Author: Publisher:
ISBN: 087154668X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Author: Publisher:
ISBN: 087154668X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
The Participation Gap
Author: Russell J. DaltonPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191053325
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
The dilemma of democracy arises from two contrasting trends. More people in the established democracies are participating in civil society activity, contacting government officials, protesting, and using online activism and other creative forms of participation. At the same time, the importance of social status as an influence on political activity is increasing. The democratic principle of the equality of voice is eroding. The politically rich are getting richer-and the politically needy have less voice. This book assembles an unprecedented set of international public opinion surveys to identify the individual, institutional, and political factors that produce these trends. New forms of activity place greater demands on participants, raising the importance of social status skills and resources. Civil society activity further widens the participation gap. New norms of citizenship shift how people participate. And generational change and new online forms of activism accentuate this process. Effective and representative government requires a participatory citizenry and equal voice, and participation trends are undermining these outcomes. The Participation Gap both documents the growing participation gap in contemporary democracies and suggests ways that we can better achieve their theoretical ideal of a participatory citizenry and equal voice.
Citizens and Service Delivery
Author: Alaka HollaPublisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821389807
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 153
Book Description
In many low and middle income countries, dismal failures in the quality of public service delivery such as absenteeism among teachers and doctors and leakages of public funds have driven the agenda for better governance and accountability. This has raised interest in the idea that citizens can contribute to improved quality of service delivery by holding policy-makers and providers of services accountable. This proposition is particularly resonant when it comes to the human development sectors health, education and social protection which involve close interactions between providers and citizens/users of services. Governments, NGOs, and donors alike have been experimenting with various social accountability tools that aim to inform citizens and communities about their rights, the standards of service delivery they should expect, and actual performance; and facilitate access to formal redress mechanisms to address service failures. The report reviews how citizens individually and collectively can influence service delivery through access to information and opportunities to use it to hold providers both frontline service providers and program managers accountable. It focuses on social accountability measures that support the use of information to increase transparency and service delivery and grievance redress mechanisms to help citizens use information to improve accountability. The report takes stock of what is known from international evidence and from within projects supported by the World Bank to identify knowledge gaps, key questions and areas for further work. It synthesizes experience to date; identifies what resources are needed to support more effective use of social accountability tools and approaches; and formulates considerations for their use in human development. The report concludes that the relationships between citizens, policy-makers, program managers, and service providers are complicated, not always direct or easily altered through a single intervention, such as an information campaign or scorecard exercise. The evidence base on social accountability mechanisms in the HD sectors is under development. There is a small but growing set of evaluations which test the impact of information interventions on service delivery and HD outcomes. There is ample space for future experiments to test how to make social accountability work at the country level.
Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions Catching the Deliberative Wave
Author: OECDPublisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264725903
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.
Building Citizen Involvement
Author: Mary L. WalshPublisher: International City/County Management Association(ICMA)
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
Citizen Governance
Author: Richard C. BoxPublisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452250383
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Book Description
Drawing on fundamental ideas about the relationship of citizens to the public sphere, Richard C Box presents a model of `citizen governance'. Recognizing the challenges in the community governance setting, he advocates rethinking the structure of local government and the roles of citizens, elected officials and public professionals in the twenty-first century. His model shifts a large part of the responsibility for local public policy from the professional and the elected official to the citizen. Citizens take part directly in creating and implementing policy, elected officials coordinate the policy process, and public professionnals facilitate citizen discourse, offering the knowledge of public practice needed for successful `citizen gover
Super PACs
Author: Louise I. GerdesPublisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 0737776552
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 113
Book Description
The passage of Citizens United by the Supreme Court in 2010 sparked a renewed debate about campaign spending by large political action committees, or Super PACs. Its ruling said that it is okay for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want in advertising and other methods to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. This book provides a wide range of opinions on the issue. Includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others.
Oregon Blue Book
Author: Oregon. Office of the Secretary of StatePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Oregon
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
The Pig Book
Author: Citizens Against Government WastePublisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 146685314X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212
Book Description
The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of: - $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa - $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil - $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri - $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!) - $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California - $1 million for ornamental fish research Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!
Citizen Participation in the Age of Contracting
Author: Anna A. AmirkhanyanPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351379267
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
Citizen Participation in the Age of Contracting is based on a simple premise: in democracies, power originates with citizens. While citizen participation in government remains a central tenet of democracy, public service delivery structures are considerably more complex today than they were fifty years ago. Today, governments contract with private organizations to deliver a wide array of services. Yet, we know very little about how citizens influence government decisions and policies in the "hollow state." Based on nearly 100 interviews with public and private managers, our findings about the state of citizen participation in contract governance are somewhat disheartening. Public and private organizations engaged citizens in a number of ways. However, most of their efforts failed to shift the power structure in communities and did not give citizens a chance to fundamentally shape local priorities and programs. Instead, elected officials and professional staff largely maintained control over significant policy and administrative decisions. Widespread, but narrow in their forms and impact, the participation practices we uncovered did not live up to the ideals of democracy and self-governance. Citizen Participation in the Age of Contracting is suitable for those who study public administration, as well as in other closely related fields such as nonprofit management and organizational behavior.
