The GOVERNANCE blog

In the current issue of Governance (23.2), Alison Post reviews The Political Economy of Water and Sanitation by Matthias Krause.  Post says that the Krause’s book “provides a helpful reminder that the effects of privatization and other types of reforms in infrastructure sector will vary greatly depending upon both the broader institutional and political environment and sector-specific institutions and policies.”  Read the review.

And Eric Heinze of the University of Oklahoma reviews two books that examine changing ideas about state sovereignty.  The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws Populations, edited by Douglas Howland and Luise White, demonstrates how “the notion of sovereignty changes over time,” while Humanitarian Intervention: Confronting the Contradictions, edited by Michael Newman, illustrates “how international human rights and humanitarian principles are affecting traditional conceptions of state sovereignty.”  Read the review.

“It is no small thing to win the adoption of general-interest reforms in the United States,” says Erik Patashnik in his new book, Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted?, “But what is required to initiate policy reform should not be confused with what is required to sustain it”  Patashnik’s book is reviewed by Michael Moran of the University of Manchester in the new issue of Governance.   Moran says the book is “an example of American political science at its best . . . fine scholarship indeed.”

Also reviewed in the new issue:  Sustainable Development for Public Administration, by Denise Zeynep Leuenberger and John Bartle.  Fred Thompson of Willamette University says that this “very good book . . . introduces public administrators to the basics of sustainable development and to the design and implementation of public policies . . . which are systemically sustainable, intertemporally and distributionally equitable, and economically efficient.”

And Arthur Goldsmith of the University of Massachusetts Boston reviews Governance and the Depoliticisation of Development, edited by Wil Hout and Richard Robison.  Hout and Robison “challenge the new orthodoxy about governance,” Goldsmith says.  The book’s theme is that “the governance approach to global development represents less improvement than advertised over the market fundamentalism it superseded.”

David Rosenbloom says that Leonardo Avritzer‘s book Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil “significantly advances conceptualization and theorizing with respect to participatory democratic institutions,” while Angela Wigger says that a new volume edited by Mark Blyth provides “an erudite and elegantly written” overview of international political economy.   Also reviewed in the current issue: Rosemary O’Leary and Lisa Blomgren Bingham on collaborative public management; Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufman on the political economy of welfare in the developing world; Rachel Epstein on liberalization in Eastern Europe; and Steven Cohen and William Eimicke on contract management.  Read all of the reviews for free in January.

In the current issue of Governance (22.4), Mary Alice Haddad says that Daniel Aldrich “has written an extraordinary book” about political struggles over the location of unpopular facilities in Japan.  Site Fights is a “methodologically sophisticated book” that describes the tactics used by communities and government agencies in the struggle over facility placement.

Also reviewed in the current issue: Michael Martinez, William Richardson and Camilla Stivers on administrative ethics; William Genieys and Marc Smyrl on policy elites; Lesley McAllister on environmental protection in Brazil; Cornelia Woll on the ways in which governments shape business attitudes about global trade liberalization; and Herbert Gottweis and Alan Petersen on the governance of “human biobanks.”  Read the reviews here.