Civic Engagement: 10 Questions to Shape an Effective Plan


Book Description

When citizens are invited to help define and resolve difficult community issues, they often find better and more sustainable solutions. Civic Engagement: 10 Question to Shape an Effective Plan is designed to help you evaluate your community’s “civic health,” plan for effective public engagement, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of your engagement processes, and also identify, benchmark, and share best practices.




Overcoming Social Division


Book Description

Locked in our worldview communities and polarised through increasingly radical campaigning, we are anxious of today's great uncertainty and our politicians have little incentive to reach across party lines. The problem of social division is real. The Brexit vote led to the highest spike in hate crimes in Britain ever recorded and heated situations like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, USA are increasingly boiling over. Overcoming Social Division is not another book about dying democracies, because horror scenarios don't make you act. Instead, it is an optimistic response on what can be done, and about how we can coexist in fragmented and polarised societies. Anatol Valerian Itten explains how public conflict resolution, civic fusion and mediative decision making help us re-learn the ability to find common ground on controversial issues with our fellow citizens, whom we tend to assume believe more extreme things than they really do. This book takes the reader through empirical key factors, obstacles and blind spots and provides helpful guidelines for everyone interested in mitigating social division and resolving conflicts. The author's insights are based on his experience in conflict management, a study of dozens of public conflict resolution cases and surprising stories of over twenty interviewed mediators. Overcoming social division can be a strenuous task. But talking to our enemies is necessary if we don't want to end up in dysfunctional democracies, and it can be a more rewarding experience than we might think. This is a fascinating read for students and academics interested in conflict resolution and public participation from psychology, social sciences, law, and related disciplines. It is also a unique resource for professionals including officials, mediators, lawyers and other practitioners dealing with conflict and public participation.




Civic Fusion


Book Description

Bringing together the forces of political debate, this book outlines civic fusion and the process of successful public policy mediation. To help mediators understand how powerful the tool of mediation is and help them reach their full potential, this guide outlines what civic fusion is and provides real world examples of cases with positive outcomes. The book examines what mediators aspire to do, what they actually do, and outlines what needs to be done to bring disparate groups of people together to reach agreements on complicated public policy questions. To help you understand, achieve and sustain civic fusion, this guide: Will help you construct the metaphor of civic fusion and describe how passion, power, and conflict provide the energy for it; Discusses three projects: the Chelsea charter consensus process; the construction cranes and derricks negotiated rulemaking; and abortion talks; Describes what it takes to build a foundation for civic fusion; and Much more!




Winning Together


Book Description

"Building upon the theoretical and empirical findings, Verdini offers advice for practitioners on effective negotiation and dispute resolution strategies that avoid the presumption that there are not enough resources to go around, and that one side must win and the other must inevitably lose."--Page [4] of cover.




The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2023


Book Description

#1 New York Times Bestseller! Get thousands of facts at your fingertips with this essential resource: sports, pop culture, science and technology, U.S. history and government, world geography, business, and so much more. The World Almanac® is America’s bestselling reference book of all time, with more than 83 million copies sold. For more than 150 years, this compendium of information has been the authoritative source for school, library, business, and home. The 2023 edition of The World Almanac reviews the biggest events of 2022 and will be your go-to source for questions on any topic in the upcoming year. Praised as a “treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information” by The Wall Street Journal, The World Almanac and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia needs effortlessly. Features include: Special Feature: Coronavirus Status Report: A special section provides up-to-the-minute information about the world’s largest public health crisis in at least a century. Statistical data and graphics across dozens of chapters show how the pandemic continues to affect the economy, work, family life, education, and culture. 2022 Election Results: The World Almanac provides a comprehensive look at the entire 2022 election process, including Election Day results for House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. 2022—Top 10 News Topics: The editors of The World Almanac list the top stories that held the world's attention in 2022, from the death of Queen Elizabeth to the invasion of Ukraine. 2022—Year in Sports: Hundreds of pages of trivia and statistics that are essential for any sports fan, featuring complete coverage of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing and the 2022 World Series. World Almanac Editors' Picks: Most Memorable Rivalry Match-ups: Looking back from Coach K's final Duke-UNC face-off in 2022, The World Almanac editors created a list of all-time favorite rivalry games across sports history. 2022—Year in Pictures: Striking full-color images from around the world in 2022, covering news, entertainment, science, and sports. 2022—Offbeat News Stories: The World Almanac editors found some of the strangest news stories of the year. World Almanac Editors' Picks: Time Capsule: The World Almanac lists the items that most came to symbolize the year 2022. The World at a Glance: This annual feature of The World Almanac provides a quick look at the surprising stats and curious facts that define the changing world.




Subnationalism in Africa


Book Description

This examination of the politics of ethnicity and nation-building in Africa stresses the trend towards subnationalist autonomy and away from a singular, state-centric system based on the Western model. Forrest ranges across the continent to explore a variety of subnational movements.




World Almanac and Book of Facts 2014


Book Description

Get thousands of facts right at your fingertips with this updated resource. The World Almanac® and Book of Facts is America's top-selling reference book of all time, with more than 82 million copies sold. Published annually since 1868, this compendium of information is the authoritative source for all your entertainment, reference, and learning needs. The 2014 edition of The World Almanac reviews the events of 2013 and will be your go-to source for any questions on any topic in the upcoming year. Praised as a “treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information” by The Wall Street Journal, The World Almanac® contains thousands of facts that are unavailable publicly elsewhere. The World Almanac® and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia needs—from history and sports to geography, pop culture, and much more.




Curious Case of Kiryas Joel


Book Description

Twenty years ago, on the last day of session, the New York State Legislature created a publicly funded school district to cater to the interests of a religious sect called Kiryas Joel, an extremely insular group of Hasidic Jews. The sect had bought land in upstate New York, populated it solely with members of its faction, and created a village that exerted extraordinary political pressure over both political parties in the Legislature. Marking the first time in American history that a governmental unit was established for a religious group, the Legislature's action prompted years of litigation that eventually went to the Supreme Court. The 1994 case, The Board of Education of the Village of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet, stands as the most important legal precedent in the fight to uphold the separation of church and state. In The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel, plaintiff Louis Grumet opens a window onto the Satmar Hasidic community and details the inside story of his fight for the First Amendment. This story—a blend of politics, religion, cultural clashes, and constitutional tension—is an object lesson in the ongoing debate over freedom of vs. freedom from religion.




Tunneling to the Future


Book Description

Derrick (archivist, Bronx County Historical Society) tells the story of what was, at the time, the largest and most expensive single municipal project ever attempted--the 1913 expansion of the New York City Dual System of Rapid Transit. He considers the factors motivating the expansion, the process of its design, the controversies surrounding financing it, and its impact on New York then and today. Appendixes summarize the contracts and related certificates and list the opening dates of Dual System lines. Twenty-four pages of photographs are also included. c. Book News Inc.




The Politics of Civil Society


Book Description

"The Politics of Civil Society offers a wide-ranging analysis of recent shifts in ideas and paradigms that underpin social policy. Since the 1980s the renaissance of civil society has introduced new ideas about the nature of power, citizenship and human rights, with such slogans as 'active citizenship' and 'participation' radically challenging the dominance of the state, the power of professionals and the welfare system itself." "Frederick Powell traces the historical roots of these apparent changes and movements, demonstrates in detail their often paradoxical results and speculates about the whole future of social policy. He has produced an entirely original synthesis, as well as a major guide to social policy, that goes well beyond traditional interpretations of civil society as the voluntary and community sector." "The book covers a breadth of material which is not generally found in social policy literature and offers a unique opportunity to rethink existing paradigms. This is not just a book for the specialist reader but raises a whole range of issues of much wider interest to the social sciences. A concluding chapter on the practical and policy implications of the analysis is of special relevance to welfare practitioners and policy-makers."--BOOK JACKET.