Latin America suffered a profound state crisis in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide variety of institutional or 'second generation' reforms. 'The State of State Reform in Latin America' reviews and assesses the outcomes of these less studied institutional reforms. This book examines four major areas of institutional reform: a. political institutions and the state organization; b. fiscal institutions, such as budget, tax and decentralization institutions; c. public institutions in charge of sectoral economic policies (financial, industrial, and infrastructure); and d. social sector institutions (pensions, social protection, and education). In each of these areas, the authors summarize the reform objectives, describe and measure their scope, assess the main outcomes, and identify the obstacles for implementation, especially those of an institutional nature.

State Building in Latin America diverges from existing scholarship in developing explanations both for why state-building efforts in the region emerged and for their success or failure. First, Latin American state leaders chose to attempt concerted state-building only where they saw it as the means to political order and economic development. Fragmented regionalism led to the adoption of more laissez-faire ideas and the rejection of state-building. With dominant urban centers, developmentalist ideas and state-building efforts took hold, but not all state-building projects succeeded. The second plank of the book's argument centers on strategies of bureaucratic appointment to explain this variation. Filling administrative ranks with local elites caused even concerted state-building efforts to flounder, while appointing outsiders to serve as administrators underpinned success. Relying on extensive archival evidence, the book traces how these factors shaped the differential development of education, taxation, and conscription in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.

Analysts and policymakers often decry the failure of institutions to accomplish their stated purpose. Bringing together leading scholars of Latin American politics, this volume helps us understand why. The volume offers a conceptual and theoretical framework for studying weak institutions. It introduces different dimensions of institutional weakness and explores the origins and consequences of that weakness. Drawing on recent research on constitutional and electoral reform, executive-legislative relations, property rights, environmental and labor regulation, indigenous rights, squatters and street vendors, and anti-domestic violence laws in Latin America, the volume's chapters show us that politicians often design institutions that they cannot or do not want to enforce or comply with. Challenging existing theories of institutional design, the volume helps us understand the logic that drives the creation of weak institutions, as well as the conditions under which they may be transformed into institutions that matter.

A state-of-the-art, one-stop resource, Public Administration in South Asia: India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan examines public administration issues and advances in the Indian subcontinent. The book fulfills a critical need. These nations have the largest public administration programs in South Asia, yet existing knowledge on them is fragmented at best. Bringing together leading scholars from these countries, this book provides both an insider perspective and a scholarly look at the challenges and accomplishments in the region. Focusing on the machinery of government, the book explores questions such as: What is the history of public administration development? How are major decisions made in the agencies? Why are anti-corruption efforts so much a challenge? What is the significance of intergovernmental relations? What is the success of administrative reform? What are examples of successful social development programs? How successful is e-government, and what are its challenges? Why is civil service reform difficult to achieve? How is freedom of information being used as a means to combat corruption and invoke grassroots activism? What can be learned from the successes and failures? While public administration practice and education have become considerably professionalized in the last decade, a sufficiently in-depth and well-rounded reference on public administration in these countries is sorely lacking. Most available books tackle only aspects of public administration such as administrative reforms, civil service, economic developments, or public policy, and are country specific. None provide the in-depth analysis of the sphere of public action in South Asia found in this book. It supplies an understanding of how public administration can be either the source of, or solution to, so many of the problems and achievements in the Indian subcontinent.

This book represents a powerful analysis of the challenges of metropolitan governance in all its messiness and complexity. It examines Latin American metropolitan governance by focusing on the issue of public service provision and comparatively examining five of the largest and most complex urban agglomerations in the region: Buenos Aires, Bogota, Lima, Mexico City and Santiago. The volume identifies and discusses the most pressing challenges associated with metropolitan coordination and the coverage, quality and financial sustainability of service delivery. It also reveals a number of spatial inequalities associated with inadequate provision, which may perpetuate poverty and other inequalities. Metropolitan Governance in Latin America will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers and policymakers tackling themes of urban planning, spatial inequality, public service provision and Latin American urban development.

The past two decades have been marked by a period of substantial and often fundamental change in public administration. Critically reflecting on the utility of scholarly theory and the extent to which government practices inform the development of this theory, the Handbook of Public Administration was a landmark publication which served as an essential guide for both the practice of public administration today and its on-going development as an academic discipline. The Concise Paperback Edition provides a selection of 30 of the original articles in an accessible paperback format and includes a new introduction by B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre. It is an essential point of reference for all students of public administration.

This innovative Handbook offers a wide-ranging overview of the multi-faceted field of public administration and management. It provides a broad approach to the discipline, addressing the range of descriptive, normative and critical theories required to diagnose public service issues and prescribe administrative action.