Governing

Agencies and policies instituted to streamline Ottawa's planning process instead concentrate power in the hands of the Prime Minister, more powerful in Canadian politics than the U.S. President in America. Riveting, startling, and indispensable reading.

What does it really take to govern effectively? Michael Wernick, a career public servant with experience working at the highest levels of Canadian government, shares tips, insider knowledge, and essential advice in this first-ever practical governance handbook. From choosing a Cabinet and getting the most out of it, to delivering on the prime minister’s mandate letter, readers will get a close-up look at how day-to-day political work actually happens. Wernick’s three decades "in the room" with prime ministers, cabinet ministers, and other members of government make this a must-read not only for politicians, but for anyone who aspires to understand them.

There are lots of books and articles on governance in general. Many can be helpful, but few, maybe very few, actually show or explain a cohesive and comprehensive system of governance. Without a unified and encompassing system, boards will never be able to maximize their contribution to the organization and its purpose for existence. The purpose of this book is to make sure that they can.There is only one system that we have found which does address the above problem. That system is Policy Governance®.If you are on a Policy Governance board or any other type of board, this book will empower your governing.Based on input from multiple boards and ten's, and possibly more than a hundred, training sessions with boards we have determined that Policy Governance concepts make a positive change in a board's impact and that two specific insights can amplify that impact: 1.To understand and maximize the system's benefits, a board must deeply understand the principles of the system, the implications of those principles and their "1+1=5" synergy when used as a set.2.For a governing board to sustain this particular system, it needs to own it. The model must be truly owned by the board, using both ongoing study and diligence. It must become the board's culture, not just its governing system. This book will provide insight into the importance of the principles, their synergies as a whole, and, ultimately, amplifying the board's value and empowering the organization's purpose.

The region is back in town. Galloping urbanization has pushed beyond historical notions of metropolitanism. City-regions have experienced, in Edward Soja’s terms, “an epochal shift in the nature of the city and the urbanization process, marking the beginning of the end of the modern metropolis as we knew it.” Governing Cities Through Regions broadens and deepens our understanding of metropolitan governance through an innovative comparative project that engages with Anglo-American, French, and German literatures on the subject of regional governance. It expands the comparative angle from issues of economic competiveness and social cohesion to topical and relevant fields such as housing and transportation, and it expands comparative work on municipal governance to the regional scale. With contributions from established and emerging international scholars of urban and regional governance, the volume covers conceptual topics and case studies that contrast the experience of a range of Canadian metropolitan regions with a strong selection of European regions. It starts from assumptions of limited conversion among regions across the Atlantic but is keenly aware of the remarkable differences in urban regions’ path dependencies in which the larger processes of globalization and neo-liberalization are situated and materialized.

With the fields of public administration and public management suffering a crisis of relevance, Alasdair Roberts offers a provocative assessment of their shortfalls. The two fields, he finds, no longer address urgent questions of governance in a turbulent and dangerous world. Strategies for Governing offers a new path forward for research, teaching, and practice. Leaders of states, Roberts writes, are constantly reinventing strategies for governing. Experts in public administration must give advice on the design as well as execution of strategies that effective, robust, and principled. Strategies for Governing challenges us to reinvigorate public administration and public management, preparing the fields for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

World's foremost experts explain how polycentric thinking can enhance societal attempts to govern climate change, for researchers, practitioners, advanced students. This title is also available as Open Access.

This book traces three decades of securitization in Angola. As a governing strategy during war and peacetime, it muted the aspirations of those on opposing sides, distorted the state, emboldened elites and redefined the identity of Angolans. Through this lens, Paula Cristina Roque provides an original account of Angola's post-conflict state-building. Securitization protected the interests of President dos Santos, the ruling MPLA party and the elites supporting the regime. Angola's array of security forces and infrastructure provided an alternative to a fully functioning executive, at national, provincial and local levels. The intrusive way in which any form of dissent or activism was crushed allowed the presidency to control the direction and narrative of the post-war years. But the facade of democracy, development and stability hid a very different reality for the majority of Angolans, who remained poor, disenfranchised and marginalized. Roque explores the inner workings of the intelligence services, army and presidential guard, explaining the trajectory of a survivalist and fearful regime presiding over scarcities and injustices. She shows that the survival of national security and governing elites was the highest priority. The 'shadows' held far more power than institutions, and weakened them-widening the gap between government and governed.

Studies how the Chinese Communist Party uses and reforms its taxation institution to promote economic growth and governance quality while limits the emerging capitalists' political demand