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Introduction

Edward C. Page and Vincent Wright

in Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States: A Comparative Analysis of Top Officials

It is argued that existing theories and accounts of change in state bureaucracies — which centre mainly on bureaucracy and changing role perceptions — are of little help in understanding how the ... More

It is argued that existing theories and accounts of change in state bureaucracies — which centre mainly on bureaucracy and changing role perceptions — are of little help in understanding how the civil service has developed in modern political systems, and substantially neglect the implications of social and political change for the position of top officials. The aim of this book is to redress this neglect and focus directly on the changing position of senior civil servants in the modern state, and provide evidence on which to base an assessment of the changing political status of senior civil servants in Europe. This introduction starts the process by looking at what might be expected to change vis ‐à ‐vis the political status of senior officials and why, provides a basis for the 11 chapters that follow and presents a picture of substantial diversity.Less

Township Governments as Brokers of Power and Property

You‐tien Hsing

in The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China

Chapter 6 moves to the third type of place examined in this book, the rural edge of the metropolitan region, where the influence of the metropolitan government gives way to ... More

Chapter 6 moves to the third type of place examined in this book, the rural edge of the metropolitan region, where the influence of the metropolitan government gives way to low‐ranking township governments exercising informal power over rural land. Acting as power and property brokers between the state bureaucracy and peasants, township leaders try to avoid scrutiny from above while intensifying downward control over village land to develop illegal industrial, commercial, and residential projects. Townships' power and property brokerage is exemplified by their issuing of homeownership certificates that attract buyers of affordable homes but are not recognized by the state. Townships' limited formal power is secured through construction projects and expanded through the operation of the black market for property.Less

Building Effective Bureaucracies and Promoting Democracy in Kosovo

Elton Skendaj

in Creating Kosovo: International Oversight and the Making of Ethical Institutions

This chapter addresses the role of international interventions in building state bureaucracies and democracy. The crucial factor that linked international insulation to bureaucratic effectiveness was ... More

This chapter addresses the role of international interventions in building state bureaucracies and democracy. The crucial factor that linked international insulation to bureaucratic effectiveness was meritocratic recruitment and promotion. In effective bureaucracies, international administrators stayed on the boards that recruited and promoted according to merit. Moreover, international administrators established bureaucratic rules that motivated performance and penalized corruption. Indeed, public officials learned that they were being evaluated and promoted on the basis of their performance. In Kosovo, when international organizations structured the rules of new bureaucracies while insulating them from political, clientelist pressures, such institutions attracted and retained professional domestic employees, who then performed their tasks more effectively.Less

The Welfare System: Interaction Between Officials and Clients

Ida Susser

in Norman Street: Poverty and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood, Updated Edition

Welfare assistance reflects a crucial aspect of low-income life: interaction with government institutions. Attitudes and roles fostered by the public assistance program indicate the constraining ... More

Welfare assistance reflects a crucial aspect of low-income life: interaction with government institutions. Attitudes and roles fostered by the public assistance program indicate the constraining influence of state bureaucracies, upon which low-income people are commonly dependent. The description presented here of relations between clients and officials and of pressures on each side also stands as a general picture of experiences of low-income people in the United States. Greenpoint–Williamsburg economic life reflected that of the nation from 1975 to 1977. Just as high unemployment, military enlistment, and the CETA program were nationwide phenomena, so was the welfare program. Since reliance on welfare assistance was a more constant factor it the structuring of most low-income households than any particular job situation, it is important to discuss the process and its influences in some detail. This chapter outlines the procedures which an applicant had to follow in order to enroll for public assistance. The focus is primarily on interaction between client and welfare officer, and the officers' perceptions of their role in the welfare bureaucracy are analyzed.Less

Introduction: Patchwork Leviathans

Erin Metz McDonnell

in Patchwork Leviathan: Pockets of Bureaucratic Effectiveness in Developing States

This introductory chapter goes beyond the stereotypical image of dysfunctional public service to argue that many seemingly weak state “leviathans” are instead patchworked. What this means is that ... More

This introductory chapter goes beyond the stereotypical image of dysfunctional public service to argue that many seemingly weak state “leviathans” are instead patchworked. What this means is that they are cobbled together from scarce available resources. They have a wide range of internal variation in organizational capacities sewn loosely together into the semblance of unity. The chapter thus reveals a striking empirical observation with theoretical implications for how to conceptualize states and state capacity: amid general organizational weakness and neopatrimonial politics, there are a few spectacularly effective state agencies dedicating their full working capacity to the routine satisfaction of organizational goals in the public interest. These are the subcultural niches of the bureaucratic ethos that manage to thrive against impressive odds.Less

Origins of Democratic Rule

David Stasavage

in The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

This chapter discusses the culmination of democracy in the establishment of political systems based on competitive elections and universal suffrage. The chapter explores the early forms of democracy ... More

This chapter discusses the culmination of democracy in the establishment of political systems based on competitive elections and universal suffrage. The chapter explores the early forms of democracy that existed in many regions and confirms why modern democracy emerged first in Europe and the United States. It traces the particular trajectory taken by Europe when compared with regions such as China and the Middle East. The chapter examines how Europe's backwardness laid the ground for the rise of modern democracy. It describes early democracy that existed in lieu of a state bureaucracy and as a system in which a ruler governed jointly with a council or assembly that composed of members of society who were themselves independent from the ruler.Less

Cole Blease’s Pardoning Pen: State Power and Penal Reform in South Carolina

Amy Louise Wood

in Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South

examines prison reform efforts in South Carolina under the governorship of Cole Blease in the 1910s to argue that Progressive-era prison reform played out in distinct ways in the South due to the ... More

examines prison reform efforts in South Carolina under the governorship of Cole Blease in the 1910s to argue that Progressive-era prison reform played out in distinct ways in the South due to the region’s class and racial politics. Despite his fierce racism, Blease, in the name of reform, pardoned or paroled more criminals, many of them African American, than any previous governor. Yet, Blease’s use of executive clemency had much more to do with imposing an authoritarian and pre-modern form of power onto state bureaucracy than it did with progressive ideals about the promise of the regulatory state. His approach to prison reform illuminates larger tensions within southern progressivismLess

Glasnost Unleashed: Language Ideologies in the Gorbachev Revolution

Michael S. Gorham

in After Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin

This chapter looks at the concept of “glasnost” in the Gorbachev era, noting how its ambiguity both ensured the success of the policy and served as a rhetorical flash point in the battle between ... More

This chapter looks at the concept of “glasnost” in the Gorbachev era, noting how its ambiguity both ensured the success of the policy and served as a rhetorical flash point in the battle between reform-minded democrats and members of the Soviet bureaucracy, or apparatchiks. In his original use of the term, Mikhail Gorbachev viewed glasnost as a mechanism that, through the more open publicity of various state-related facts and information, would disturb the entrenched party–state bureaucracy, beat back the growing economic stagnation, and give rise to a new form of what he repeatedly called “democratic socialism”—a concept that still envisioned a single-party state run by the Communist Party. Thus, glasnost served as a new party–state ideology that promoted criticism and self-criticism as a means of reviving a stagnant party apparatus and giving a new sense of empowerment to the people—a heightened sense of interest in a restructured socialism.Less

U.S. Army Engineers and the Rise of Cost-Benefit Analysis

Theodore M. Porter

in Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life

This chapter traces the history of cost–benefit analysis in the United States bureaucracy from the 1920s until about 1960. It is not a story of academic research, but of political pressure and ... More

This chapter traces the history of cost–benefit analysis in the United States bureaucracy from the 1920s until about 1960. It is not a story of academic research, but of political pressure and administrative conflict. Cost–benefit methods were introduced to promote procedural regularity and to give public evidence of fairness in the selection of water projects. Early in the century, numbers produced by the Army Corps of Engineers were usually accepted on its authority alone, and there was correspondingly little need for standardization of methods. About 1940, however, economic numbers became objects of bitter controversy, as the Corps was challenged by such powerful interests as utility companies and railroads. The really crucial development in this story was the outbreak of intense bureaucratic conflict between the Corps and other government agencies, especially the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Reclamation. The agencies tried to settle their feuds by harmonizing their economic analyses. When negotiation failed as a strategy for achieving uniformity, they were compelled to try to ground their makeshift techniques in economic rationality. On this account, cost–benefit analysis had to be transformed from a collection of local bureaucratic practices into a set of rationalized economic principles.Less

Merchants and Their Families in the Confederacy, 1861–1863

Frank J. Byrne

in Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865

This chapter examines the condition of merchants and their families in the Confederate South during the period from 1861 to 1863. It explains that the effect of the American Civil War on the southern ... More

This chapter examines the condition of merchants and their families in the Confederate South during the period from 1861 to 1863. It explains that the effect of the American Civil War on the southern commercial population transcended the number of merchants who served and died while fighting for the Confederacy. During this period, Confederate citizens endured material deprivation, loss of independence to a swelling state bureaucracy, and all the personal hazards associated with warfare. Several policies implemented by the Confederate government also had a conspicuous impact on merchant families, particularly conscription.Less

Unravelling of Keating’s plans (1976–99)

Amanda Slevin

in Gas, Oil and the Irish State: Understanding the Dynamics and Conflicts of Hydrocarbon Management

Keating's terms were introduced at a time when interest in North West Europe's hydrocarbon potential was at its peak due to large discoveries in the North Sea. Consequently, some politicians, oil ... More

Keating's terms were introduced at a time when interest in North West Europe's hydrocarbon potential was at its peak due to large discoveries in the North Sea. Consequently, some politicians, oil industry representatives and trade unions anticipated an economic boom in Ireland courtesy of oil and gas exploitation. This chapter discusses hydrocarbon activities onshore and offshore Ireland in the period from 1976 to 1999, connecting these with shifts in the Irish state's model of hydrocarbon management and oil companies' investment strategies. Progressing beyond empirical happenings, this chapter examines the growth in popularity of neoliberal ideology and its influence on Ireland's approach to its gas and oil. Attention to restrictions imposed on state companies like the Irish National Petroleum Corporation, and the encapsulation of a free-market perspective in the 1992 licensing terms, illustrates the impact of prevailing ideologies and global trade on the Irish model of hydrocarbon management. This chapter also considers the oscillating power of interest groups such as the oil industry lobby and the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and contemplates their interactions with different political parties and the state bureaucracy.Less

Weak States Inherited Democracy

David Stasavage

in The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

This chapter argues that early democracy was more likely to prevail when rulers were uncertain about production, when people found it easy to exit, and when rulers needed their people more than their ... More

This chapter argues that early democracy was more likely to prevail when rulers were uncertain about production, when people found it easy to exit, and when rulers needed their people more than their people needed them. It investigates evidence from multiple world regions at different points in time that supports claims that the practice of early democracy was one way for those who ruled to cope with challenges. It also looks into state bureaucracy as substitute for council governance. The chapter talks about Douglass North, the famous economic historian who defined the state as an entity that extracts revenue in exchange for protection. It explains that protection can be defense against outside invaders, insurance against events like famine, and involves certain types of “social protection.”Less

Constructing a Region of Christian Free Enterprise

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf

in Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie

This chapter traces the emergence of a Christian free enterprise vision for the South at the end of the war. For evangelical businessmen, the region seemed a new promised land for growth and ... More

This chapter traces the emergence of a Christian free enterprise vision for the South at the end of the war. For evangelical businessmen, the region seemed a new promised land for growth and investment with a hard-working, low-wage labor force. Christian free-enterprise ideology meshed easily with the goals of corporate executives hoping to take advantage of the lower wages and conservative politics of the South. Moreover, The South was a bulwark against the further spread of liberal, New Deal politics. Meanwhile, for white Protestant evangelicals, Christian free enterprise could protect the region against the threats that modernism and state-centered bureaucracies posed to the southern way of life.Less

How Democracy Disappeared in the Islamic World

David Stasavage

in The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

This chapter assesses the compatibility of Islam with democracy and points out why modern democracy has a very weak track record in the Middle East. It explores the deep roots of governance in the ... More

This chapter assesses the compatibility of Islam with democracy and points out why modern democracy has a very weak track record in the Middle East. It explores the deep roots of governance in the Middle East and shows how early democracy was actually the norm in pre-Islamic Arabia until after the Islamic conquests. It also mentions the Koranic principle of shura that embodied the idea that rulers should be collectively selected and consult those they governed. The chapter shows how early practices of democracy died out under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates for reasons that had little to do with religious doctrine. It describes Umayyad and Abbasid rulers that inherited a state bureaucracy, which allowed them to pursue the autocratic alternative.Less

Welfare as Charity

in Measuring Up: A History of Living Standards in Mexico, 1850-1950

This chapter examines the history of welfare as charity provision in Mexico. It shows how the state authorities were blinded by their anticlerical animosities and forced the Catholic Church to sell ... More

This chapter examines the history of welfare as charity provision in Mexico. It shows how the state authorities were blinded by their anticlerical animosities and forced the Catholic Church to sell its assets which reduced its capabilities of serving the needy during the period 1850 –1950. It also explains that though several secular private welfare institutions emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century they failed to fill the void left by Catholic charitable enterprise. This chapter also mentions that the growth of the secular welfare institutions was hindered by state bureaucracy and they were not granted legal personality until the late 1940s.Less

Overview and Final Conclusions

in Measuring Up: A History of Living Standards in Mexico, 1850-1950

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of living standards in Mexico during the period from 1850 to 1950. It discusses the reasons for the continuing inequality in health ... More

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of living standards in Mexico during the period from 1850 to 1950. It discusses the reasons for the continuing inequality in health services and highlights the negative impact of state bureaucracy on welfare and poverty alleviation programs. This chapter also argues that the evolution of living standards with regard to poverty and inequality is the result of political decisions as much as economic performance, scientific advances, and technological innovations.Less

Comedy and Error

David Vincent

in I Hope I Don't Intrude: Privacy and its Dilemmas in Nineteenth-Century Britain

The concluding chapter focuses on two issues. Firstly it considers why a comic figure should come to embody so much of the debate about privacy. It examines the growth of the bureaucratic state that ... More

The concluding chapter focuses on two issues. Firstly it considers why a comic figure should come to embody so much of the debate about privacy. It examines the growth of the bureaucratic state that commenced in the late 1820s, concluding that the threat to the individual and domestic archive from government was less than most accounts assume. The change in surveillance systems was gradual, and the nature of liberal governmentality generated a reluctance to inquire in detail into personal lives in the face of the rowdy defence of the home by even the poorest in the community. Secondly, the chapter focuses on the frequency with which those prying on domestic secrets came to the wrong conclusions. It challenges the long-standing treatment of Bentham’s Panopticon as the model of modern surveillance and argues that there is a need to bring communication theory to bear on private discourse.Less