Author: John Adams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464807744
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Palala Press
ISBN: 9781379172581
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author: Jon Keller
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466855231
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
What's Happened to Massachusetts? At one time, Americans thought of Massachusetts with pride. It was the place where the charge against British oppression was incubated and first battle of the Revolutionary War was fought. It was the intellectual center of the United States, the home of the country's first university – Harvard - and the birthplace of some of our most famous writers -- Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, to name just a few. What do Americans picture when they think of Massachusetts today? They think of taxes on everything that moves and a burning desire to tax what doesn't. They think of unctuous, doomed Presidential candidates from Michael Dukakis to John Kerry. And, most of all, they think of "Kennedy Country" - not the moderate politics of JFK who backed supply-side tax cuts and saber-rattling foreign policy, but a place influenced by the ideology of his little brother, Ted, a punch line for bad political jokes and the relic of a dream gone bad. Over the past thirty years, Massachusetts has been the test kitchen for the baby boom's political impulses and instincts, with devastating results: urban deterioration, failing public schools and a vanishing job base. Unfortunately, the story of Massachusetts' decline has national implications. Other states share its problems. And the cautionary tale of their mishandling in Massachusetts speaks to a broader issue. What's gone wrong with the Democratic Party? In The Bluest State, a book that echoes Tom Franks' bestseller "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Jon Keller, a veteran political commentator, shows how the collapse of the Massachusetts Miracle into the Massachusetts Miasma mirrors chronic failures within the Democratic Party and American liberalism. After an election in which Democrats elsewhere regained power in Washington by moving toward the political center, the story of how failed boomer politics ruined one of America's great liberal citadels is a timely warning to the party for the election ahead.

Author: Calvin Coolidge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Massachusetts
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Author: Joseph F. Zimmerman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313003637
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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In this groundbreaking study, Zimmerman explores the town meeting form of government in all New England states. This comprehensive work relies heavily upon surveys of town officers and citizens, interviews, and mastery of the scattered writing on the subject. Zimmerman finds that the stereotypes of the New England open town meeting advanced by its critics are a serious distortion of reality. He shows that voter superintendence of town affairs has proven to be effective, and there is no empirical evidence that thousands of small towns and cities with elected councils are governed better. Whereas the relatively small voter attendance suggests that interest groups can control town meetings, their influence has been offset effectively by the development of town advisory committees, particularly the finance committee and the planning board, which are effective counterbalances to pressure groups. Zimmerman provides a new conception of town meeting democracy, positing that the meeting is a de facto representative legislative body with two safety valves—open access to all voters and the initiative to add articles to the warrant, and the calling of special meetings to reconsider decisions made at the preceding town meeting. And, as Zimmerman points out, a third safety valve—the protest referendum—can be adopted by a town meeting.

Author: Amy Fried
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023155124X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Polling shows that since the 1950s Americans’ trust in government has fallen dramatically to historically low levels. In At War with Government, the political scientists Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris reveal that this trend is no accident. Although distrust of authority is deeply rooted in American culture, it is fueled by conservative elites who benefit from it. Since the postwar era conservative leaders have deliberately and strategically undermined faith in the political system for partisan aims. Fried and Harris detail how conservatives have sown distrust to build organizations, win elections, shift power toward institutions that they control, and secure policy victories. They trace this strategy from the Nixon and Reagan years through Gingrich’s Contract with America, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump’s rise and presidency. Conservatives have promoted a political identity opposed to domestic state action, used racial messages to undermine unity, and cultivated cynicism to build and bolster coalitions. Once in power, they have defunded public services unless they help their constituencies and rolled back regulations, perversely proving the failure of government. Fried and Harris draw on archival sources to document how conservative elites have strategized behind the scenes. With a powerful diagnosis of our polarized era, At War with Government also proposes how we might rebuild trust in government by countering the strategies conservatives have used to weaken it.

Author: Edward J. Balleisen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521118484
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 579

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Book Description
After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory reforms will be rooted in outdated ideas. As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory work, is in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policy-making. This interdisciplinary volume points the way toward the modernization of regulatory theory. Its essays by leading scholars move past predominant approaches, integrating the latest research about the interplay between human behavior, societal needs, and regulatory institutions. The book concludes by setting out a potential research agenda for the social sciences.

Author: Woodrow Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Executive power
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Author: Gene M. Grossman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262571678
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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An exploration of the role that special interest groups play in modern democratic politics.