Books about Bureaucratic from Amazon.com

A case study of development in the Thaba-Tseka district of Lesotho during the period 1975 to 1984, which looks at the workings of the development industry in the country, and in particular at one development project..
Price: $18.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many questioned whether the large number of political appointees in the Federal Emergency Management Agency contributed to the agency's poor handling of the catastrophe, ultimately costing hundreds of lives and causing immeasurable pain and suffering. The Politics of Presidential Appointments examines in depth how and why presidents use political appointees and how their choices impact government performance--for better or worse.

One way presidents can influence the permanent bureaucracy is by filling key posts with people who are sympathetic to their policy goals. But if the president's appointees lack competence and an agency fails in its mission--as with Katrina--the president is accused of employing his friends and allies to the detriment of the public. Through case studies and cutting-edge analysis, David Lewis takes a fascinating look at presidential appointments dating back to the 1960s to learn which jobs went to appointees, which agencies were more likely to have appointees, how the use of appointees varied by administration, and how it affected agency performance. He argues that presidents politicize even when it hurts performance--and often with support from Congress--because they need agencies to be responsive to presidential direction. He shows how agency missions and personnel--and whether they line up with the president's vision--determine which agencies presidents target with appointees, and he sheds new light on the important role patronage plays in appointment decisions.

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Price: $21.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Everyone has trouble with bureaucracy Citizens and politicians have trouble controlling the runaway bureaucratic machine. Managers have trouble managing it. Employees dislike working in it. Clients can't get the goods from it. Teachers have difficulty getting a grip on it.Optimists argue that soon all of this will be fixed. The new Fifth Edition of Ralph P. Hummel's classic text maintains just the opposite - that despite all the current rhetoric from proponents of total quality management, corporate reengineering, and the new public management, it's still "business as usual" for bureaucracies. The persistent reality of organizational structure remains resilient in the face of feel-good trends and values.For this edition the book has been thoroughly revised and updated, with two key changes: each of the six core chapters has been trimmed and edited to consolidate and streamline the important organizational theory developments since the book's initial publication; and, each chapter contains newly added critiques of the postmodern theory of modern organizations, pursuing the theme that postmodernism covers up the persistent reality of organizational structure..
Price: $34.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Until now political scientists have devoted little attention to the origins of American bureaucracy and the relationship between bureaucratic and interest group politics. In this pioneering book, Daniel Carpenter contributes to our understanding of institutions by presenting a unified study of bureaucratic autonomy in democratic regimes. He focuses on the emergence of bureaucratic policy innovation in the United States during the Progressive Era, asking why the Post Office Department and the Department of Agriculture became politically independent authors of new policy and why the Interior Department did not. To explain these developments, Carpenter offers a new theory of bureaucratic autonomy grounded in organization theory, rational choice models, and network concepts.

According to the author, bureaucracies with unique goals achieve autonomy when their middle-level officials establish reputations among diverse coalitions for effectively providing unique services. These coalitions enable agencies to resist political control and make it costly for politicians to ignore the agencies' ideas. Carpenter assesses his argument through a highly innovative combination of historical narratives, statistical analyses, counterfactuals, and carefully structured policy comparisons. Along the way, he reinterprets the rise of national food and drug regulation, Comstockery and the Progressive anti-vice movement, the emergence of American conservation policy, the ascent of the farm lobby, the creation of postal savings banks and free rural mail delivery, and even the congressional Cannon Revolt of 1910..
Price: $23.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The third title in our popular "Parr/Nazraeli Series of Ten" is Jan Bannings "Bureaucratics." This book offers a comparative study of the culture and symbols of state civil administrations - the institutions through which citizens are generally confronted with the state. Eight countries, based on political, cultural and historical considerations, are represented here: Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, Yemen, and the United States. The subjects in the photographs are all civil servants holding executive power. The vast majority are appointed (not elected), in different services and at different levels: from fiscal authorities to police, from governors to local clerks. Each subject is posed behind his or her desk, within their bureaux: the rooms from which they exercise their (substantial or very limited) power. Jan Banning (born in Almelo, the Netherlands in 1954) is an historian and photographer, specializing in documentary photography. The author of several books, his work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe and the United States..
Price: $47.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]