Download or read book Bring Back the Bureaucrats written by John DiIulio and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bring Back the Bureaucrats, John J. DiIulio Jr., one of America’s most respected political scientists and an adviser to presidents in both parties, summons the facts and statistics to show us how America’s big government works and why reforms that include adding a million more people to the federal workforce by 2035 might help to slow government’s growth while improving its performance. Starting from the underreported reality that the size of the federal workforce hasn’t increased since the early 1960s, even though the federal budget has skyrocketed. The number of federal programs has ballooned; Bring Back the Bureaucrats tells us what our elected leaders won’t: there are not enough federal workers to work for our democracy effectively. DiIulio reveals that the government in America is Leviathan by Proxy, a grotesque form of debt-financed big government that guarantees terrible government. Washington relies on state and local governments, for-profit firms, and nonprofit organizations to implement federal policies and programs. Big-city mayors, defense industry contractors, nonprofit executives, and other national proxies lobby incessantly for more federal spending. This proxy system chokes on chores such as cleaning up toxic waste sites, caring for hospitalized veterans, collecting taxes, handling plutonium, and policing more than $100 billion annually in “improper payments.” The lack of competent, well-trained federal civil servants resulted in the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the troubled launch of Obamacare’s “health exchanges.” Bring Back the Bureaucrats is further distinguished by the presence of E. J. Dionne Jr. and Charles Murray, two of the most astute voices from the political left and right, respectively, who offer their candid responses to DiIulio at the end of the book.
Download or read book What Motivates Bureaucrats written by Marissa Martino Golden and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000-10-06 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: -- Political Science Quarterly
Download or read book Undemocratic written by Jay Sekulow and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jay Sekulow—one of America’s most influential attorneys—explores a post Obama landscape where bureaucracy has taken over our government and provides a practical roadmap to help take back our personal liberties. Jay Sekulow is on a mission to defend Americans’ freedom. The fact is that freedom is under attack like never before. The threat comes from the fourth branch of government—the biggest branch—and the only branch not in the Constitution: the federal bureaucracy. The bureaucracy imposes thousands of new laws every year, without a single vote from Congress. The bureaucracy violates the rights of Americans without accountability—persecuting adoptive parents, denying veterans quality healthcare, discriminating against conservatives and Christians for partisan purposes, and damaging our economy with job-killing rules. Americans are bullied by the very institutions established to protect their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our nation’s bureaucrats are on an undemocratic power trip. But Sekulow has a plan to fight back. We can resist illegal abuse, we can reform a broken system, and we can restore American democracy. This book won’t just tell you how to win, it will show you real victories achieved by Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice. Unless we can roll back the fourth branch of government—the most dangerous branch—our elections will no longer matter. Undemocratic is a wake-up call, a call made at just the right time—before it’s too late to save the democracy we love.
Download or read book Bending the Rules written by Rachel Augustine Potter and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who determines the fuel standards for our cars? What about whether Plan B, the morning-after pill, is sold at the local pharmacy? Many people assume such important and controversial policy decisions originate in the halls of Congress. But the choreographed actions of Congress and the president account for only a small portion of the laws created in the United States. By some estimates, more than ninety percent of law is created by administrative rules issued by federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, where unelected bureaucrats with particular policy goals and preferences respond to the incentives created by a complex, procedure-bound rulemaking process. With Bending the Rules, Rachel Augustine Potter shows that rulemaking is not the rote administrative activity it is commonly imagined to be but rather an intensely political activity in its own right. Because rulemaking occurs in a separation of powers system, bureaucrats are not free to implement their preferred policies unimpeded: the president, Congress, and the courts can all get involved in the process, often at the bidding of affected interest groups. However, rather than capitulating to demands, bureaucrats routinely employ “procedural politicking,” using their deep knowledge of the process to strategically insulate their proposals from political scrutiny and interference. Tracing the rulemaking process from when an agency first begins working on a rule to when it completes that regulatory action, Potter shows how bureaucrats use procedures to resist interference from Congress, the President, and the courts at each stage of the process. This exercise reveals that unelected bureaucrats wield considerable influence over the direction of public policy in the United States.
Download or read book Street Level Bureaucracy written by Michael Lipsky and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1983-06-29 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Street-Level Bureaucracy is an insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs.
Download or read book Barbarians to Bureaucrats Corporate Life Cycle Strategies written by Lawrence M. Miller and published by Fawcett. This book was released on 1990-01-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One day your sluggish company will taken to the sound of a beating drum and the sight of a competitor approaching at ramming speed. On deck will be a jut-jawed Barbarian....He will hardly blink as his target is ripped asunder, sending Aristocrats, Bureaucrats and their unfortunate shipmates to their corporate death....So goes Mr. Miller's tale, from which we can all profit." The Wall Street Journal Barbarians to Bureaucrats presents a brilliant new solution to a stubborn old business problem: how to halt a company's descent into wasteful, stifling bureaucracy. Lawrence M. Miller, a management consultant for such corporate giants as Xerox and 3M, argues that corporations, like civilizations, have a natural life cycle, and that by identifying the stage your company is in, and the leaders associated with it, you can avert decline and continue to thrive. Every company begins with the compelling new vision of a Prophet and the aggressive leadership of an iron-willed Barbarian, who implements the Prophet's ideas. New techniques and expansions are pushed through by the Builder and the Explorer, but the growth spawned by these managers can easily stagnate when the Administrator sacrifices innovation to order, and the Bureaucrat imposes tight control. And just as in civilizations, the rule of the Aristocrat, out of touch with those who do the real work, invites rebellion -- from employees, customers, and stockholders. It will take the Synergist, a business leader who balances creativity with order, to restore vitality and insure future growth. Executives from major corporations have already put the powerful insights of Barbarians to Bureaucrats into practice to regenerate their own companies. Now you can use this brilliant, lucid, and dazzlingly original book to put your company -- and your career -- back on track.
Download or read book Who s Counting written by John Fund and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2012 election will be one of the hardest-fought in U.S. history. It is also likely to be one of the closest, a fact that brings concerns about voter fraud and bureaucratic incompetence in the conduct of elections front and center. If we don't take notice, we could see another debacle like the Bush-Gore Florida recount of 2000 in which courts and lawyers intervened in what should have involved only voters. Who's Counting? will focus attention on many problems of our election system, ranging from voter fraud to a slipshod system of vote counting that noted political scientist Walter Dean Burnham calls “the most careless of the developed world.” In an effort to clean up our election laws, reduce fraud and increase public confidence in the integrity of the voting system, many states ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin have passed laws requiring a photo ID be shown at the polls and curbing the rampant use of absentee ballots, a tool of choice by fraudsters. The response from Obama allies has been to belittle the need for such laws and attack them as akin to the second coming of a racist tide in American life. In the summer of 2011, both Bill Clinton and DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz preposterously claimed that such laws suppressed minority voters and represented a return to the era of Jim Crow. But voter fraud is a well-documented reality in American elections. Just this year, a sheriff and county clerk in West Virginia pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent absentee ballots that changed the outcome of an election. In 2005, a state senate election in Tennessee was overturned because of voter fraud. The margin of victory? 13 votes. In 2008, the Minnesota senate race that provided the 60th vote needed to pass Obamacare was decided by a little over 300 votes. Almost 200 felons have already been convicted of voting illegally in that election and dozens of other prosecutions are still pending. Public confidence in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. In the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2008, 62% of American voters thought that voter fraud was very common or somewhat common. Fear that elections are being stolen erodes the legitimacy of our government. That's why the vast majority of Americans support laws like Kansas's Secure and Fair Elections Act. A 2010 Rasmussen poll showed that 82% of Americans support photo ID laws. While Americans frequently demand observers and best practices in the elections of other countries, we are often blind to the need to scrutinize our own elections. We may pay the consequences in 2012 if a close election leads us into pitched partisan battles and court fights that will dwarf the Bush-Gore recount wars.
Download or read book Bureaucracy written by James Q. Wilson and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic book on the way American government agencies work and how they can be made to work better -- the "masterwork" of political scientist James Q. Wilson (The Economist) In Bureaucracy, the distinguished scholar James Q. Wilson examines a wide range of bureaucracies, including the US Army, the FBI, the CIA, the FCC, and the Social Security Administration, providing the first comprehensive, in-depth analysis of what government agencies do, why they operate the way they do, and how they might become more responsible and effective. It is the essential guide to understanding how American government works.
Download or read book Valuing Bureaucracy written by Paul R. Verkuil and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be effective, government must be run by professional managers. When decisions that should be taken by government officials are delegated to private contractors without adequate oversight, the public interest is jeopardized. Verkuil uses his inside perspectives on government performance and accountability to examine the tendencies at both the federal and state levels to 'deprofessionalize' government. Viewing the turn to contractors and private sector solutions in ideological and functional terms, he acknowledges that the problem cannot be solved without meaningful civil service reforms that make it easier to hire, incent and, where necessary, fire career employees and officials. The indispensable goal is to revitalize bureaucracy so it can continue to competently deliver essential services. By highlighting the leadership that already exists in the career ranks, Verkuil senses a willingness, or even eagerness, to make government, like America, great again.
Download or read book Breaking Through Bureaucracy written by Michael Barzelay and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1992-10-09 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book attacks the conventional wisdom that bureaucrats are bunglers and the system can't be changed. Michael Barzelay and Babak Armajani trace the source of much poor performance in government to the persistent influence of what they call the bureaucratic paradigm—a theory built on such notions as central control, economy and efficiency, and rigid adherence to rules. Rarely questioned, the bureaucratic paradigm leads competent and faithful public servants—as well as politicians—unwittingly to impair government's ability to serve citizens by weakening, misplacing, and misdirecting accountability. How can this system be changed? Drawing on research sponsored by the Ford Foundation/Harvard University program on Innovations in State and Local Government, this book tells the story of how public officials in one state, Minnesota, cast off the conceptual blinders of the bureaucratic paradigm and experimented with ideas such as customer service, empowering front-line employees to resolve problems, and selectively introducing market forces within government. The author highlights the arguments government executives made for the changes they proposed, traces the way these changes were implemented, and summarizes the impressive results. This approach provides would-be bureaucracy busters with a powerful method for dramatically improving the way government manages the public's business. Generalizing from the Minnesota experience and from similar efforts nationwide, the book proposes a new paradigm that will reframe the perennial debate on public management. With its carefully analyzed ideas, real-life examples, and closely reasoned practical advice, Breaking Through Bureaucracy is indispensable to public managers and students of public policy and administration.
Download or read book Patent Failure written by James Bessen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today's patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. But like the infamous patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, much of the cited evidence about the patent system is pure anecdote--making realistic policy formation difficult. Is the patent system fundamentally broken, or can it be fixed with a few modest reforms? Moving beyond rhetoric, Patent Failure provides the first authoritative and comprehensive look at the economic performance of patents in forty years. James Bessen and Michael Meurer ask whether patents work well as property rights, and, if not, what institutional and legal reforms are necessary to make the patent system more effective. Patent Failure presents a wide range of empirical evidence from history, law, and economics. The book's findings are stark and conclusive. While patents do provide incentives to invest in research, development, and commercialization, for most businesses today, patents fail to provide predictable property rights. Instead, they produce costly disputes and excessive litigation that outweigh positive incentives. Only in some sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry, do patents act as advertised, with their benefits outweighing the related costs. By showing how the patent system has fallen short in providing predictable legal boundaries, Patent Failure serves as a call for change in institutions and laws. There are no simple solutions, but Bessen and Meurer's reform proposals need to be heard. The health and competitiveness of the nation's economy depend on it.
Download or read book The Broken Contract written by Saqib Iqbal Qureshi and published by Lioncrest Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A democracy should reflect the views of its citizens and offer a direct connection between government and those it serves. So why, more than ever, does it seem as if our government exists in its own bubble, detached from us? In reality, our democracy is not performing as it should, which has left us fed up with a system we no longer trust. Moreover, we lack a mechanism to fix what's broken, because there is no incentive for politicians and civil servants to make government more accountable, efficient, and representative. Saqib Iqbal Qureshi is calling on his fellow citizens to assert their voice in the dialogue of democracy. In The Broken Contract, he puts forth solutions-many involving easy-to-implement technologies. It's up to us to turn the ship around. If you're looking for the best way to start a conversation with your elected and unelected officials, this is the book you need.
Download or read book The Rule of Nobody written by Philip K Howard and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?” What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think. Yes, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship. Rules have replaced leadership in America. Bureaucracy, regulation, and outmoded law tie our hands and confine policy choices. Nobody asks, “What’s the right thing to do here?” Instead, they wonder, “What does the rule book say?” There’s a fatal flaw in America’s governing system—trying to decree correctness through rigid laws will never work. Public paralysis is the inevitable result of the steady accretion of detailed rules. America is now run by dead people—by political leaders from the past who enacted mandatory programs that churn ahead regardless of waste, irrelevance, or new priorities. America needs to radically simplify its operating system and give people—officials and citizens alike—the freedom to be practical. Rules can’t accomplish our goals. Only humans can get things done. In The Rule of Nobody Philip K. Howard argues for a return to the framers’ vision of public law—setting goals and boundaries, not dictating daily choices. This incendiary book explains how America went wrong and offers a guide for how to liberate human ingenuity to meet the challenges of this century.
Download or read book When the State Meets the Street written by Bernardo Zacka and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Street level discretion -- Three pathologies: the indifferent, the enforcer, and the caregiver -- A gymnastics of the self: coping with the everyday pressures of street-level work -- When the rules run out: informal taxonomies and peer-level accountability -- Impossible situations: on the breakdown of moral integrity at the frontlines of public service
Download or read book Government Is Good written by Douglas J. Amy and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why a book defending government? Because for decades, right-wing forces in this country have engaged in a relentless and irresponsible campaign of vicious government bashing. Conservatives and libertarians have demonized government, attacked basic safety net programs like Medicare, and undermined vital regulations that protect consumers, investors, workers, and the environment. This book takes on this anti-government movement and shows that most of its criticisms of this institution are highly exaggerated, misleading, or just plain wrong. In reality, American government - despite its flaws - plays a valuable and indispensable role in promoting the public good. Most government programs are working well and are actually improving the lives of Americans in innumerable ways. Democratic government is a vital tool for making our world a better place; and if we want an America that is prosperous, healthy, secure, well-educated, just, compassionate, and unpolluted, we need a strong, active, and well-funded public sector. Part I: Why Government is Good. The section of the book describes how government acts as a force for good in society. One chapter chronicles a day in the life of an average middle-class American and identifies the myriad ways that government programs improve our lives. Other chapters describe the forgotten achievements of government; how government is the only way to effectively promote public values like justice and equality; and how a free market economy would be impossible without the elaborate legal and regulatory infrastructure provided by government. Part II: The War on Government. This section of the book chronicles the unrelenting assault on government being waged by conservative forces in this country. Chapters describe how cuts in social programs and rollbacks of regulations have harmed the health, safety, and welfare of millions of Americans and how these assaults have taken place on many fronts - in Congress, the administrative branch, and the federal courts, as well as on the state and local level. Also addressed: how the right's radical anti-government agenda is out of touch with the views and priorities of most Americans, and what the real truth is about government deficits. Part III: How to Revitalize Democracy and Government. There are, in fact, some problems with American government, and we need to address these if we are to restore Americans' faith in this institution. One of the main problems with our government is that it is not accountable and responsive enough to the public. Moneyed special interests too often win out over the public interest. Chapters in this section describe this problem and how we can fix it. There are several reforms - including public financing of elections - that could help our government live up to its democratic ideals. The final chapter discusses strategies for building a pro-government coalition in this country.
Download or read book Bureaucracy written by Tom Vine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-20 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bureaucracy is a curse – it seems we can’t live with it, we can’t live without it. It is without doubt one of the fundamental ideas which underpin the business world and society at large. In this book, Tom Vine observes, analyses and critiques the concept, placing it at the heart of our understanding of organisation. The author unveils bureaucracy as an endlessly emergent phenomenon which defies binary debate – in analysing organisation, we are all bureaucrats. In building an experiential perspective, the book develops more effective ways to interact with bureaucracy in theory and practice. Empirical material take centre stage, whilst the book employs ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods to illuminate the existential function of bureaucracy. Taking examples from art, history and culture, this book provides an entertaining alternative academic analysis of bureaucracy as a key idea in business and society which will be essential reading for students and scholars of work and organisation
Download or read book Ethics for Bureaucrats written by John Rohr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important text integrates the study of ethics into public management training, highlighting Supreme Court opinions on three specific constitutional values-equality, freedom, and property-focusing on the pedagogical aspects of law and posing challenging questions to help readers apply theories to concrete situations. It includes a case index for further research. Topics of specific interest include abortion, affirmative action, bureaucratic bashing, civil disobedience, the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, the Iran-Contra scandal, moral absolutism, privileged communications, religious fundamentalism, and whistle blowing. The Midwest Review of Pubic Administration lauds it as "...a unique teaching tool."
