Download or read book Taming the Bureaucracy written by William T. Gormley Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are just emerging from one of the great reform eras in our historyan era in which we attempted to control public bureaucracies through interest representation, due process, management, policy analysis, federalism, and oversight. The United States has, in fact, undergone an institutional realignment and has emerged with a weaker, less autonomous bureaucracy. In a book that will interest not only public administration specialists but students of American government generally, William Gormley examines the consequences of the reform efforts of the 1970s and 1980s and seeks to understand why, despite an astonishing number of these efforts, we remain dissatisfied with the results. "The American bureaucracy is beleaguered and besieged," writes Gormley. ". . . Unfortunately, the bureaucracy's critics are equally capable of blunders." The author explains our situation by analyzing a spectrum of controls ranging from catalytic to hortatory to coercive. Catalytic controls--such as proxy advocacy, environmental impact statements, and freedom-of-information acts--are most flexible, while coercive controls--such as legislative vetoes, executive orders, and judicial take-overs of state institutions--are most rigid. While recommending that controls be tailored both to issues and to bureaucracies, Gormley shows that coercive interventions (or muscles) often generate new bureaucratic pathologies without eradicating old ones. In contrast, catalytic controls (or prayers) energize the bureaucracy without predetermining a hastily crafted response. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Bureaucracy the Marshall Plan and the National Interest written by Hadley Arkes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marshall Plan has been widely regarded as a realistic yet generous policy, and a wise construction of the national interest. But how was the blend of interest and generosity in the minds of its initiators transformed in the process of bureaucratic administration? Hadley Arkes studies the Marshall Plan as an example of the process by which a national interest in foreign policy is defined and implemented. The author's analysis of the efforts to design the Economic Cooperation Agency demonstrates how the definition of the national interest is fundamentally linked to the character of the political regime. His account of the discussions in the executive branch of the government, the bureaucratic infighting, and the deliberations in Congressional hearings and floor debates also shows how, in the process of making decisions on administration and procedure, the bureaucracy itself affected the aims of the Plan. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Bureaucracy s Masters and Minions written by Eleanor L. Schiff and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bureaucracy’s Masters and Minions: The Politics of Controlling the U.S. Bureaucracy, the author argues that political control of the bureaucracy from the president and the Congress is largely contingent on an agency’s internal characteristics of workforce composition, workforce responsibilities, and workforce organization. Through a revised principal-agent framework, the author explores an agent-principal model to use the agent as the starting-point of analysis. The author tests the agent-principal model across 14 years and 132 bureaus and finds that both the president and the House of Representatives exert influence over the bureaucracy, but agency characteristics such as the degree of politization among the workforce, the type of work the agency is engaged in, and the hierarchical nature of the agency affects how agencies are controlled by their political masters. In a detailed case study of one agency, the U.S. Department of Education, the author finds that education policy over a 65-year period is elite-led, and that that hierarchical nature of the department conditions political principals’ influence. This book works to overcome three hurdles that have plagued bureaucratic studies: the difficulty of uniform sampling across the bureaucracy, the overuse of case studies, and the overreliance on the principal-agent theoretical approach.

Download or read book The Post Bureaucratic Organization written by Charles Heckscher and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1994-06-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is wrong with bureaucracy? What does the post-bureaucratic organization offer in the way of improvement? These and other provocative questions are addressed in this well-integrated collection of chapters by leading scholars in the field of organizational change. The far-reaching implications of the transformation of organizations from bureaucratic to post-bureaucratic are critically examined within this volume. Ideal for scholars of organizational behavior, sociology of organizations, organizational psychology, and for those who are interested in the latest developments in corporate reorganization.

Download or read book Emergence of a Bureaucracy written by R. Burr Litchfield and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burr Litchfield traces the development of the patrician elite of Florence from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the growth of a bureaucratic state in Tuscany during this period, and the changing relationship of the patricians to the state apparatus. His discussion of this largely neglected period of Italian history shows that the elite of the Florentine Renaissance Republic continued as the main component of the urban office-holding aristocracy under the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and that they had an important role in the transition from Renaissance communal institutions to those of a regional state. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Bureaucracy and Administration written by Ali Farazmand and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bureaucracy is an age-old form of government that has survived since ancient times; it has provided order and persisted with durability, dependability, and stability. The popularity of the first edition of this book, entitled Handbook of Bureaucracy, is testimony to the endurance of bureaucratic institutions. Reflecting the accelerated globalizatio

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Bureaucracy written by Robert F. Durant and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the major dilemmas facing the administrative state in the United States today is discerning how best to harness for public purposes the dynamism of markets, the passion and commitment of nonprofit and volunteer organizations, and the public-interest-oriented expertise of the career civil service. Researchers across a variety of disciplines, fields, and subfields have independently investigated aspects of the formidable challenges, choices, and opportunities this dilemma poses for governance, democratic constitutionalism, and theory building. This literature is vast, affords multiple and conflicting perspectives, is methodologically diverse, and is fragmented. The Oxford Handbook of American Bureaucracy affords readers an uncommon overview and integration of this eclectic body of knowledge as adduced by many of its most respected researchers. Each of the chapters identifies major issues and trends, critically takes stock of the state of knowledge, and ponders where future research is most promising. Unprecedented in scope, methodological diversity, scholarly viewpoint, and substantive integration, this volume is invaluable for assessing where the study of American bureaucracy stands at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and where leading scholars think it should go in the future. The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are a set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of scholarship on American politics. Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the field. The project is under the General Editorship of George C. Edwards III, and distinguished specialists in their respective fields edit each volume. The Handbooks aim not just to report on the discipline, but also to shape it as scholars critically assess the scholarship on a topic and propose directions in which it needs to move. The series is an indispensable reference for anyone working in American politics. General Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics: George C. Edwards III

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development written by Richard M. Valelly and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 898 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars working in or sympathetic to American political development (APD) share a commitment to accurately understanding the history of American politics - and thus they question stylized facts about America's political evolution. Like other approaches to American politics, APD prizes analytical rigor, data collection, the development and testing of theory, and the generation of provocative hypotheses. Much APD scholarship indeed overlaps with the American politics subfield and its many well developed literatures on specific institutions or processes (for example Congress, judicial politics, or party competition), specific policy domains (welfare policy, immigration), the foundations of (in)equality in American politics (the distribution of wealth and income, race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual and gender orientation), public law, and governance and representation. What distinguishes APD is careful, systematic thought about the ways that political processes, civic ideals, the political construction of social divisions, patterns of identity formation, the making and implementation of public policies, contestation over (and via) the Constitution, and other formal and informal institutions and processes evolve over time - and whether (and how) they alter, compromise, or sustain the American liberal democratic regime. APD scholars identify, in short, the histories that constitute American politics. They ask: what familiar or unfamiliar elements of the American past illuminate the present? Are contemporary phenomena that appear new or surprising prefigured in ways that an APD approach can bring to the fore? If a contemporary phenomenon is unprecedented then how might an accurate understanding of the evolution of American politics unlock its significance? Featuring contributions from leading academics in the field, The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development provides an authoritative and accessible analysis of the study of American political development.

Download or read book Bureaucracy in America written by Joseph Postell and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2017-07-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of the administrative state is the most significant political development in American politics over the past century. While our Constitution separates powers into three branches, and requires that the laws are made by elected representatives in the Congress, today most policies are made by unelected officials in agencies where legislative, executive, and judicial powers are combined. This threatens constitutionalism and the rule of law. This book examines the history of administrative power in America and argues that modern administrative law has failed to protect the principles of American constitutionalism as effectively as earlier approaches to regulation and administration.

Download or read book States at Work written by Thomas Bierschenk and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States at Work explores the mundane practices of state-making in Africa by focussing on the daily functioning of public services and the practices of civil servants.

Download or read book When Good Government Meant Big Government written by Jesse Tarbert and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The years after World War I have often been seen as an era when Republican presidents and business leaders brought the growth of government in the United States to a sudden and emphatic halt. In When Good Government Meant Big Government, the historian Jesse Tarbert inverts the traditional story by revealing a forgotten effort by business-allied reformers to expand federal power—and how that effort was foiled by Southern Democrats and their political allies. Tarbert traces how a loose-knit coalition of corporate lawyers, bankers, executives, genteel reformers, and philanthropists emerged as the leading proponents of central control and national authority in government during the 1910s and 1920s. Motivated by principles of “good government” and using large national corporations as a model, these elite reformers sought to transform the federal government’s ineffectual executive branch into a modern organization with the capacity to solve national problems. They achieved some success during the presidency of Warren G. Harding, but the elite reformers’ support for federal antilynching legislation confirmed the worries of white Southerners who feared that federal power would pose a threat to white supremacy. Working with others who shared their preference for local control of public administration, Southern Democrats led a backlash that blocked enactment of the elite reformers’ broader vision for a responsive and responsible national government. Offering a novel perspective on politics and policy in the years before the New Deal, this book sheds new light on the roots of the modern American state and uncovers a crucial episode in the long history of racist and antigovernment forces in American life.

Download or read book Decadent Developmentalism written by Matthew M. Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complementarities between political and economic institutions have kept Brazil in a low-level economic equilibrium since 1985.

Download or read book International Bureaucracy written by Michael W. Bauer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-26 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book applies established analytical concepts such as influence, authority, administrative styles, autonomy, budgeting and multilevel administration to the study of international bureaucracies and their political environment. It reflects on the commonalities and differences between national and international administrations and carefully constructs the impact of international administrative tools on policy making. The book shows how the study of international bureaucracies can fertilize interdisciplinary discourse, in particular between International Relations, Comparative Government and Public Administration. The book makes a forceful argument for Public Administration to take on the challenge of internationalization.

Download or read book Humanocracy written by Gary Hamel and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal Bestseller In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring. Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book. In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing on more than a decade of research and packed with practical examples, Humanocracy lays out a detailed blueprint for creating organizations that are as inspired and ingenious as the human beings inside them. Critical building blocks include: Motivation: Rallying colleagues to the challenge of busting bureaucracy Models: Leveraging the experience of organizations that have profitably challenged the bureaucratic status quo Mindsets: Escaping the industrial age thinking that frustrates progress Mobilization: Activating a pro-change coalition to hack outmoded management systems and processes Migration: Embedding the principles of humanocracy—ownership, markets, meritocracy, community, openness, experimentation, and paradox—in your organization's DNA If you've finally run out of patience with bureaucratic bullshit . . . If you want to build an organization that can outrun change . . . If you're committed to giving every team member the chance to learn, grow, and contribute . . . . . . then this book's for you. Whatever your role or title, Humanocracy will show you how to launch an unstoppable movement to equip and empower everyone in your organization to be their best and to do their best. The ultimate prize: an organization that's fit for the future and fit for human beings.

Download or read book The Economist s Craft written by Michael S. Weisbach and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive guide that helps up-and-coming economists become successful scholars The Economist's Craft introduces graduate students and rising scholars to the essentials of research, writing, and other critical skills for a successful career in economics. Michael Weisbach enables you to become more effective at communicating your ideas, emphasizing the importance of choosing topics that will have a lasting impact. He explains how to write clearly and compellingly, present and publish your findings, navigate the job market, and more. Walking readers through each stage of a research project, Weisbach demonstrates how to develop research around a theme so that the value from a body of work is more than the sum of its individual papers. He discusses how to structure each section of an academic article and describes the steps that follow the completion of an initial draft, from presenting and revising to circulating and eventually publishing. Weisbach reveals how to get the most out of graduate school, how the journal review process works, how universities decide promotions and tenure, and how to manage your career and continue to seek out rewarding new opportunities. A how-to guide for the aspiring economist, The Economist's Craft covers a host of important issues rarely taught in the graduate classroom, providing readers with the tools and insights they need to succeed as professional scholars.

Download or read book The League of Nations written by Karen Gram-Skjoldager and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2019-07-28 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The League of Nations - Perspectives from the Present is an accessible and richly illustrated edited volume displaying a wide variety of cutting-edge research on the many ways the League of Nations shaped its times and continues to shape our contemporary world. A series of bite-size studies, divided into three thematic parts, investigates how the League affected the world around it and the lives of the people who became part of this 'first great experiment' in international organisation. Recent research has reinterpreted the League as a laboratory of global economic, political and humanitarian governance. Expanding on this, the volume aims to show that the League is an 'academic site', where international history - as a discipline - has re-invented itself by integrating new approaches from social, cultural and media history. With an introduction by Director-General Michael Moller of the United Nations Organisation in Geneva, this work is a timely reminder of the fragile, varied and enduring history of multilateralism, on the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Download or read book Patchwork Leviathan written by Erin Metz McDonnell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corruption and ineffectiveness are often expected of public servants in developing countries. However, some groups within these states are distinctly more effective and public oriented than the rest. Why? Patchwork Leviathan explains how a few spectacularly effective state organizations manage to thrive amid general institutional weakness and succeed against impressive odds. Drawing on the Hobbesian image of the state as Leviathan, Erin Metz McDonnell argues that many seemingly weak states actually have a wide range of administrative capacities. Such states are in fact patchworks sewn loosely together from scarce resources into the semblance of unity. McDonnell demonstrates that when the human, cognitive, and material resources of bureaucracy are rare, it is critically important how they are distributed. Too often, scarce bureaucratic resources are scattered throughout the state, yielding little effect. McDonnell reveals how a sufficient concentration of resources clustered within particular pockets of a state can be transformative, enabling distinctively effective organizations to emerge from a sea of ineffectiveness. Patchwork Leviathan offers a comprehensive analysis of successful statecraft in institutionally challenging environments, drawing on cases from contemporary Ghana and Nigeria, mid-twentieth-century Kenya and Brazil, and China in the early twentieth century. Based on nearly two years of pioneering fieldwork in West Africa, this incisive book explains how these highly effective pockets differ from the Western bureaucracies on which so much state and organizational theory is based, providing a fresh answer to why well-funded global capacity-building reforms fail—and how they can do better.