and unusual cast of characters, including American social scientists and legal academics, the philosopher John Rawls, and German refugee intellectuals who had witnessed the destruction of democracy in the face of a totalitarian administrative state. In particular, she uncovers the sympathetic but concerned voices—commonly drowned out in the increasingly partisan political discourse—of critics who struggled to reconcile the positive aspects of the administrative state with the negative pressure such a contrivance brought on other liberal values such as individual autonomy, popular sovereignty, and social justice. By showing that the leviathan state was never given a principled and scrupulous justification by its proponents, Debating the American State reveals why the liberal state today remains haunted by programmatic dysfunctions and relentless political attacks.




Using the Narcotrafico Threat to Build Public Administration Capacity between the US and Mexico


Book Description

The current drug trafficking crisis between the US and Mexico is a "perfect storm" that has caused deaths, disappearances, and widespread fear of violence and insecurity in the border area between these two countries. Current US drug control policies with Mexico are based on a militarized system of border control and characterized by domestic gridl