Restoring Responsibility

Restoring Responsibility PDF Author: Dennis Frank Thompson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521547222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Argues for a more robust conception of responsibility in public life than prevails in contemporary democracies.

Restoring Responsibility

Restoring Responsibility PDF Author: Dennis Frank Thompson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521547222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Argues for a more robust conception of responsibility in public life than prevails in contemporary democracies.

Bureaucracy and Democracy

Bureaucracy and Democracy PDF Author: Steven J. Balla
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1506348904
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Given the influence of public bureaucracies in policymaking and implementation, Steven J. Balla and William T. Gormley assess their performance using four key perspectives—bounded rationality, principal-agent theory, interest group mobilization, and network theory—to help students develop an analytic framework for evaluating bureaucratic accountability. The new Fourth Edition of Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance provides a thorough review of bureaucracy during the Obama and Trump administrations, as well as new attention to state and local level examples and the role of bureaucratic values. ? New to this Edition: Interviews with two new cabinet secretaries—Christine Todd Whitman and Tom Ridge—with insightful quotes from them throughout the book. Added material on the battle over regulations, a battle that will loom large during the Trump administration, including midnight regulations and the Congressional Review Act. New examples demonstrate the activity and influence of constituencies of different kinds including the placing of women and minorities on US currency, a vignette that features the musical Hamilton, and the political protests surrounding the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. A new discussion of the privatization of roads, the pros and cons.

Bureaucracy and Democracy

Bureaucracy and Democracy PDF Author: Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135027293
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Although a powerful, independent bureaucracy poses a threat to democracy, it is indispensable to its proper functioning. This book provides an overview of the complex relationship between bureaucracy and the politics of democracy and is essential reading for students of sociology, political science and public administration. It is designed to guide students through the maze of classical and modern theories on the topic, to give them basic information on the historical developments in this area and the present them with case histories of the actual relationship between bureaucrats and politicians in democratic societies.

Bureaucratic Democracy

Bureaucratic Democracy PDF Author: Douglas Yates
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674086111
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Although everyone agrees on the need to make government work better, few understand public bureaucracy sufficiently well to offer useful suggestions, either theoretical or practical. In fact, some consider bureaucratic efficiency incompatible with democratic government. Douglas Yates places the often competing aims of efficiency and democracy in historical perspective and then presents a unique and systematic theory of the politics of bureaucracy, which he illustrates with examples from recent history and from empirical research. He argues that the United States operates under a system of "bureaucratic democracy," in which governmental decisions increasingly are made in bureaucratic settings, out of the public eye. He describes the rational, selfinterested bureaucrat as a "minimaxer," who inches forward inconspicuously, gradually accumulating larger budgets and greater power, in an atmosphere of segmented pluralism, of conflict and competition, of silent politics. To make the policy process more competitive, democratic, and open, Yates calls for strategic debate among policymakers and bureaucrats and insists that bureaucrats should give a public accounting of their significant decisions rather than bury them in incremental changes. He offers concrete proposals, applicable to federal, state, and local governments, for simplifying the now-chaotic bureaucratic policymaking system and at the same time bolstering representation and openness. This is a book for all political scientists, policymakers, government officials, and concerned citizens. It may well become a classic statement on the workings of public bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy in a Democratic State

Bureaucracy in a Democratic State PDF Author: Kenneth J. Meier
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801889456
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Here, Kenneth J. Meier and Laurence J. O'Toole Jr. present a timely analysis of working democracy, arguing that bureaucracy—often considered antithetical to fundamental democratic principles—can actually promote democracy. Drawing from both the empirical work of political scientists and the qualitative work of public administration scholars, the authors employ a "governance approach" that considers broad, institutionally complex systems of governance as well as the nitty-gritty details of bureaucracy management. They examine the results of bureaucratic and political interactions in specific government settings, locally and nationally, to determine whether bureaucratic systems strengthen or weaken the connections between public preferences and actual policies. They find that bureaucracies are part of complex intergovernmental and interorganizational networks that limit a single bureaucracy's institutional control over the implementation of public policy. Further, they conclude that top-down political control of bureaucracy has only modest impact on the activities of bureaucracy in the U.S. and that shared values and commitments to democratic norms, along with political control, produce a bureaucracy that is responsive to the American people.

Bureaucratic Dynamics

Bureaucratic Dynamics PDF Author: B. Dan Wood
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Offering readable case studies and well-paired figures and tables (presented in both technical and nontechnical fashion), Bureaucratic Dynamics uses principal-agent theory to explain how the public policy system works.

Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice

Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice PDF Author: Patrick Dunleavy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131786722X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
First published in 1991. This book initially offers a critique of some key rational public choice models, to show that they were internally inconsistent and ideologically slanted. Then due to the authors’ research the ideas are restructured around a particular kind of institutional public choice method, recognizing the value of instrumental models as a mode of thinking clearly about the manifold complexities of political life.

Making Policy Public

Making Policy Public PDF Author: Susan L. Moffitt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107065224
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book challenges the convention that government bureaucrats seek secrecy and demonstrates how participatory bureaucracy manages the tension between bureaucratic administration and democratic accountability.

Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left

Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left PDF Author: Philip K. Howard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324001771
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Award-winning author Philip K. Howard lays out the blueprint for a new American society. In this brief and powerful book, Philip K. Howard attacks the failed ideologies of both parties and proposes a radical simplification of government to re-empower Americans in their daily choices. Nothing will make sense until people are free to roll up their sleeves and make things work. The first steps are to abandon the philosophy of correctness and our devotion to mindless compliance. Americans are a practical people. They want government to be practical. Washington can’t do anything practically. Worse, its bureaucracy prevents Americans from doing what’s sensible. Conservative bluster won’t fix this problem. Liberal hand-wringing won’t work either. Frustrated voters reach for extremist leaders, but they too get bogged down in the bureaucracy that has accumulated over the past century. Howard shows how America can push the reset button and create simpler frameworks focused on public goals where officials—prepare for the shock—are actually accountable for getting the job done.

The Political Forms of Modern Society

The Political Forms of Modern Society PDF Author: Claude Lefort
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262620545
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Claude Lefort is one of the leading social and political theorists in France today. This anthology of his most important work published over the last four decades makes his writing widely accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time. With exceptional skill Lefort combines the analysis of contemporary political events with a sensitivity to the history of political thought. His critical account of the development of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a timely contribution to current debates about the nature and shortcomings of these societies. His incisive analyses of Marx's theory of history and concept of ideology provide the backdrop for a highly original account of the role of symbolism in modern societies. While critical of many traditional assumptions and doctrines, Lefort develops a political position based on a reappraisal of the idea of human rights and a reconsideration of what "democracy" means today. The Political Forms of Modern Society is a major contribution to contemporary social and political theory. The volume includes a substantial introduction that describes the context of Lefort's writings and highlights the central themes of his work.