The GOVERNANCE blog

Governance: An international journal of policy, administration and institutions

Posts Tagged ‘sustainable development

Book reviews: Business and government, sustainable development

In the current issue of Governance (24.1, January 2011), Sandra Suarez reviews the Oxford Handbook of Business and Government edited by David Coen, Wyn Grant and Graham Wilson.  The volume “offers a comprehensive view of this fragmented subfield,” Suarez says.  And Robert Cox reviews Governing Sustainability edited by W. Neil Adger and Andrew Jordan.  The volume, says Cox, “is the best outline to date of the emerging discourse” on sustainability.  Read the reviews.

Written by governancejournal

February 20, 2011 at 1:21 am

What happens after major policy changes are enacted?

“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 BartleFred 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governance approach to global development represents less improvement than advertised over the market fundamentalism it superseded.”

Written by governancejournal

April 20, 2010 at 1:00 am

Posted in book reviews

Tagged with , implementation, ,

New modes of governance for long-term societal challenges

Modern industrialized societies are confronted with immense long-term challenges.  But Derk Loorbach of Erasmus University says that two dominant ways of managing those challenges — top-down steering by government or the free market approach — are inadequate.  In the current issue of Governance (23.1), Loorbach describes a new governance approach, “transition management,” drawn from experience in the Netherlands.  Broad-based innovation networks created under the banner of transition management produce shared visions for social reform while preserving space for short-term innovation.  These networks, says Loorbach, “are increasingly influencing regular policies in areas such as energy supply, mobility, health care, agriculture, and water management.”  Read more: Transition Management for Sustainable Development: A Prescriptive, Complexity-Based Governance Framework.

Written by governancejournal

February 17, 2010 at 1:00 am

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 101 other followers

Powered by WordPress.com