Roots of Reform


Book Description

Offering a revision of the understanding of the rise of the American regulatory state in the late 19th century, this book argues that politically mobilised farmers were the driving force behind most of the legislation that increased national control.




Zhu Rongji on the Record


Book Description

China's explosive transformation from a planned economy to a more market-oriented one over the past three decades owes much to the charismatic reformer Zhu Rongji. His pragmatism and strong work ethic have been key forces in China's drive to greater modernization and global stature. He served as the mayor and party chief in Shanghai from 1987 to 1991, as vice premier of China from 1991 to 1998, and then as premier until 2003. This monumental collection brings together, for the first time in English, over one hundred important speeches, articles, letters, and instructions written during his term as vice premier, when he had major responsibility for fulfilling Deng Xiaoping's vision and setting China on a new and fruitful course. During this time, Zhu embarked on a plan to reduce the size of government and reform the heavily indebted banking system and state-owned enterprises as well as the housing and health care systems. His sweeping efforts ranged from lobbying for the establishment of stock exchanges to revitalizing agriculture through the introduction of a modern grain market. The ramifications of these reforms are still being felt throughout China and the globe, and Zhu Rongji on the Record provides a real-time look at these plans as they were being formulated during the 1990s. These pages also reflect the forthright personality that gained great popularity with the Chinese public. Zhu vows to speak the truth and avoid "empty talk," as he tells his compatriots. "We must tackle [reform] with both hands, and both hands must be strong." To this end, he provides lists of "musts" and "mustn'ts" that will ensure a "soft landing" during China's transition and calls for swift and resolute action, both in reform and in fighting corruption. In addition to revealing the evolution of Zhu's thinking and demonstrating how he helped transform the world's most populous nation, this book provides insight into the course of China's economic refor




The Senate


Book Description

In this lively analysis, Daniel Wirls examines the Senate in relation to our other institutions of government and the constitutional system as a whole, exposing the role of the "world’s greatest deliberative body" in undermining effective government and maintaining white supremacy in America. As Wirls argues, from the founding era onward, the Senate constructed for itself an exceptional role in the American system of government that has no firm basis in the Constitution. This self-proclaimed exceptional status is part and parcel of the Senate’s problematic role in the governmental process over the past two centuries, a role shaped primarily by the combination of equal representation among states and the filibuster, which set up the Senate’s clash with modern democracy and effective government and has contributed to the contemporary underrepresentation of minority members. As he explains, the Senate’s architecture, self-conception, and resulting behavior distort rather than complement democratic governance and explain the current gridlock in Washington, D.C. If constitutional changes to our institutions are necessary for better governance, then how should the Senate be altered to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? This book provides one answer.




Welfare Reform in the Early Republic


Book Description

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The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China


Book Description

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chine




Reform in the Making


Book Description

Is it time to give up on rehabilitating criminals? Record numbers of Americans are going to prison, and most of them will eventually return to society with a high chance of becoming repeat offenders. But a decision to abandon rehabilitation programs now would be premature warns Ann Chih Lin, who finds that little attention has been given to how these programs are actually implemented and why they tend to fail. In Reform in the Making, she not only supplies much-needed information on the process of program implementation but she also considers its social context, the daily realities faced by prison staff and inmates. By offering an in-depth look at common rehabilitation programs currently in operation--education, job training, and drug treatment--and examining how they are used or misused, Lin offers a practical approach to understanding their high failure rate and how the situation could be improved. Based on extensive observation and over 350 interviews with staff and prisoners in five medium-security male prisons, the book contrasts successfully implemented programs with subverted, abandoned, or neglected programs (those which staff reject or which do not teach prisoners anything useful). Lin explains that staff and prisoners have little patience with programs aimed at long-range goals when they must face the ongoing, immediate challenge of surviving prison life. Finding incentives to make both sides participate fully in rehabilitation is among the book's many contributions to improving prison policy.




Left Back


Book Description

In this authoritative history of American education reforms in this century, a distinguished scholar makes a compelling case that our schools fail when they consistently ignore their central purpose--teaching knowledge.




Financial Stabilization in Meiji Japan


Book Description

With a new look at the 1880s financial reforms in Japan, Steven J. Ericson's Financial Stabilization in Meiji Japan overturns widely held views of the program carried out by Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi. As Ericson shows, rather than constituting an orthodox financial-stabilization program—a sort of precursor of the "neoliberal" reforms promoted by the IMF in the 1980s and 1990s—Matsukata's policies differed in significant ways from both classical economic liberalism and neoliberal orthodoxy. The Matsukata financial reform has become famous largely for the wrong reasons, and Ericson sets the record straight. He shows that Matsukata intended to pursue fiscal retrenchment and budget-balancing when he became finance minister in late 1881. Various exigencies, including foreign military crises and a worsening domestic depression, compelled him instead to increase spending by running deficits and floating public bonds. Though he drastically reduced the money supply, he combined the positive and contractionary policies of his immediate predecessors to pull off a program of "expansionary austerity" paralleling state responses to financial crisis elsewhere in the world both then and now. Through a new and much-needed recalibration of this pivotal financial reform, Financial Stabilization in Meiji Japan demonstrates that, in several ways, ranging from state-led export promotion to the creation of a government-controlled central bank, Matsukata advanced policies that were more in line with a nationalist, developmentalist approach than with a liberal economic one. Ericson shows that Matsukata Masayoshi was far from a rigid adherent of classical economic liberalism.




A Challenging Reform


Book Description

In these pages Archbishop Piero Marini reveals the Vision, courage, and faith of the pastors and scholars who struggled to implement the Second Vatican Council's teachings on the liturgy. While in some circles it is fashionable to propose a reform of the liturgical reform, any such revision needs to take into account the history of the consilium 'the organism established by the Holy See to carry out the initial liturgical changes. This story of the work of the consilium offers a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and tensions that accompanied the realization of the council's dream to promote the full, conscious and active participation" of the faithful in Roman Catholic worship. Piero Marini was ordained on June 27, 1965. He became the personal secretary for Archbishop Annibale Bugnini in 1975 and in 1987 was appointed the head of the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, a position he currently holds. In 1998, Marini was appointed Titular Bishop of Martirano, Italy, and was ordained bishop the following month. In 2003, Marini was appointed Titular Archbishop of Martirano. He also served as the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations from 1987-2007. "




Rehabilitating Lochner


Book Description

In this timely reevaluation of an infamous Supreme Court decision, David E. Bernstein provides a compelling survey of the history and background of Lochner v. New York. This 1905 decision invalidated state laws limiting work hours and became the leading case contending that novel economic regulations were unconstitutional. Sure to be controversial, Rehabilitating Lochner argues that the decision was well grounded in precedent—and that modern constitutional jurisprudence owes at least as much to the limited-government ideas of Lochner proponents as to the more expansive vision of its Progressive opponents. Tracing the influence of this decision through subsequent battles over segregation laws, sex discrimination, civil liberties, and more, Rehabilitating Lochner argues not only that the court acted reasonably in Lochner, but that Lochner and like-minded cases have been widely misunderstood and unfairly maligned ever since.