As services provided by government have expanded over the past several decades, so inevitably, has bureaucracy--especially the corps of professional administrators in charge of programs ranging from health care to the maintenance of efficient transportation networks. Under pressure from reform groups to promote public accountability by involving citizens in the decision-making process, government has begun to place private citizens on many important health, education, transportation, and environmental planning bodies. This study of citizen participation and technocracy, written by twelve...

Nicolas Guillen and Aime Cesaire are considered by many critics and literary historians to be the foremost Caribbean poets of the 20th century, yet they are rarely treated together. This work deals with the two writers within a comparative framework, exploring their poetry as the exemplification of Negritude art and writing from the Caribbean. Josaphat Kubayanda uses non-canonical theories of literary and cultural analysis to discuss the relationships between creative writing, the idea of Africa, and the rediscovery of African values in the Caribbean, and to propose and demonstrate an...

This exemplary contribution to the literature on ethnic studies examines the issues surrounding Mexican-American political empowerment in the United States. The chapters, originally contributions to a symposium at the University of Texas in El Paso, are uniformly engaging, rigorous in their analysis, and richly suggestive in their conclusions. This exceptionally fine collection discusses the political history of Mexican-Americans, the role of their interest groups, educational models, local bureaucracies, and electoral strategies. Noteworthy are the barriers to Chicano authority found in...

This comprehensive work explores the militia system and its role in the development of colonial New England. Ahearn contends that the militia and the military sermon created an atmosphere of Christian soldiery and warfare that exercised a powerful, long-lasting hold upon New Englanders. Ministers reinforced martial drill and militancy in their sermons. The language and attitudes of warfare became part of the society. New England's military sermons deeply encoded the biblical language of Christian warfare into the patterns of everyday life and into the fabric of American consciousness; its...

Privatization and corporatism along with pluralist forms of adaptation have received much attention as strategies for coping with the transformation of mature industrial economics. Yet, the burgeoning literature on this topic has, until now, lacked an adequate account of the determinants of a government's choice between such strategies or of the relationships between these strategies and the Keynesian economic framework that predominated in the postwar era. This groundbreaking study bridges these gaps by considering both the determinants of the choice of an adjustment strategy and how that...

Much of the literature devoted to impact assessment has focused on it as a technique or set of techniques, or on the environmental impact statement as a legal procedural requirement. While there are notable exceptions, the rich theoretical and empirical possibilities for research concerning significant innovations in the way governments operate has not been exhausted. The intention of this new edited collection is to stimulate research on the influence that impact assessment has had on policy making. Bartlett has organized the contributions around the principle that practical effectiveness...

Labeled A Nation at Risk, Americans are urgently seeking reform in their public school systems. While many promising programs are being developed, they have not yet been validated. The national conference Making Schools Work for Underachieving Minority Students shared the best of what is presently known and deliberated on the implications for research, policy, and practice. Sponsored by CRESST (Center for Research on Evaluation Standards and Student Testing), The National Urban League, and the National Council of LaRaza, the conference was financed by the U.S. Department of Education....

One of the most dramatic and surprising developments of the last twenty years was the proliferation of aggressive political movements linked to religion. This book examines the interplay of religion and politics in predominantly Hindu India, Islamic Pakistan, and Buddhist Sri Lanka. This collection of studies by internationally known scholars challenges traditional stereotypes and interpretations of South Asian religion and politics and provides a multidisciplinary perspective on contemporary conflicts. While the focus of the work is on Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka, the arguments...

Since 1979, thousands of Westerners have been entering China. These include numbers of foreign teachers who have been invited by the Chinese to observe and participate in the educational system. Why were they invited? And just what did the foreign teachers expect to contribute? In "Foreign Teachers in China," Edgar A. Porter addresses and explores these and other questions. Although the events surrounding June 4, 1989 have brought many more issues and realities to light, the book seeks to present the ten-year period of East-West relationships, beginning in 1979, and tests Jonathan Spence's...

This unique publication provides a thesaurus of all Library of Congress sub-Saharan African subject headings ever published, including classification numbers for most subject headings and cross-references from related or unused versions of a heading. Thus it provides a valuable easy-to-use thesaurus for those doing library research and online searches in African Studies.

The volume covers the 41 countries that make up Africa south of the Sahara and the islands of Cape Verde, the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Saint Helena, Sao Tome Principe, and the Seychelles. It consists of...