Governments have always required large public organizations, or bureaucracies, to deliver on their promises. Yet most people leading and managing those agencies lack understanding of the full toolkit of values, insights and findings that are necessary. Considering how public administration can learn from a wide range of disciplines ranging from history and the humanities to management and the social sciences, Marc Holzer delineates new ways of transforming organizations and building trust in governments.

When we think about government, our thoughts are almost invariably about politics. Politicians deserve the attention they get, serving as they do at the top of federal, state, and local government. But there is a downside to focusing on politics, which is that we pay no attention to the management of our public institutions. Author Richard Clay Wilson, Jr., a former city manager, argues that the career managers who actually operate the entities of government have the capacity to significantly upgrade governmental performance. Before that can happen, though, we must rethink the roles of elected officials and career managers. This book points the way.

This volume explores new directions of governance and public policy arising both from interpretive political science and those who engage with interpretive ideas. It conceives governance as the various policies and outcomes emerging from the increasing salience of neoclassical and institutional economics or, neoliberalism and new institutionalisms. In doing so, it suggests that that the British state consists of a vast array of meaningful actions that may coalesce into contingent, shifting, and contestable practices. Based on original fieldwork, it examines the myriad ways in which local actors - civil servants, mid-level public managers, and street level bureaucrats - have interpreted elite policy narratives and thus forged practices of governance on the ground. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of governance and public policy.

Striving to redirect the study of public administration toward innovation and imagination, deliberative democracy, knowledge transfer, policy making, and ethics and values--topics which for too long have been overshadowed by traditional problems of efficency, productivity, and instrumental-rational solutions--this book of diverse essays is certain to invigorate both scholarship and practice. Eighteen leading international scholars evaluate public administration's historical development and explore the significance and value trends in public administration from a variety of cutting-edge theoretical and practical perspectives. Aimed at students and practitioners alike, this collection of essays is certain to stimulate critical thinking and discussion of public administration's aims, mechanisms, and overall effectiveness, as well as the role it plays in democratizing countries.

When we think about government, our thoughts are almost invariably about politics. Politicians deserve the attention they get, serving as they do at the top of federal, state, and local government. But there is a downside to focusing on politics, which is that we pay no attention to the management of our public institutions. Author Richard Clay Wilson, Jr., a former city manager, argues that the career managers who actually operate the entities of government have the capacity to significantly upgrade governmental performance. Before that can happen, though, we must rethink the roles of elected officials and career managers. This book points the way.

While a growing private sector and a vibrant civil society can help compensate for the shortcomings of India’s public sector, the state is—and will remain—indispensable in delivering basic governance. In Rethinking Public Institutions in India, distinguished political and economic thinkers critically assess a diverse array of India’s core federal institutions, from the Supreme Court and Parliament to the Election Commission and the civil services. Relying on interdisciplinary approaches and decades of practitioner experience, this volume interrogates the capacity of India’s public sector to navigate the far-reaching transformations the country is experiencing. An insightful introduction to the functioning of Indian democracy, it offers a roadmap for carrying out fundamental reforms that will be necessary for India to build a reinvigorated state for the twenty-first century.