Not all collections of an author’s past works need be a dull revisitation of the best-forgotten. This book brings together Charles T. Goodsell’s works on public administration, some of which are of ancient vintage or go outside the field for inspiration, possibly earning the appellation ‘outlandish’. Such essays draw from fields including symbol analysis, theory of art, room phenomenology, and theories of public space. The book also deals with more orthodox topics, such as bureau culture, government contracting, and the early New Deal. The author’s methodological biases, placed in full view, will assure controversy. The book ends by encouraging young new scholars to have fun by picking unusual topics and treating them at a fresh angle.
What are the roles of governments and other actors in solving, or alleviating, collective action problems in today’s world? The traditional conceptual frameworks of public administration and public policy studies have become less relevant in answering this question. This book critically assesses traditional conceptual frameworks and proposes an alternative: a complex governance networks (CGN) framework. Advocating that complexity theory should be systematically integrated with foundational concepts of public administration and public policy, Göktuğ Morçöl begins by clarifying the component concepts of CGN and then addresses the implications of CGN for key issues in public administration and policy studies: effectiveness, accountability, and democracy. He illustrates the applicability of the CGN concepts with examples for the COVID-19 pandemic and metropolitan governance, particularly the roles of business improvement districts in governance processes. Morçöl concludes by discussing the implications of CGN for the convergence of public administration and public policy education and offering suggestions for future studies using the CGN conceptualization. Complex Governance Networks is essential reading for both scholars and advanced students of public policy, public administration, public affairs, and related areas.
Not all collections of an authorâ (TM)s past works need be a dull revisitation of the best-forgotten. This book brings together Charles T. Goodsellâ (TM)s works on public administration, some of which are of ancient vintage or go outside the field for inspiration, possibly earning the appellation â ~outlandishâ (TM). Such essays draw from fields including symbol analysis, theory of art, room phenomenology, and theories of public space. The book also deals with more orthodox topics, such as bureau culture, government contracting, and the early New Deal. The authorâ (TM)s methodological biases, placed in full view, will assure controversy. The book ends by encouraging young new scholars to have fun by picking unusual topics and treating them at a fresh angle.
An independent and impartial judiciary is fundamental to the existence and operation of a liberal democracy. Focussing on Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, this comparative 2011 study explores four major issues affecting the judicial institution. These issues relate to the appointment and discipline of judges; judges and freedom of speech; the performance of non-judicial functions by judges; and judicial bias and recusal, and each is set within the context of the importance of maintaining public confidence in the judiciary. The essays highlight important episodes or controversies affecting members of the judiciary to illustrate relevant principles.
Is public administration an art or a science? This question of whether the field is driven by values or facts will never be definitively answered due to a lack of consensus among scholars. The resulting divide has produced many heated debates; however, in this pioneering volume, Norma Riccucci embraces the diversity of research methods rather than suggesting that there is one best way to conduct research in public administration. Public Administration examines the intellectual origins and identity of the discipline of public administration, its diverse research traditions, and how public administration research is conducted today. The book’s intended purpose is to engage reasonable-minded public administration scholars and professionals in a dialogue on the importance of heterogeneity in epistemic traditions, and to deepen the field’s understanding and acceptance of its epistemological scope. This important book will provide a necessary overview of the discipline for graduate students and scholars.
Knowledge does not happen in a vacuum, yet scholars and other professionals tend to engage in management scholarship focused on their specific niche often without knowing if or how their work might relate to other research streams. Further exacerbating things, people within specific disciplines, including management, tend not to communicate regularly outside of their relatively homogeneous audiences. If we were able to bridge communication among these groups, scholars, and practitioners, we might be able to better understand one another in a way that is contextually informed by each other’s experiences. Sementelli argues that understanding concepts of power, agency, and experience can provide such tools to orient management theories and practices relative to one another. Using critical management thought to frame a discussion of ontology and how knowledge emerges from it enables the development of an orienting "sandbox" that works both practically and intellectually. Such a "sandbox" enables us not just to communicate one’s organizational priorities but also reveal some underlying reasons for those priorities and areas of inquiry. This monograph focuses on public administration in particular as a special case of critical management research. This book also examines the complexity of experiences (of being) using Karl Jaspers as a basis. The sandbox that emerges can be used as a way to organize and orient management thought, especially in the public sector. It contributes both to administrative thought and applied inquiry into philosophy and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of critical management studies, organizational studies, and public administration.
An examination of the current Israeli government, covering public policies such as health, housing and transport. The volume covers the institutional as well as the political and the bureaucratic framework within which public policies have been made and implemented.
Written by award-winning CQ Researcher journalists, this collection of non-partisan reports offers an in-depth examination of today’s most pressing policy issues.
The phenomenon of post-truth poses a problem for the public policy-oriented sciences, including policy analysis. Along with “fake news,” the post-truth denial of facts constitutes a major concern for numerous policy fields. Whereas a standard response is to call for more and better factual information, this Element shows that the effort to understand this phenomenon has to go beyond the emphasis on facts to include an understanding of the social meanings that get attached to facts in the political world of public policy. The challenge is thus seen to be as much about a politics of meaning as it is about epistemology. The analysis here supplements the examination of facts with an interpretive policy-analytic approach to gain a fuller understanding of post-truth. The importance of the interpretive perspective is illustrated by examining the policy arguments that have shaped policy controversies related to climate change and coronavirus denial.
