Search

In an era of low trust in government and a pervasive negativity bias, this volume goes against the grain. It examines the foundations, practices and tools of a distinctly positive strand of public administration (PPA).This book asserts that there is a perennial need for social, evidence-based learning on what to aspire to and what works in public administration. Responding to this need, scholars from five continents present research that has been designed to do just that. Employing an array of frameworks and methods, they present studies of high-performing policies and programs and explore what makes them tick and what might be learned from how they were designed and delivered. Taken together, the 27 contributions make a powerful case for the added value of PPA as an intellectual and practical endeavour.Laying out a future agenda for the field, this book is invaluable for students and scholars of public administration and management, public policy, regulation and governance. Theoretically grounded and conceptually innovative, it is also beneficial to policymakers seeking evidence for their belief that when done well, government does make an immensely positive contribution to society.

The Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics provides a comprehensive longitudinal overview of the state of the art of academic research on the Dutch political system: its origins and historical development, its key institutions, main fault lines, pivotal processes, and key public policy dynamics. In each of the chapters, researchers take stock of what - if anything - has changed over time, how scholars have conceptualized and studied these dynamics, and what key factors can account for the developmental patterns found to be at play. Notwithstanding its considerable degree of constitutional and institutional stability, Dutch politics has seen considerable step changes and occasional upheavals across the last half century. Influenced by long-term demographic, socio-economic, and cultural shifts the old social cleavages have waned. New social identities and dividing lines - such as ethnicity, education, place, and gender - have influenced Dutch citizens'political attitudes and behaviours, including their voting patterns. The media landscape and the information environment have been altered by new technologies that politicians and citizens alike have to navigate. This has produced changes in such pivotal components as the party system, coalition formation and management process, and executive-legislative relations, and many others. Moreover, public policy paradigms and the political coalitions that sustained them have ascended and lost traction in most of the eleven policy domains discussed in the Handbook. In all, this volume provides unique and indispensable insights into stability and change in a political system that once gained notoriety as an archetype of a consensual or consociational democracy.

This open access book offers unique insights into how governments and governing systems, particularly in advanced economies, have responded to the immense challenges of managing the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing disease COVID-19. Written by three eminent scholars in the field of the politics and policy of crisis management, it offers a unique ‘bird's eye'view of the immense logistical and political challenges of addressing a worst-case scenario that would prove the ultimate stress test for societies, governments, governing institutions and political leaders. It examines how governments and governing systems have (i) made sense of emerging transboundary threats that have spilled across health, economic, political and social systems (ii) mobilised systems of governance and often fearful and sceptical citizens (iii) crafted narratives amid high uncertainty about the virus and its impact and (iv) are working towards closure and a return to ‘normal'when things can never quite bethe same again. The book also offers the building blocks of pathways to future resilience. Succeeding and failing in all these realms is tied in with governance structures, experts, trust, leadership capabilities and political ideologies. The book appeals to anyone seeking to understand ‘what's going on?', but particularly academics and students across multiple disciplines, journalists, public officials, politicians, non-governmental organisations and citizen groups.

This open access book presents case studies of twelve organisations which the public have come to view as institutions. From the BBC to Doctors Without Borders, from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra to CERN, this volume examines how some organisations rise to prominence and remain in high public esteem through changing and challenging times. It builds upon the scholarly tradition of institutional scholarship pioneered by Philip Selznick, and highlights common themes in the stories of these highly diverse organizations; demonstrating how leadership, learning, and luck all play a role in becoming and remaining an institution. This case study format makes this volume ideal for classroom use and practitioners alike. In an era where public institutions are increasingly under threat, this volume offers concrete lessons for contemporary organisation leaders.

A new edition of a popular textbook that provides a systematic and up-to-date introduction to the different approaches to understanding leadership in the public sector. This text draws together a wide range of enduring and cutting-edge scholarship to provide a clear and concise overview of the area. Written by two of the field's leading experts, it uses real-world case studies to unpack the dilemmas and complexities facing leaders in contemporary democracies. Now streamlined to further help students navigate this widely debated area, this is the ideal text for undergraduate and postgraduate modules on leadership on public administration and management courses. Moreover, with its balance between theory and applicability it is also a valuable resource for training courses for public sector professionals.New to this Edition:- Streamlined chapter structures and improved pedagogical features that are even more useful for students- A new co-author bringing added insights from organizational science and quantitative methodologies- Revised to address the most up-to-date developments in thinking about leadership in the 21st century

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY NC ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. With so much media and political criticism of their shortcomings and failures, it is easy to overlook the fact that many governments work pretty well much of the time. Great Policy Successes turns the spotlight on instances of public policy that are remarkably successful. It develops a framework for identifying and assessing policy successes, paying attention not just to their programmatic outcomes but also to the quality of the processes by which policies are designed and delivered, the level of support and legitimacy they attain, and the extent to which successful performance endures over time. The bulk of the book is then devoted to 15 detailed case studies of striking policy successes from around the world, including Singapore's public health system, Copenhagen and Melbourne's rise from stilted backwaters to the highly liveable and dynamic urban centres they are today, Brazil's Bolsa Familia poverty relief scheme, the US's GI Bill, and Germany's breakthrough labour market reforms of the 2000s. Each case is set in context, its main actors are introduced, key events and decisions are described, the assessment framework is applied to gauge the nature and level of its success, key contributing factors to success are identified, and potential lessons and future challenges are identified. Purposefully avoiding the kind of heavy theorizing that characterizes many accounts of public policy processes, each case is written in an accessible and narrative style ideally suited for classroom use in conjunction with mainstream textbooks on public policy design, implementation, and evaluation.

A crisis of governance is widespread in western societies. Public administration is caught in a web of personal and organizational inter-dependencies that require continuous awareness and readjustment on the part of its practitioners. Understanding Policy Fiascoes applies policy analysis to come to terms with policy fiascoes, with a full appreciation of its limits. Despite the fact that policy failures may seem universal, they are in fact better understood as social, political and academic constructions. Bovens and'tHart trace how and why certain episodes of public policymaking become labeled as'fiascoes.'They highlight the analytical and political biases that shape our judgments of policy outcomes and the performance of policymakers and institutions.When put in their proper historical, institutional, and policymaking perspective, many policy fiascoes could easily have turned out quite differently. The authors show that the fact that these policy episodes unfolded as they did does not mean that they were inevitable. Careful analysis indicates that a whole series of variables, if not always manageable, can, through careful configurations of decisions, alter the course and outcomes of policies and programs, as well as the post-hoc judgments made about them.In examining public policymaking, certain questions arise: If public policymaking has failed so miserably, what does this tell us about the state of policy analysis? While policymakers are facing a crisis of legitimacy, policy analysis have been forced to reconsider the validity o their knowledge claims and the extent of their impact on the practice of policymaking. Understanding Policy Fiascoes will provide social scientists, policymakers, and political scientists with compelling perspectives on old problems and a path-breaking way to handle new problems.

Leadership has never been more important – and divisive – than it is today. The idea and discourse of the leader remains a critical factor in organizational and societal performance, but there is evident tension between the persistent focus on the critical importance of individual leaders and the increasing emphasis on collective leadership. The Routledge Companion to Leadership provides a survey of the contentious and dynamic discipline of leadership.This collection covers key themes in the field, including advances in leadership theory, leadership in a range of contexts and geographies, leadership failure, leadership process, and leadership development. Topics range from micro studies to wider political analyses of leadership, taking in unusual but important aspects such as portrayals of leadership in architecture, media, and science fiction. Contributions from 61 internationally renowned authors from 16 countries make available the full range of perspectives, approaches, and insights on the idea of leadership. Providing both a social sciences and a psychological approach, these go beyond common themes to offer diverse perspectives on such topics as emotion and leadership, portrayals of leadership. This volume situates leadership debates and evidence within contemporary leadership crises, while ensuring that the explorations of the issues are of enduring relevance.With wide and critical coverage of the key topics and potent contextualization of themes in current events, The Routledge Companion to Leadership is the ideal resource for graduate study in leadership.

The Leadership Capital Index develops a conceptual framework of leadership capital and a diagnostic tool - the Leadership Capital Index (LCI) - to measure and evaluate the fluctuating nature of the leadership capital of leaders. Differing amounts of leadership capital, a combination of skills, relations and reputation, allow leaders to succeed or bring about their failure. This book brings together leading international scholars in the field to engage with the concept of'leadership capital'and use and apply the LCI to a variety of comparative case studies. The book provides an important, timely, and innovative contribution to the now flourishing academic discipline of political leadership studies. The LCI offers a comprehensive yet parsimonious and easily applicable 10 point matrix to examine leadership authority over time and in different political contexts. In each case, leaders'spend'and put their'stock'of authority and support at risk. United States president Lyndon Johnson arm-twisting Congress to put into effect civil rights legislation; Tony Blair taking the United Kingdom into the invasion of Iraq; Angela Merkel committing Germany to a generous reception of refugees: all'spent capital'to forge public policy they believed in. The volume examines how office-holders acquire, consolidate, risk, and lose such capital, and concentrates predominantly on elected'chief executives'at the national level, including majoritarian and consensus systems, multiple and singular cases, and also examines some presidential and sub-national cases. The Leadership Capital Index is an exploratory volume, with chapters providing a series of plausibility probes to see how the LCI framework'performs'as a descriptive and analytical tool.