Patchwork Leviathan
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Patchwork Leviathan
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Author : Erin Metz McDonnell
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2020-03-03
Patchwork Leviathan written by Erin Metz McDonnell and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-03-03 with Business & Economics categories.
Corruption and ineffectiveness are often expected of public servants in developing countries. However, some groups within these states are distinctly more effective and public oriented than the rest. Why? Patchwork Leviathan explains how a few spectacularly effective state organizations manage to thrive amid general institutional weakness and succeed against impressive odds. Drawing on the Hobbesian image of the state as Leviathan, Erin Metz McDonnell argues that many seemingly weak states actually have a wide range of administrative capacities. Such states are in fact patchworks sewn loosely together from scarce resources into the semblance of unity. McDonnell demonstrates that when the human, cognitive, and material resources of bureaucracy are rare, it is critically important how they are distributed. Too often, scarce bureaucratic resources are scattered throughout the state, yielding little effect. McDonnell reveals how a sufficient concentration of resources clustered within particular pockets of a state can be transformative, enabling distinctively effective organizations to emerge from a sea of ineffectiveness. Patchwork Leviathan offers a comprehensive analysis of successful statecraft in institutionally challenging environments, drawing on cases from contemporary Ghana and Nigeria, mid-twentieth-century Kenya and Brazil, and China in the early twentieth century. Based on nearly two years of pioneering fieldwork in West Africa, this incisive book explains how these highly effective pockets differ from the Western bureaucracies on which so much state and organizational theory is based, providing a fresh answer to why well-funded global capacity-building reforms fail—and how they can do better.
Markets With Bureaucratic Characteristics
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Author : Yingyao Wang
language : en
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Release Date : 2024-05-21
Markets With Bureaucratic Characteristics written by Yingyao Wang and has been published by Columbia University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-05-21 with Political Science categories.
China’s breathtaking economic development has been driven by bureaucrats. Even as the country transitioned away from socialist planning toward a market economy, the economic bureaucracy retained a striking degree of influence and control over crafting and implementing policy. Yet bureaucrats are often dismissed as faceless and inconsequential, their role neglected in favor of party leaders’ top-down rule or bottom-up initiatives. Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics offers a new account of economic policy making in China over the past four decades that reveals how bureaucrats have spurred large-scale transformations from within. Yingyao Wang demonstrates how competition among bureaucrats motivated by careerism has led to the emergence of new policy approaches. Second-tier economic bureaucrats instituted distinctive—and often conflicting—“policy paradigms” aimed at securing their standing and rewriting China’s long-term development plans for their own benefit. Emerging from the middle levels of the bureaucracy, these policy paradigms ultimately reorganized the Chinese economy and reshaped state-market relations. Drawing on fine-grained biographical and interview data, Wang traces how officials coalesced around shared career trajectories, generational experiences, and social networks to create new alliances and rivalries. Shedding new light on the making and trajectory of China’s ambitious economic reforms, this book also provides keen sociological insight into the relations among bureaucracy, states, and markets.
After Positivism
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Author : Nicholas Hoover Wilson
language : en
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Release Date : 2024-04-21
After Positivism written by Nicholas Hoover Wilson and has been published by Columbia University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-04-21 with Social Science categories.
What is the value of comparison for research in historical sociology? Today, social scientists regularly express doubt about the positivist premises that have long justified comparison’s use: that cases can be unproblematically compared as though they are independent of one another, that comparison can reliably yield valid causal inference, and that comparative methods can grapple with questions of meaning, sequence, and process that are central to historical explanation. Yet they remain reluctant to abandon comparison altogether, not least because comparisons are still manifestly useful in the research process. After Positivism presents a bold new set of warrants and methodologies for comparison that takes these criticisms fully into account. The contributors to this book marshal a wide array of postpositivist approaches to knowledge to reconstruct the analytic potential of comparison for a new generation of social scientists. In addition to providing fresh answers to classic questions about case selection and causal inference, authors ponder the role comparison plays in a world where social phenomena are demonstrably time-, space-, and concept-dependent; where causation is typically conjunctural; where social structures and groups emerge and die; and where important objects of inquiry can be understood only in terms of relationships, emergent properties, or contingent and irregular effects. Engaging and timely, this book will be of interest to all those who seek to improve our explanations of historical change in social-scientific research.
Problem Solving Sociology
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Author : Monica Prasad
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2021-10-15
Problem Solving Sociology written by Monica Prasad and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-10-15 with Reference categories.
A broad resource that offers tools for how to conduct problem-solving sociology in order to deepen and reformulate our understanding of society. Most students arrive in graduate sociology programs eager to engage with the pressing social and political issues of the day. Yet that initial enthusiasm does not always survive the professional socialization of graduate school. In Problem-Solving Sociology, Monica Prasad shows graduate students and early career sociologists how to conduct research that uses sociological theory to help solve real-world problems, and how to use problem-solving to improve sociological theory. Prasad discusses how to be objective when examining issues of injustice and oppression, and provides methodological strategies and plenty of exercises for research aimed at creating change. She gives examples throughout of problem-solving research conducted at all levels, from undergraduate theses to the major figures of the discipline. She also considers how to respond to some common objections; where problem-solving fits into the landscape of sociological practice; and how to build a life in problem-solving.
Pockets Of Effectiveness And The Politics Of State Building And Development In Africa
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Author : Sam Hickey
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2023-07-03
Pockets Of Effectiveness And The Politics Of State Building And Development In Africa written by Sam Hickey and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-07-03 with Social Science categories.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-BC-ND 4.0 International License. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Why do certain parts of the state in Africa work so effectively despite operating in difficult governance contexts? How do 'pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness' emerge and become sustained over time? And what does this tell us about the prospects for state-building and development in Africa? Repeated economic and social crises have demanded that development thinkers and policy actors have had to engage with the critical role that states play in delivering development. Pockets of Effectiveness and the Politics of State-building and Development in Africa shows that politics is the driving factor that shapes how well state agencies perform their roles. It deploys a new conceptual framework – the power domains approach – to explore the shifting fortunes of key state agencies in five countries – Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia – over the past three decades. Our original research reveals when, how and why political rulers decide to build effective state agencies and enable them to deliver certain forms of economic development – often through forming strategic coalitions with senior bureaucrats and with international support – and also when this support falters and gives way to a politics of survival. Comparative analysis identifies two potential trajectories towards state-building in Africa, each shaped by different configurations of social and political power. The book critiques the role that international development agencies have played in (mis)shaping the state in Africa and suggests a new strategic agenda for building the state capacities required to deliver sustained development at the current juncture. The book closes with critical commentaries from two leading scholars in the field, to help place our work in context and establish the next steps for research and strategy in this increasingly important area of development theory and practice.
The Government Analytics Handbook
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Author : Daniel Rogger
language : en
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Release Date : 2023-10-20
The Government Analytics Handbook written by Daniel Rogger and has been published by World Bank Publications this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-10-20 with Business & Economics categories.
The Government Analytics Handbook presents frontier evidence and practitioner insights on how to leverage data to strengthen public administration. Covering a range of microdata sources—such as administrative data and public servant surveys—as well as tools and resources for undertaking the analytics, it transforms the ability of governments to take a data-informed approach to diagnose and improve how public organizations work. Readers can order the book as a single volume in print or digital formats, or visit worldbank.org/governmentanalytics for modular access and additional hands-on tools. The Handbook is a must-have for practitioners, policy makers, academics, and government agencies. “Governments have long been assessed using aggregate governance indicators, giving us little insight into their diversity and how they can practically be improved. This pioneering handbook shows how microdata can be used to give scholars and practitioners granular and real insights into how states work, and practical guidance on the process of state-building.†? —Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University, author of State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century “The Government Analytics Handbook is the most comprehensive work on practically building government administration I have ever seen, helping practitioners to change public administration for the better.†? —Francisco Gaetani, Special Secretary for State Transformation, Government of Brazil “The machinery of the state is central to a country’s prosperity. This handbook provides insights and methodological tools for creating a better shared understanding of the realities of a state, to support the redesign of institutions, and improve the quality of public administration.†? —James Robinson, University of Chicago, coauthor of Why Nations Fail
Managing Organizations To Sustain Passion For Public Service
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Author : James L. Perry
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2020-12-17
Managing Organizations To Sustain Passion For Public Service written by James L. Perry and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-12-17 with Business & Economics categories.
New behavioural science knowledge about motivation in public service from a pioneer of the field.
An Ungovernable Foe
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Author : Natalie B. Aviles
language : en
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Release Date : 2024-01-23
An Ungovernable Foe written by Natalie B. Aviles and has been published by Columbia University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-01-23 with Political Science categories.
In American politics, medical innovation is often considered the domain of the private sector. Yet some of the most significant scientific and health breakthroughs of the past century have emerged from government research institutes. The U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) is tasked with both understanding and eradicating cancer—and its researchers have developed a surprising expertise in virus research and vaccine development. An Ungovernable Foe examines seventy years of federally funded scientific breakthroughs in the laboratories of the NCI to shed new light on how bureaucratic organizations nurture innovation. Natalie B. Aviles analyzes research and policy efforts around the search for a viral cause of leukemia in the 1960s, the discovery of HIV and the development of AIDS drugs in the 1980s, and the invention of the HPV vaccine in the 1990s. She argues that the NCI transformed generations of researchers into innovative public servants who have learned to balance their scientific and bureaucratic missions. These “scientist-bureaucrats” are simultaneously committed to conducting cutting-edge research and stewarding the nation’s investment in cancer research, and as a result they have developed an unparalleled expertise. Aviles demonstrates how the interplay of science, politics, and administration shaped the NCI into a mission-oriented agency that enabled significant breakthroughs in cancer research—and in the process, she shows how organizational cultures indelibly stamp scientific work.
Patching Development
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Author : Rajesh Veeraraghavan
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2021-12-16
Patching Development written by Rajesh Veeraraghavan and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-12-16 with Political Science categories.
Diving into an original and unusually positive case study from India, Patching Development shows how development programs can be designed to work. How can development programs deliver benefits to marginalized citizens in ways that expand their rights and freedoms? Political will and good policy design are critical but often insufficient due to resistance from entrenched local power systems. In Patching Development, Rajesh Veeraraghavan presents an ethnography of one of the largest development programs in the world, the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and examines NREGA's implementation in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. He finds that the local system of power is extremely difficult to transform, not because of inertia, but because of coercive counter strategy from actors at the last mile and their ability to exploit information asymmetries. Upper-level NREGA bureaucrats in Andhra Pradesh do not possess the capacity to change the power axis through direct confrontation with local elites, but instead have relied on a continuous series of responses that react to local implementation and information, a process of patching development. Patching development is a top-down, fine-grained, iterative socio-technical process that makes local information about implementation visible through technology and enlists participation from marginalized citizens through social audits. These processes are neither neat nor orderly and have led to a contentious sphere where the exercise of power over documents, institutions and technology is intricate, fluid and highly situated. A highly original account with global significance, this book casts new light on the challenges and benefits of using information and technology in novel ways to implement development programs.
Varieties Of Clientelism
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Author : Edward Aspinall
language : en
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Release Date : 2022-12-26
Varieties Of Clientelism written by Edward Aspinall and has been published by Taylor & Francis this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-12-26 with Political Science categories.
Clientelism is a prominent feature of many of the world’s democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes. Yet the comparative study of this practice, which involves exchanging personal favours for electoral support, remains strikingly underdeveloped. This book makes the case that clientelistic politics take different forms in different countries, and that this variation matters for understanding democracy, elections, and governance. Involving collaboration by experienced observers of politics in several countries – Mexico, Ghana, Sudan to Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines, Caribbean and Pacific Island states, and Malaysia – the chapters in this volume unpack the concept of clientelism and show that it is possible to identify different types of patronage democracies. The book proposes a comparative framework that focuses on the networks that politicians use, the type of resources they hand out, their degree of control over the distribution of state resources, and shows that the comparative study of a key informal dimension of politics offers much analytical promise for scholars of democracy and governance. Varieties of Clientelism is essential reading for scholars and students interested in clientelism, patronage democracies, comparative political economy, as well as party politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Democratization.