Governance in Dark Times PDF Download

Author: Camilla Stivers
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 158901197X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
"The darkness of the threat of terrorism is immediate, but equally profound is the darkness of a lost public world," observes Camilla Stivers in this reflection on the wide gulf between government and citizens. Stivers explores the conjunction of these two kinds of "dark times" in the United States-an era of pervasive fear and sense of vulnerability triggered by the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the darkness brought on by the loss of a public space in which citizens openly discuss shared concerns. In this contemplative book, she probes the extent to which the loss of public space makes us unable to face the new challenges confronting our government. And because public administrators are the closest level of government to ordinary citizens, these doubly dark times question the meaning of public service. Stivers analyzes the search for truth and meaning in public service from Kant and Hobbes to Arendt and Foucault, uncovering the philosophical assumptions supporting the current managerial conception of governance. She proposes an alternative set that would enable public servants to foster more constructive democratic institutions. The book concludes with a model for public service ethics.

Author: Camilla Stivers
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589013344
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
With the rush of calamitous events in recent years—the September 11 terror attacks, the Iraq imbroglio, and hurricanes Katrina and Rita—Americans feel themselves to be living in dark times. Trust in one another and in the government is at low ebb. People in public service face profound challenges to the meaning and efficacy of their work. Where can a public servant turn for a public philosophy to sustain practice? Inspired by Hannah Arendt and several other philosophers, Governance in Dark Times is the first book to explore the philosophical and value underpinnings needed to guide public servants in these times. Featuring down-to-earth discussions of such issues as terrorism, torture, and homeland security, it suggests ways for people in government to think more deeply, judge more wisely, and act more meaningfully. Camilla Stivers argues that the most urgent requirement in dark times is re-kindling what Arendt called "the light of the public," and offers practical steps for public servants to create spaces for citizen dialogue and engagement in public life. Ideas like "governance of the common ground" and "public service as social hope" will spark discussion and encourage renewed dedication to the work of governing. Grounded in the author's more than thirty years of teaching and administrative practice, Governance in Dark Times urges public servants in clear, jargon-free prose to reflect, to understand the world we live in, and to act responsibly, both individually and with fellow citizens.

Author: Brian Levy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199363803
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The development discourse has long been dominated by best practices prescriptions for reform, but these are not a useful way of responding to the governance ambiguities of the early 21st century. Working with the Grain draws on both innovative scholarship and Brian Levy's quarter century of experience at the World Bank to lay out an alternative-a practical, analytically grounded, "with-the-grain" approach to reducing poverty and addressing weaknesses in governance. Best practice prescriptions confuse the goals of development with the journey of getting from here to there. A strong rule of law, capable and accountable governments, and a flexible, level playing field business environment are indeed desirable end points. But the ability to describe well-governed states does not conjure them into existence. If the only available actions are all or nothing, then efforts at change will almost certainly fall short, leading to disillusion and despair. By contrast, this book takes as its point of departure the realities of a country's economy, polity and society, and directs attention towards the challenges of initiating and sustaining forward development momentum. The book: -- distinguishes among four broad groups of countries, according to whether polities are dominant or competitive, and whether institutions are personalized or impersonal -- identifies alternative options for governance and policy reform-top down options which endeavor to strengthen formal institutions, and options supporting the emergence of "islands of effectiveness" -- explores how to identify entry points for change where there is a good fit between divergent country contexts and alternative options for reform. Sometimes the binding constraint to forward movement can be institutional, making governance reform the priority; at other times, the priority can better be on inclusive growth. Taking the decade-or-so time horizon of practitioners, the aim is to nudge things along-seeking gains that initially may seem quite modest but sometimes can give rise to a cascading sequence of change for the better.

Author: Ilene Grabel
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538520
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
An account of the significant though gradual, uneven, disconnected, ad hoc, and pragmatic innovations in global financial governance and developmental finance induced by the global financial crisis. In When Things Don't Fall Apart, Ilene Grabel challenges the dominant view that the global financial crisis had little effect on global financial governance and developmental finance. Most observers discount all but grand, systemic ruptures in institutions and policy. Grabel argues instead that the global crisis induced inconsistent and ad hoc discontinuities in global financial governance and developmental finance that are now having profound effects on emerging market and developing economies. Grabel's chief normative claim is that the resulting incoherence in global financial governance is productive rather than debilitating. In the age of productive incoherence, a more complex, dense, fragmented, and pluripolar form of global financial governance is expanding possibilities for policy and institutional experimentation, policy space for economic and human development, financial stability and resilience, and financial inclusion. Grabel draws on key theoretical commitments of Albert Hirschman to cement the case for the productivity of incoherence. Inspired by Hirschman, Grabel demonstrates that meaningful change often emerges from disconnected, erratic, experimental, and inconsistent adjustments in institutions and policies as actors pragmatically manage in an evolving world. Grabel substantiates her claims with empirically rich case studies that explore the effects of recent crises on networks of financial governance (such as the G-20); transformations within the IMF; institutional innovations in liquidity support and project finance from the national to the transregional levels; and the “rebranding” of capital controls. Grabel concludes with a careful examination of the opportunities and risks associated with the evolutionary transformations underway.

Author: Frederick A. O. Schwarz
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 162097052X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
“A timely and provocative book exploring the origins of the national security state and the urgent challenge of reining it in” (The Washington Post). From Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe to the National Security Agency’s massive intelligence gathering, secrecy has too often captured the American government’s modus operandi better than the ideals of the Constitution. In this important book, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., who was chief counsel to the US Church Committee on Intelligence—which uncovered the FBI’s effort to push Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide; the CIA’s enlistment of the Mafia to try to kill Fidel Castro; and the NSA’s thirty-year program to get copies of all telegrams leaving the United States—uses examples ranging from the dropping of the first atomic bomb and the Cuban Missile Crisis to Iran–Contra and 9/11 to illuminate this central question: How much secrecy does good governance require? Schwarz argues that while some control of information is necessary, governments tend to fall prey to a culture of secrecy that is ultimately not just hazardous to democracy but antithetical to it. This history provides the essential context to recent cases from Chelsea Manning to Edward Snowden. Democracy in the Dark is a natural companion to Schwarz’s Unchecked and Unbalanced, cowritten with Aziz Huq, which plumbed the power of the executive branch—a power that often depends on and derives from the use of secrecy. “[An] important new book . . . Carefully researched, engagingly written stories of government secrecy gone amiss.” —The American Prospect

Author: Acuto, Michele
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529218284
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Urban experts consider the future of night-time economies’ governance during the pandemic and beyond in this scholarly and accessible guide. They use global case studies to illustrate a range of socio-economic issues in cities after dark, and investigate the role of public and private sectors and leaders in shaping urban planning and policy.

Author: Steven P. Erie
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782180
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
The early 21st century has not been kind to California's reputation for good government. But the Golden State's governance flaws reflect worrisome national trends with origins in the 1970s and 1980s. Growing voter distrust with government, a demand for services but not taxes to pay for them, a sharp decline in enlightened leadership and effective civic watchdogs, and dysfunctional political institutions have all contributed to the current governance malaise. Until recently, San Diego, California—America's 8th largest city—seemed immune to such systematic governance disorders. This sunny beach town entered the 1990s proclaiming to be "America's Finest City," but in a few short years its reputation went from "Futureville" to "Enron-by-the-Sea." In this eye-opening and telling narrative, Steven P. Erie, Vladimir Kogan, and Scott A. MacKenzie mix policy analysis, political theory, and history to explore and explain the unintended but largely predictable failures of governance in San Diego. Using untapped primary sources—interviews with key decision makers and public documents—and benchmarking San Diego with other leading California cities, Paradise Plundered examines critical dimensions of San Diego's governance failure: a multi-billion dollar pension deficit; a chronic budget deficit; inadequate city services and infrastructure; grandiose planning initiatives divorced from dire fiscal realities; an insulated downtown redevelopment program plagued by poorly-crafted public-private partnerships; and, for the metropolitan region, inadequate airport and port facilities, a severe underinvestment in firefighting capacity despite destructive wildfires, and heightened Mexican border security concerns. Far from a sunny story of paradise and prosperity, this account takes stock of an important but understudied city, its failed civic leadership, and poorly performing institutions, policymaking, and planning. Though the extent of these failures may place San Diego in a league of its own, other cities are experiencing similar challenges and political changes. As such, this tale of civic woe offers valuable lessons for urban scholars, practitioners, and general readers concerned about the future of their own cities.

Author: Anna Rowlands
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567212335
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Anna Rowlands offers a guide to the main time periods, key figures, documents and themes of thinking developed as Catholic Social Teaching (CST). A wealth of material has been produced by the Catholic Church during its long history which considers the implications of scripture, doctrine and natural law for the way these elements live together in community - most particularly in the tradition of social encyclicals dating from 1891. Rowlands takes a fresh approach in weaving overviews of the central principles with the development of thinking on political community and democracy, migration, and integral ecology, and by considering the increasingly critical questions concerning the role of CST in a pluralist and post-secular context. As such this book offers both an incisive overview of this distinctive body of Catholic political theology and a new and challenging contribution to the debate about the transformative potential of CST in contemporary society.

Author: Virginia Tassinari
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350070270
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The architectural historian and critic Kenneth Frampton 'never recovered' from the force of Hannah Arendt's teaching at The New School in New York. The philosopher Richard J. Bernstein considers her the most perceptive political theorist and observer of 'dark times' (a concept which, drawing from Brecht, she made her own). Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt's major writings (The Human Condition; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Men in Dark Times) to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today. Taking 56 terms – from Action, Beginnings and Creativity through Mortality, Natality, and Play to Superfluity, Technology and Violence – and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up an extraordinary range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt's thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis. Neither simply dictionary nor glossary, the lexicon brings together designing and political philosophy to begin to create a new language for acting and designing against dark times.

Author: Jos C.N. Raadschelders
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472038540
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
It is only in the last 250 years that ordinary people (in some parts of the world) have become citizens rather than subjects. This change happened in a very short period, between 1780 and 1820, a result of the foundations of democracy laid in the age of revolutions. A century later local governments embraced this shift due to rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. During the twentieth century, all democratic governments began to perform a range of tasks, functions, and services that had no historical precedent. In the thirty years following the Second World War, Western democracies created welfare states that, for the first time in history, significantly reduced the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. Many of the reforms of that postwar period have been since rolled back because of the belief that government should be more like a business. Jos C.N. Raadschelders provides the information that all citizens should have about their connections to government, why there is a government, what it does, how it does it, and why we can no longer do without it. The Three Ages of Government rises above stereotypical thinking to show the centrality of government in human life.