Political Science

Building a World-Class Civil Service for Twenty-First Century India

S.K. Das

India’s current bureaucracy dates back to the nineteenth century, set up by the British in 1854. It is outdated and moribund. Clearly, India needs a better civil service, one that ... More

India’s current bureaucracy dates back to the nineteenth century, set up by the British in 1854. It is outdated and moribund. Clearly, India needs a better civil service, one that delivers policies and services to make its people more healthy, more secure, and better equipped to meet the challenges head on. While several countries in the world already have flexible, decentralized, and user-friendly civil services in place, India’s civil service has been stuck with a civil service that is rigid, hierarchical, centralized, and process-driven. This book presents a range of initiatives aimed at helping India build a world-class civil service suitable for the twenty-first century. These initiatives are mainly based on the reform experiences of nations such as Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, but remain appropriate for India. Some of these initiatives are structural, while others are thematic and deal with subjects ranging from performance and accountability to accounting, risk management, results orientation, values, and civil service law. The book is divided into four parts. Part I provides an overview of India’s current civil service. Part II deals with the institutional framework for reforms. Part III examines the organizational framework for the proposed reforms. Part IV describes the legal and ethical framework, and concludes by arguing for a modern, world-class civil service to improve India’s governance. Less

Building Europe's Parliament: Democratic Representation Beyond the Nation State

Berthold Rittberger

Why have national governments of EU member states created and, over the past fifty years, successively endowed the European Parliament with supervisory, budgetary, and legislative ... More

Why have national governments of EU member states created and, over the past fifty years, successively endowed the European Parliament with supervisory, budgetary, and legislative powers? This book presents a three-staged argument to explain how the European Parliament acquired this power ‘trias’. First, it is argued that the construction of a supranational polity induces political elites in the member states to reflect on the implications posed by transfers of national sovereignty for domestic processes of democratic accountability and interest representation. It is shown empirically that there exists a strong correlation between national governments’ decisions to transfer sovereignty and political elites’ perception of a ‘democratic legitimacy deficit’ that triggers a search for institutional solutions for its remedy. In a second step, it is argued that political elites, first and foremost, domestic political parties, advance different proposals to alleviate the perceived ‘legitimacy deficit’. These proposals are derived from ‘legitimating beliefs’ that vary cross-nationally and across political parties. Consequently, the creation and empowerment of a supranational parliamentary institution plays a prominent but not exclusive role as potential remedy to the ‘democratic legitimacy deficit’. Third, the book illuminates the mechanisms through which ‘legitimating beliefs’ expressed by political elites and the behaviour of national governments who negotiate and decide on the creation and potential empowerment of the European Parliament are linked. What logic of action best captures national governments’ decisions to empower the European Parliament? The explanatory power of the theoretical argument will be explored by looking at three landmark cases in the European Parliament’s history: its creation as ‘Common Assembly’ of the ECSC Treaty and the concomitant acquisition of supervisory powers vis-à-vis the High Authority, the acquisition of budgetary powers (Treaty of Luxembourg of 1970) and of legislative powers (Single European Act signed in 1986). The developments ranging from the Maastricht Treaty to the adoption of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe will also be analysed in the light of the theory. Less

Building Legitimacy: Exploring State-Society Relations in Northeast India

M. Sajjad Hassan

This book deals with the instability and violence in Northeast India, and discusses the attempts made by states and societies in the region to respond to them. It also investigates why ... More

This book deals with the instability and violence in Northeast India, and discusses the attempts made by states and societies in the region to respond to them. It also investigates why attaining political order and peace in Northeast India has been a difficult task. Section I of this book examines the historical process of state-making in Manipur and Mizoram. Section II evaluates mobilization of identity in Manipur, followed by a similar exploration in the case of Mizoram. Section III discusses state capability by systematically comparing how agencies of the state in Manipur and Mizoram perform their basic functions. Lastly, it presents some lessons from the author's research in terms of the overall argument, as well as the manner in which the research findings open out to larger issues around state-making, state capability, and collective identity construction and mobilization, and how they can help to better inform policy responses to the crisis in the Northeast. Less

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

Edward C. Page, Vincent Wright (eds)

Presents a comparative study of the senior civil service in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Denmark, and Sweden, which provides ... More

Presents a comparative study of the senior civil service in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Denmark, and Sweden, which provides information about the structures and the composition of the higher civil service, and its position in the political structure. Explores how the higher civil service has developed in the light of the massive changes in European societies over the past thirty years. These changes include the size of the top level of the civil service, the growing social diversity of its ranks, and the tendency to recruit from outside the civil service. Also examines whether wider social changes, such as the democratization of education, the growth of interest groups, and the increasing importance of the European Union have an impact on the higher levels of bureaucracy and produce similar patterns of change throughout Europe. Less

Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported: Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe

Will Kymlicka, Magda Opalski (eds)

This book explores recent work by Western liberal theorists on ethnocultural pluralism, and shows Western liberals that conventional ways of distinguishing between ethnic relations in ... More

This book explores recent work by Western liberal theorists on ethnocultural pluralism, and shows Western liberals that conventional ways of distinguishing between ethnic relations in the East and West do not help in understanding or responding to ethnic conflicts in the post-Communist world. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 presents a paper by Will Kymlicka entitled ‘Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe’. Part 2 features 15 replies and commentaries on this paper, mostly by scholars and writers in Eastern Europe. Part 3 presents a reply by Kymlicka, which examines some of the specific issues raised in the commentaries, and reflects on the exportability of Western political theory to newly-democratizing countries. Less

Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden

Peter A. Swenson

Challenges the conventional wisdom that welfare state builders take their cues solely from labor and other progressive interests. It argues instead that pragmatic social reformers in the ... More

Challenges the conventional wisdom that welfare state builders take their cues solely from labor and other progressive interests. It argues instead that pragmatic social reformers in the U.S. and Sweden looked for support from above as well as below, taking into account capitalists’ interests and preferences in the political process. Legislation associated with the American New Deal and Swedish social democracy was built, consequently, on cross‐class alliances of interest. Capitalists in both countries appreciated the regulatory impact of reformist social and labor legislation. Their interests in such legislation derived from their distinct systems of labor market governance. Thus, new theory and historical evidence in this book illuminate the political conditions for greater equality and security in capitalist societies. Less

Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State

Eileen Boris, Jennifer Klein

This book helps to explain why there is no adequate long-term care in America. Through a sweeping analytical narrative, from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Great Recession of ... More

This book helps to explain why there is no adequate long-term care in America. Through a sweeping analytical narrative, from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Great Recession of today, Caring for America shows how law and social policy shaped home care into a low-waged job and a means-tested social service, stigmatized as part of public welfare, primarily funded through Medicaid, and relegated to the bottom of the medical hierarchy. It became a job for African American and immigrant women that kept them in poverty, while providing independence from institutionalization for needy elderly and disabled people. But while the state organized home care, it did not do so without contestation and confrontation. Caring for America also traces the intertwined, sometimes conflicting search of care providers and receivers for dignity, self-determination, security, and personal and social worth. It highlights social movements of senior citizens and disability rights/independent living, the civil rights organizing of women on welfare and domestic workers, the battles of public sector unions, and the unionization of health and service workers. It rethinks both the history of the American welfare state from the perspective of carework and the strategies of the U.S. labor movement in terms of a growing carework economy, arguing for care as a right deserving a living wage and social support. Less

The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities

Douglas Kriner, Francis Shen

Many have long suspected that when America takes up arms it is a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight. Despite these concerns about social inequality in military sacrifice, the hard ... More

Many have long suspected that when America takes up arms it is a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight. Despite these concerns about social inequality in military sacrifice, the hard data to validate such claims has been kept out of public view. The Casualty Gap renews the debate over unequal sacrifice by bringing to light new evidence on the inequality dimensions of American wartime casualties. It demonstrates unequivocally that since the conclusion of World War II, communities at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder have borne a disproportionate share of the human costs of war. Moreover, they show for the first time that when Americans are explicitly confronted with evidence of this inequality, they become markedly less supportive of the nation's war efforts. The Casualty Gap also uncovers how wartime deaths affect entire communities. Citizens who see the high price war exacts on friends and neighbors become more likely to oppose war and to vote against the political leaders waging it than residents of low-casualty communities. Moreover, extensive empirical evidence connects higher community casualty rates in Korea and Vietnam to lower levels of trust in government, interest in politics, and electoral and non-electoral participation. In this way, the casualty gap threatens the very vibrancy of American democracy by depressing civic engagement in high-casualty communities for years after the last gun falls silent. Less

Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era

Stuart Scheingold

Austin Sarat (ed.)

“Cause lawyering” denotes the practice of law by those committed to furthering through the upholding of a particular cause by legal means, the aims of the good society. This books ... More

“Cause lawyering” denotes the practice of law by those committed to furthering through the upholding of a particular cause by legal means, the aims of the good society. This books explains how new configurations of state power, brought about by globalization and democratization processes, are creating new opportunities for altering the political and social status quo, and how cause lawyers in a wide variety of fields are developing new transnational networks for exploiting them. Less