Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States

Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States PDF Author: Edward C. Page
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191522287
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Bureaucratic Elites in West European States provides valuable information about the structures and composition of the higher civil service and its position in the political structure through a comparative analysis of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Denmark, and Sweden. The book explores how higher civil service has developed in the light of the massive changes in European societies in the past thirty years. Changes include the size of the top level of the civil service, the growing social diversity of its ranks and well as the tendency to recruit from outside the civil service. The book also examines how wider social changes, such as the democratisation of education, the growth of interest groups, and the increasing importance of the European Union impact on the higher levels of bureaucracy producing similar patterns of change throughout Europe.

Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States

Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States PDF Author: Edward C. Page
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191522287
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bureaucratic Elites in West European States provides valuable information about the structures and composition of the higher civil service and its position in the political structure through a comparative analysis of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Denmark, and Sweden. The book explores how higher civil service has developed in the light of the massive changes in European societies in the past thirty years. Changes include the size of the top level of the civil service, the growing social diversity of its ranks and well as the tendency to recruit from outside the civil service. The book also examines how wider social changes, such as the democratisation of education, the growth of interest groups, and the increasing importance of the European Union impact on the higher levels of bureaucracy producing similar patterns of change throughout Europe.

Civil Service Systems in Western Europe, Second Edition

Civil Service Systems in Western Europe, Second Edition PDF Author: Frits M. van der Meer
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 178100093X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of Civil Service Systems in Western Europe presents a comprehensive overview of the important issues in modern bureaucracies and provides a comparative analysis of the civil service systems of various Western European nations.

Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States

Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States PDF Author: Vincent Wright
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Government executives
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description


Handbook of European Societies

Handbook of European Societies PDF Author: Stefan Immerfall
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 038788291X
Category : Ethnology
Languages : en
Pages : 698

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Book Description
European integration is one of the most ambitious and socially far-reaching developments in world politics and in world economics. Against growing opposition and despite increasing social heterogeneity, the European Union continues to expand and to acquire new competences. But to what extent is the self-proclaimed "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe" a social reality? In which ways is the political European project anchored in social developments? How does social change impinge upon political integration? Societal trends in multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and socially diverse Europe have never been studied systematically. Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century sets to rectify this neglect of societal developments in Europe, providing a groundwork for the sociology of European integration. The book portrays social life and social relations in the enlarged Europe, and gives a perspective on the European Union as an evolving social entity. Handbook of European Societies is a pioneering source book analyzing the current social patterns on the continent. It covers a representative selection of major topics of social concern and sociological relevance, such as Collective Action, Consumption, Identity, Power Structure, Sexuality, Stratification and Well-being. Each contribution probes key developments in a strictly comparative manner. The Handbook thus offers a detailed look into the intricacies of the national societies of Europe and into the prospect of an emerging European society. The Editors have enlisted leading researchers to synthesize existing knowledge and to make use of many different data sources in a straight-forward style. The contributions stay away from jargon, simple labeling and sweeping assertions. Instead, they provide solid and accessible information on a wide variety of social trends and processes within and across European societies

Patchwork Leviathan

Patchwork Leviathan PDF Author: Erin Metz McDonnell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691197369
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
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.

Prime Ministers in Greece

Prime Ministers in Greece PDF Author: Kevin Featherstone
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191026700
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book is concerned with a large question in one small, but highly problematic case: how can a prime minister establish control and coordination across his or her government? The Greek system of government sustains a 'paradox of power' at its very core. The Constitution provides the prime minister with extensive and often unchecked powers. Yet, the operational structures, processes and resources around the prime minister undermine their power to manage the government. Through a study of all main premierships between 1974 and 2009, Prime Ministers in Greece argues that the Greek prime minister has been 'an emperor without clothes'. The costs of this paradox included the inability to achieve key policy objectives under successive governments and a fragmented system of governance that provided the backdrop to Greece's economic meltdown in 2010. Building on an unprecedented range of interviews and archival material, Featherstone and Papadimitriou set out to explore how this paradox has been sustained. They conclude with the Greek system meeting its 'nemesis': the arrival of the close supervision of its government by the 'Troika' - the representatives of Greece's creditors. The debt crisis challenged taboos and forced a self-reflection. It remains unclear, however, whether either the external strategy or the domestic response is likely to be sufficient to make the Greek system of governance 'fit for purpose'.

Steering from the Centre

Steering from the Centre PDF Author: B. Guy Peters
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442641487
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Governments face new challenges in an era marked by globalization, shifting economic and national security policies, pervasive electronic media, and policy reform. Steering from the Centre details how chief executives in ten Western democracies have responded to governance challenges in the wake of reform ideas such as the New Public Management which stress deregulation and decentralization. This volume analyzes the extent to which the centre of government can retain political and administrative control when delivery of public services is increasingly done through networks, contacts, partnerships, and a host of other devolved arrangements. International in scope, Steering from the Centre covers the experiences of diverse countries and examines how various centralization/decentralization strategies have played out in these differing national and institutional contexts.

Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe

Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe PDF Author: Richard Gunther
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191513962
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
This volume analyses the evolution of selected public policies and the changing roles and structure of the state in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain since the 1960s. It makes a major contribution to work on recent democratic regime transition in southern Europe, demonstrating how the state has responded and adapted to the challenges and pressures associated with the overarching processes of democratization, socio-economic development, and Europeanization.

European Union Intergovernmental Conferences

European Union Intergovernmental Conferences PDF Author: Paul W. Thurner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134049536
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Provides an empirical investigation of foreign policy decision-making in the EU-15. The authors examine collective decision-making within national governments and in intergovernmental negotiations.

Government: A Public Administration Perspective

Government: A Public Administration Perspective PDF Author: Jos C. N. Raadschelders
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317469429
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Most public administration texts overly compartmentalize the subject and don't interconnect the various specializations within government, which leaves a serious gap in preparing students for public service. Government: A Public Administration Perspective is designed to fill that void. It provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary view of government that includes perspectives from political science, political theory, international relations, organizational sociology, economics, and history. The text draws on classic and modern literature from all these areas to analyze government at four different levels - ideational, societal, organizational, and individual layers. It links public administration's various subfields - human resource management, budgeting, policy making, organizational theory, etc. - into a holistic framework for the study of government. It also includes an extensive bibliography drawing from American and European literature in support of the book's global, historical, and comparative approach.