The Evolving Congress


Book Description

For 100 years, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has been charged with providing nonpartisan and authoritative research and analysis to inform the legislative debate in Congress. This has involved a wide range of services, such as written reports on issues and the legislative process, consultations with Members and their staff, seminars on policy and procedural matters, and congressional testimony. The Government and Finance Division at CRS took a step back from its intensive day-to-day service to Congress to analyze important trends in the evolution of the institution-its organization and policymaking process-over the last many decades. Changes in the political landscape, technology, and representational norms have required Congress to evolve as the Nation's most democratic national institution of governance. The essays in this print demonstrate that Congress has been a flexible institution that has changed markedly in recent years in response to the social and political environment.




The Oxford Handbook of Business and Government


Book Description

Business is one of the major power centres in modern society. The state seeks to check and channel that power so as to serve broader public policy objectives. However, if the way in which business is governed is ineffective or over burdensome, it may become more difficult to achieve desired goals such as economic growth or higher levels of employment. In a period of international economic crisis, the study of how business and government relate to each other in different countries isof more central importance than ever.These relationships have been studied from a number of different disciplinary perspectives - business studies, economics, economic history, law, and political science - and all of these are represented in this handbook. The first part of the book provides an introduction to the ways in which five different disciplines have approached the study of business and government. The second section, on the firm and the state, looks at how these entities interact in different settings, emphasising suchphenomena as the global firm and varieties of capitalism. The third section examines how business interacts with government in different parts of the world, including the United States, the EU, China, Japan and South America. The fourth section reviews changing patterns of market governance through aunifying theme of the role of regulation. Business-government relations can play out in divergent ways in different policy and the fifth section examines the contrasts between different key arenas such as competition policy, trade policy, training policy and environmental policy.The volume provides an authoritative overview with chapters by leading authorities on the current state of knowledge of business-government relations, but also points to ways in which this work might be developed in the future, e.g., through a political theory of the firm.




Dancing Without Partners


Book Description




Disaster Policy and Politics


Book Description

Disaster Policy and Politics combines evidence-based research with mini-case studies of recent events to demonstrate the fundamental principles of emergency management and to explore the impact that disasters have had on U.S. policy. Paying special attention to the role of key actors—decision makers at the federal, state, and local levels; scientists; engineers; civil and military personnel; and first responders—author Richard Sylves explores how researchers contribute to and engage in disaster policy development and management. The highly anticipated Third Edition explores the radical change in policy and politics after the occurrence of recent disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria; Hawaii’s false nuclear attack warning; and responses to U.S. wildfires. This book’s comprehensive “all-hazards” approach introduces students to the important public policy, organizational management, and leadership issues they may need as future practitioners and leaders in the field.




The Palgrave Handbook of Volunteering, Civic Participation, and Nonprofit Associations


Book Description

Written by over 200 leading experts from over seventy countries, this handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research on volunteering, civic participation and nonprofit membership associations. The first handbook on the subject to be truly multinational and interdisciplinary in its authorship, it represents a major milestone for the discipline. Each chapter follows a rigorous theoretical structure examining definitions, historical background, key analytical issues, usable knowledge, and future trends and required research. The nine parts of the handbook cover the historical and conceptual background of the discipline; special types of volunteering; the major activity areas of volunteering and associations; influences on volunteering and association participation; the internal structures of associations; the internal processes of associations; the external environments of associations; the scope and impacts of volunteering and associations; and conclusions and future prospects. This handbook provides an essential reference work for third-sector research and practice, including a valuable glossary of terms defining over eighty key concepts. Sponsored by the International Council of Voluntarism, Civil Society, and Social Economy Researcher Associations (ICSERA; www.icsera.org), it will appeal to scholars, policymakers and practitioners, and helps to define the emergent academic discipline of voluntaristics.




American Government


Book Description

A fresh, accessible perspective on the fundamentals




Politics


Book Description

The fifth edition of this seminal textbook by best-selling author Andrew Heywood continues to lead the way in providing a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to politics. Renowned for its engaging and accessible style, this book helps students to understand the discipline's foundational concepts and theories and use these to make sense of its key subfields, from elections and voting to security and global governance. Systematically revised and updated throughout, it also uses a range of tried-and-tested pedagogical features to draw links between different standpoints and help make contemporary institutions, events and developments come to life. Drawing on a wide range of international examples, this text is the ideal choice for lecturers around the world. Carefully designed and written to map onto the way the subject is introduced at degree level, it remains the go-to text for undergraduate introductory and comparative politics courses. Furthermore, it can also be used as pre-course reading or as a point of reference throughout politics degrees, majors or minors. New to this Edition: - Restructured and revised to reflect the decline of democracy and the rise of populism and authoritarianism in different parts of the world - New Politics in Action features reflect the latest political developments – including 'Trump's triumph: politics as polarization'; 'South Africa: a one-party state?'; and 'North Korea: a rogue nuclear power?' - Discusses the transformation of the media landscape, assessing the advent and impact of social media and 'fake news' - New and improved text design reflecting the book's contemporary and engaging coverage - Accompanied by a brand new website, featuring a flashcard glossary, additional cases, interactive simulations and weblinks for students, PowerPoint slides for lecturers, a testbank and a guide to using the book.




Social Conservatives and Party Politics in Canada and the United States


Book Description

The strength of the Tea Party and Religious Right in the United States, alongside the Harper Conservatives’ stance on same-sex marriage and religious freedom in Canada, has many asking whether social conservatism has come to define the right wing of North American politics. In this timely and penetrating book, James Farney provides the first full-length comparison of social conservatism in Canada and the United States from the sexual revolution to the present day. Based on archival research and extensive interviews, it traces the historic relationship between social conservatives and other right-wing groups. Farney illuminates why the American Republican Party was quicker to accept social conservatives as legitimate and valuable allies than the Conservative Party of Canada. This book will be indispensable for understanding why a movement so powerful amongst American conservatives has been distinctively less important in Canada and how the character of Canadian conservatism means it will likely remain so.




Migration and Poverty


Book Description

This volume uses recent research from the World Bank to document and analyze the bidirectional relationship between poverty and migration in developing countries. The case studies chapters compiled in this book (from Tanzania, Nepal, Albania and Nicaragua), as well as the last, policy-oriented chapter illustrate the diversity of migration experience and tackle the complicated nexus between migration and poverty reduction. Two main messages emerge: Although evidence indicates that migration reduces poverty, it also shows that migration opportunities of the poor differ from that of the rest. In general, the evidence suggests that the poor either migrate less or migrate to low return destinations. As a consequence, many developing countries are not maximizing the poverty-reducing potential of migration. The main reason behind this outcome is difficulties in access to remunerative migration opportunities and the high costs associated with migrating. It is shown, for example, that reducing migration costs makes migration more pro-poor. The volume shows that developing countries governments are not without means to improve this situation. Several of the country examples offer a few policy recommendations towards this end.