Municipal Accountability in the American Age of Reform

Municipal Accountability in the American Age of Reform PDF Author: David Ress
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331968258X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book

Book Description
At the foundations of our modern conception of open government are a handful of disgruntled citizens in the Progressive Era who demanded accountability from their local officials, were rebuffed, and then brought their cases to court. Drawing on newspaper accounts, angry letters to editors, local histories, and court records, David Ress uncovers a number of miniature yet critical moments in the history of government accountability, tracing its decline as the gap between citizens and officials widened with the idea of the community as corporation and citizens as consumers. Together, these moments tell the story of how a nation thought about democracy and the place of the individual in an increasingly complex society, with important lessons for policy makers, journalists, and activists today.

Municipal Accountability in the American Age of Reform

Municipal Accountability in the American Age of Reform PDF Author: David Ress
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331968258X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book

Book Description
At the foundations of our modern conception of open government are a handful of disgruntled citizens in the Progressive Era who demanded accountability from their local officials, were rebuffed, and then brought their cases to court. Drawing on newspaper accounts, angry letters to editors, local histories, and court records, David Ress uncovers a number of miniature yet critical moments in the history of government accountability, tracing its decline as the gap between citizens and officials widened with the idea of the community as corporation and citizens as consumers. Together, these moments tell the story of how a nation thought about democracy and the place of the individual in an increasingly complex society, with important lessons for policy makers, journalists, and activists today.

The Kansas Blue Sky Act of 1911

The Kansas Blue Sky Act of 1911 PDF Author: David Ress
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031438310
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Get Book

Book Description
This Palgrave Pivot presents the first in-depth study of the pioneering Kansas Blue Sky Act of 1911, the first effort in American financial history to regulate the sale of securities in the US. Though offering a balanced examination of critiques of the legislation as a barrier to individual liberty, interstate commerce, and economic growth, the author challenges the prevailing view of the Kansas Act as a complete anomaly, instead exploring sensitively what ‘blue sky laws’ can tell us about small-town market values during the nineteenth-century. Drawing on contemporary accounts of rural commerce and popular stereotypes about rural society, the author takes a cultural-historical approach to the politics of regulation and government intervention in the economy. Situating the Blue Sky Act in the broader context of Progressive Era reforms, the author demonstrates how distinctive patterns of commerce and finance in the self-contained, miniature economies of mid-continental rural communities were often at odds with the “caveat emptor” (buyer beware) standard of American law and commerce in larger markets. Instead the author explores how paternalistic assumptions about individual investment decisions led to the creation of the Act, yet how it was doomed to failure in the context of emerging national stock markets, changing attitudes that regarded stock primarily as a vehicle for trade and the market boom of the 1920s. The book also explores how the initial acceptance of the Kansas model in other states and its later rejection provides a lens through which to examine the fluidity of notions of individual liberty during this period of fast economic and social change. This book will be of interest to researchers working in American financial history, as well as legal history and securities law.

Blaming Teachers

Blaming Teachers PDF Author: Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978808429
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book

Book Description
In Blaming Teachers, Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz reveals that historical professionalization reforms subverted public school teachers' professional legitimacy. Policymakers and school leaders understood teacher professionalization initiatives as efficient ways to bolster the bureaucratic order of the schools rather than as means to amplify teachers' authority and credibility.

Reforming Juvenile Justice

Reforming Juvenile Justice PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309278937
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 463

Get Book

Book Description
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

Size and Local Democracy

Size and Local Democracy PDF Author: Bas Denters
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1783478241
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Get Book

Book Description
How large should local governments be, and what are the implications of changing the scale of local governments for the quality of local democracy? These questions have stood at the centre of debates among scholars and public sector reformers alike fro

Economic Development from the State and Local Perspective

Economic Development from the State and Local Perspective PDF Author: D. Robinson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137317493
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book

Book Description
This definitive work mixes case law, public policy, economic strategy, and examines the wide range of issues facing efforts to improve the American economy, to illustrate how economic growth is driven through strong public-private partnerships, and how successful growth strategies from the state and local level operate to grow jobs.

Education Decentralization and Accountability Relationships in Latin America

Education Decentralization and Accountability Relationships in Latin America PDF Author: Emanuela Di Gropello
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 37

Get Book

Book Description
"Di Gropello analyzes decentralization reforms in the education sector in Latin America (their status, impact, and ongoing challenges) by making use of the accountability framework developed by the World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People. She starts by identifying three main groups of models according to the subnational actors involved, the pattern adopted in the distribution of functions across subnational actors, and the accountability system central to the model. She then reviews the impact of these models according to the available empirical evidence, and explores determinants of this impact, extracting lessons useful to the design of future reforms. The author concludes that the single most important factor in ensuring the success or failure of a reform is the way the accountability relationships are set to work within each of the models and provides some lessons on how to get these relationships to work effectively. She also provides three main general lessons for selecting 'successful' models: (1) avoid complicated models; (2) increase school autonomy and the scope for 'client power,' maintaining a clear role for the other accountability relationships; and (3) place more emphasis on the 'management' accountability relationship and the sustainability of the models"--Abstract.

Government Auditing Standards - 2018 Revision

Government Auditing Standards - 2018 Revision PDF Author: United States Government Accountability Office
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0359536395
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book

Book Description
Audits provide essential accountability and transparency over government programs. Given the current challenges facing governments and their programs, the oversight provided through auditing is more critical than ever. Government auditing provides the objective analysis and information needed to make the decisions necessary to help create a better future. The professional standards presented in this 2018 revision of Government Auditing Standards (known as the Yellow Book) provide a framework for performing high-quality audit work with competence, integrity, objectivity, and independence to provide accountability and to help improve government operations and services. These standards, commonly referred to as generally accepted government auditing standards (GAGAS), provide the foundation for government auditors to lead by example in the areas of independence, transparency, accountability, and quality through the audit process. This revision contains major changes from, and supersedes, the 2011 revision.

Education Reform in the American States

Education Reform in the American States PDF Author: Jerry McBeath
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1607527421
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book

Book Description
Education Reform in the American States is a timely evaluation of the accountability movement in American public education, culminating in the No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation of 2002. The authors treat the current accountability movement, placing it in historical context and addressing the evolution in public education policymaking from the overwhelming emphasis on state and local discretion to increasing federal oversight and mandates related to federal funding. They provide case studies of the educational accountability movements in nine states and analyze the factors and forces which explain progress in achievement levels as measured on standardized tests and the states' prospects for meeting their NCLB targets. The book and the individual case studies acknowledge the merits of NCLB while exposing several significant flaws and unintended harmful consequences of the act, particularly its incentives for states to lower their standards in order to meet annual yearly progress targets and its threat to withdraw federal funds from districts with the highest percentage of disadvantaged students. The audience for this study includes local, state and federal education policy makers; administrators and instructors in schools of education and other teaching programs, educators; and the general public.

The State of State Reforms in Latin America

The State of State Reforms in Latin America PDF Author: Eduardo Lora
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821365762
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Get Book

Book Description
Latin America suffered a profound state crisis in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide variety of institutional or 'second generation' reforms. 'The State of State Reform in Latin America' reviews and assesses the outcomes of these less studied institutional reforms. This book examines four major areas of institutional reform: a. political institutions and the state organization; b. fiscal institutions, such as budget, tax and decentralization institutions; c. public institutions in charge of sectoral economic policies (financial, industrial, and infrastructure); and d. social sector institutions (pensions, social protection, and education). In each of these areas, the authors summarize the reform objectives, describe and measure their scope, assess the main outcomes, and identify the obstacles for implementation, especially those of an institutional nature.