Anarchy Unbound


Book Description

In Anarchy Unbound, Peter T. Leeson uses rational choice theory to explore the benefits of self-governance. Relying on experience from the past and present, Professor Leeson provides evidence of anarchy "working" where it is least expected to do so and explains how this is possible. Provocatively, Leeson argues that in some cases anarchy may even outperform government as a system of social organization, and demonstrates where this may occur. Anarchy Unbound challenges the conventional self-governance wisdom. It showcases the incredible ingenuity of private individuals to secure social cooperation without government and how their surprising means of doing so can be superior to reliance on the state.




A House United


Book Description

This book shows parents the communication skills they need to teach their children to govern themselves. With the proper family environment and understanding of childhood behaviors homes can become happier.




Bureaucracy and Self-Government


Book Description

A thorough update to this well-regarded political history of American public administration. In this new edition of his provocative book Bureaucracy and Self-Government, Brian J. Cook reconsiders his thesis regarding the inescapable tension between the ideal of self-government and the reality of administratively centered governance. Revisiting his historical exploration of competing conceptions of politics, government, and public administration, Cook offers a novel way of thinking constitutionally about public administration that transcends debates about “big government.” Cook enriches his historical analysis with new scholarship and extends that analysis to the present, taking account of significant developments since the mid-1990s. Each chapter has been updated, and two new chapters sharpen Cook’s argument for recognizing a constitutive dimension in normative theorizing about public administration. The second edition also includes reviews of Jeffersonian impacts on administrative theory and practice and Jacksonian developments in national administrative structures and functions, a look at the administrative theorizing that presaged progressive reforms in civil service, and insight into the confounding complexities that characterize public thinking about administration in a postmodern political order.




I, Citizen


Book Description

This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into its culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the Left and the Right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils. The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America, it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which we ordinary citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats. This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.




Official Governance and Self-governance


Book Description

This book offers a new interpretation of the evolution and modernization of social order in China's grass-roots communities. Traditionally, social order at the grass-roots level was maintained through an organic combination of self-rule by the people and authority rule by political leaders. As a hybrid form of social order, therefore, it not only has features of autonomy but also reflects the power of the state apparatus. Despite the modernization of the nation-state, the old rules sustaining social order at the grass-roots level are still very much in effect and have seamlessly integrated into the new social structure. Unless we fully appreciate this fundamental continuity, we would not be able to understand how social order at the grass-roots level today is upheld and functions. And the modernization of social order at the grass-roots level is most fruitfully studied from the perspectives of the construction of modern public social relations and the development of grass-roots systems of social autonomy.




Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government


Book Description

The book analyzes the sources of widespread dissatisfaction with democracies around the world and identifies directions for feasible reforms.




The Future of Local Self-Government


Book Description

This book presents new research results on the challenges of local politics in different European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and Switzerland, together with theoretical considerations on the further development and strengthening of local self-government. It focuses on analyses of the most recent developments in local democracy and administration.




The Politics of Self-Governance


Book Description

Liberal democracies are experiencing a major transformation of public governance by which self-regulation, co-operation and negotiation between public and private actors and across different political-administrative levels play an increasingly important role for policy-making and implementation. Using the term 'governance imagery', or what a given society envisions to be the proper way of governing public affairs, this volume examines the emergence, causes and consequences of the politics of self-governance both within relevant social science theorizing and in the everyday production of public governance in various policy areas. It questions how self-governance materialized in various areas of public governance in different liberal democracies, and the driving forces and political effects of attempts to enhance the role of self-governance. Challenging the theory and practice of public administration, The Politics of Self-Governance is an indispensable read for all those interested in new forms of public governance.




Self-Governance in Science


Book Description

A comprehensive introduction to the history, theory, and policy implications of self-governance in commercial and academic science communities.