Bureaucracy and Society in Transition

Bureaucracy and Society in Transition PDF

Author: Haldor Byrkjeflot

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 178743284X

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Despite criticism of inefficiencies and unlimited growth, bureaucracies still fill crucial positions in modern societies. This volume examines ‘varieties in bureaucracies’ across Europe, with a specific focus on the Nordic region.

Bureaucracy and Society in Transition

Bureaucracy and Society in Transition PDF

Author: Haldor Byrkjeflot

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1787439224

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Despite criticism of inefficiencies and unlimited growth, bureaucracies still fill crucial positions in modern societies. This volume examines ‘varieties in bureaucracies’ across Europe, with a specific focus on the Nordic region.

Transitions from Authoritarianism

Transitions from Authoritarianism PDF

Author: Randall Baker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2001-10-30

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0313073503

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Baker and his colleagues provide a blend of the theoretical and the empirical evidence in an examination of the nature of bureaucracy under non-democratic, authoritarian forms of government, whether on the right, as in Portugal, or the left, as in Bulgaria. In all these instances, the bureaucracy was constructed to serve the distorted interests of centralized, unaccountable power. Following the remarkable spread of democracy in the seventies in Iberia, the eighties in much of Latin America, parts of Asia and Africa, and the nineties in the former USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries, the main focus was on reforming the economy and the political institutions. Distinguished scholars concentrate on the inherited bureaucracy--the arm of government with which the people most often have to deal. They highlight the undemocratic, and sometimes antidemocratic, nature of the civil service that is supposed to serve democracy. Others consider the nature of reform as experienced, and as needed, why there is no major policy for real reform of the bureaucracy in many countries, and the similar experience of reforming from the left and the right. Contributors discuss specific experiences as case studies and examine the more general question of what lessons can be learned from this unique perspective into comparative public administration reform. Essential reading for scholars, students, policy makers, and others involved with comparative government and public administration.

The Innovative Bureaucracy

The Innovative Bureaucracy PDF

Author: Alexander Styhre

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-02-01

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1134156413

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Highly original and based on unique empirical research in the fields of organization theory and organization behaviour, this work makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on bureaucracy and innovation. Focusing on a study of two major companies working with innovation and new product development Styhre's critical analysis pushes the bound

Brokers and Bureaucrats

Brokers and Bureaucrats PDF

Author: Timothy M. Frye

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2009-11-12

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0472023489

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A classic problem of social order prompts the central questions of this book: Why are some groups better able to govern themselves than others? Why do state actors sometimes delegate governing power to other bodies? How do different organizations including the state, the business community, and protection rackets come to govern different markets? Scholars have used both sociological and economic approaches to study these questions; here Timothy Frye argues for a different approach. He seeks to extend the theoretical and empirical scope of theories of self-governance beyond groups that exist in isolation from the state and suggests that social order is primarily a political problem. Drawing on extensive interviews, surveys, and other sources, Frye addresses these question by studying five markets in contemporary Russia, including the currency futures, universal and specialized commodities, and equities markets. Using a model that depicts the effect of state policy on the prospects for self-governance, he tests theories of institutional performance and offers a political explanation for the creation of social capital, the formation of markets, and the source of legal institutions in the postcommunist world. In doing so, Frye makes a major contribution to the study of states and markets. The book will be important reading for academic political scientists, economists (especially those who study the New Institutional Economics), legal scholars, sociologists, business-people, journalists, and students interested in transitions. Timothy Frye is Assistant Professor of Political Science, The Ohio State University.

Patchwork Leviathan

Patchwork Leviathan PDF

Author: Erin Metz McDonnell

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-03-03

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0691197369

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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.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy PDF

Author: Ludwig Von Mises

Publisher: Dead Authors Society

Published: 2017-04-25

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 9781773230467

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Author Ludwig von Mises was concerned with the spread of socialist ideals and the increasing bureaucratization of economic life. While he does not deny the necessity of certain bureaucratic structures for the smooth operation of any civilized state, he disagrees with the extent to which it has come to dominate the public life of European countries and the United States. The author's purpose is to demonstrate that the negative aspects of bureaucracy are not so much a result of bad policies or corruption as the public tends to think but are the bureaucratic structures due to the very tasks these structures have to deal with. The main body of the book is therefore devoted to a comparison between private enterprise on the one hand and bureaucratic agencies/public enterprise on the other.