The success or failure of empires, nation-states, and city-states often rests on the relationship between bureaucracy and politicians. In this provocative and timely volume, editor Ali Farazmand examines the myriad relationships between politicians and bureaucrats and how they affect modern governance. This book is organized around the major themes of professionalism, bureaucracy, governance, and the relationship between career bureaucrats/higher civil servants and political appointees/politicians under presidential and parliamentary systems. After introducing the basic elements of bureaucracies in Part I, the book discusses the relations between bureaucrats and politicians in presidential systems in Part II as well as in parliamentary systems in Part III. This original and up-to-date book will fill a gap in the literature on the relationship between bureaucrats and politicians in modern governance and public administration. It can be used as a primary or supplementary text at the undergraduate and graduate level for those interested in public administration, comparative public policy, political science, and government.

This book is the immediate result of the co-operation of a great number of scholars in the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG). NIG is an interuniversity research school. As such it has a double task. In addition to offering a Ph.D program to students in Public Administration it also is a research institute in which a great number of scholars from seven Dutch universities participate and work on a common research program. The chapters in this book are all products of the research program that started in 1995. This program had the ambition to explore the frontiers of the discipline in two respects. First by studying a number of recent developments in society and their consequences for the functioning of government. These consequences can be summarised as the development of a system of multi level and multi actor governance. Second, by contributing to the knowledge of institutions, both by studying what factors are most important in the formation and change of institutions and by studying the effects of institutions on the behaviour of actors in different political and administrative settings. Most contributions to this volume either have their origin in conferences organized by the NIG or were published as an NIG working paper. We are grateful to Marcia Clifford and Connie Hoekstra who prepared the final version of the manuscript, to Ian Priestnall who took care of the language editing and to an anonymous reviewer whose comments were gratefully used.

This title examines the institutions and principal processes involved in contemporary Irish government and public administration.

This substantially revised 7th edition of a classic text includes a new chapter on globalization and regionalization and broader coverage of democratic politics, interests and movements; of the media; of social and cultural influences on political behaviour and of public management. It has been systematically revised and updated throughout in the accessible down-to-earth style that has made it such a popular student choice for over 30 years.