Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> American Government - National

Is American democracy being derailed by the United States Senate filibuster? Is the filibuster an important right that improves the political process or an increasingly partisan tool that delays legislation and thwarts the will of the majority? Are century-old procedures in the Senate hampering the institution from fulfilling its role on the eve of the 21st century?

The filibuster has achieved almost mythic proportions in the history of American politics, but it has escaped a careful, critical assessment for more than 50 years. In this book, Sarah Binder and Steven Smith provide such an...

The nation's federal, state, and local public service is in deep trouble. Not even the most talented, dedicated, well-compensated, well-trained, and well-led public servants can serve the public well if they must operate under perverse personnel and procurement regulations that punish innovation and promote inefficiency. Many attempts have been made to determine administrative problems in the public service and come up with viable solutions. Two of the most importantthe 1990 report of the National Commission on the Public Service, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, and...

The Clinton administration's National Performance Review of the federal government (also called the Reinventing Government Initiative) is the eleventh effort this century to improve the executive branch and reform the federal service. Most previous efforts have faltered. How can present and future recommendations avoid the same fate?

This book provides practical and timely guidance to those trying to improve government performance. The focus of successful attempts, the authors argue, should be sustained evolution, not bursts of invention aimed at sweeping transformation. Specific...

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10930, the first step in a long series of efforts to regulate the ethical behavior of executive branch officials. A few years later Lyndon B. Johnson required all senior officials to report assets and sources of non-government income to the Civil Service Commission. The reaction to Watergate opened the floodgates to more laws and rules: the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, subsequent expansions of that act in the 1980s and 1990s, and sweeping executive orders by Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The consequence of...

With health care reform at the top of the domestic agenda, this volume assesses the Clinton administration's proposals and several alternative plans by discussing how six other countries have organized health care finance and delivery to achieve universal access to comparable quality care at much lower costs. The six countries examinedAustralia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Japanreveal both the variety and fundamental similarities of medical care systems in the rest of the industrialized world.

Joseph White uses foreign experience to indicate the proper direction for...