Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Comparative Politics

Information--regular, systematic, reliable--is the life-blood of democracy and the fuel of effective management. Surely today there is no problem with information, for this is the age of information overload. It pours onto our computer screens and out of our printers. Indeed, many governments claim, often with some justification, to be more open and transparent than ever before. But what if the life-blood is contaminated, or the fuel polluted? Then the body politic sickens and the engine of public management runs rough. It is the vital issue of the quality of the information we...

Recent developments in policy evaluation have focused on new notions of process and use or, notably, "influence." But this debate among evaluators on how evaluations are used has been essentially a closed one-evaluators talking only among themselves. The debate has gone on seemingly oblivious to fundamental changes in the intellectual landscape of public management, organizational theory, information technology, and knowledge management. New realities demand a different approach toward evaluation.

The current era is characterized by the emergence of an increasingly global set of...

Despite their many similarities, Central American countries during the twentieth century were characterized by remarkably different political regimes. In a comparative analysis of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, James Mahoney argues that these political differences were legacies of the nineteenth-century liberal reform period. Presenting a theory of -path dependence, - Mahoney shows how choices made at crucial turning points in Central American history established certain directions of change and foreclosed others to shape long-term development.

By the...

Can religion be compatible with liberal democracy? World Religions and Democracy brings together insights from renowned scholars and world leaders in a provocative and timely discussion of religions' role in the success or failure of democracy. An essay by Alfred Stepan outlines the concept of -twin tolerations- and differentiation, and creates a template that can be applied to all of the religion-democracy relationships observed and analyzed throughout the volume. -Twin tolerations- means that there is a clear distinction and a mutual respect between political authorities and...