A Government Ill Executed

A Government Ill Executed
Author: Paul C. Light
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2009-09-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674034783

The federal government is having increasing difficulty faithfully executing the laws, which is what Alexander Hamilton called “the true test” of a good government. This book diagnoses the symptoms, explains their general causes, and proposes ways to improve the effectiveness of the federal government. Employing Hamilton’s seven measures of an energetic federal service, Paul Light shows how the government is wanting in each measure. After assessing the federal report card, Light offers a comprehensive agenda for reform, including new laws limiting the number of political appointees, reducing the layers of government management, reducing the size of government as its baby-boom employees retire, revitalizing the federal career, and reducing the heavy outsourcing of federal work. Although there are many ways to fix each of the seven problems with government, only a comprehensive agenda will bring the kind of reform needed to reverse the overall erosion of the capacity to faithfully execute all the laws.

A Government Ill Executed

A Government Ill Executed
Author: Paul C. Light
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2009-09-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674255348

The federal government is having increasing difficulty faithfully executing the laws, which is what Alexander Hamilton called “the true test” of a good government. This book diagnoses the symptoms, explains their general causes, and proposes ways to improve the effectiveness of the federal government. Employing Hamilton’s seven measures of an energetic federal service, Paul Light shows how the government is wanting in each measure. After assessing the federal report card, Light offers a comprehensive agenda for reform, including new laws limiting the number of political appointees, reducing the layers of government management, reducing the size of government as its Baby Boom employees retire, revitalizing the federal career, and reducing the heavy outsourcing of federal work. Although there are many ways to fix each of the seven problems with government, only a comprehensive agenda will bring the kind of reform needed to reverse the overall erosion of the capacity to faithfully execute all the laws.

Government by Contract

Government by Contract
Author: Jody Freeman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2009-02-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780674032088

The dramatic growth of government over the course of the twentieth century since the New Deal prompts concern among libertarians and conservatives and also among those who worry about government’s costs, efficiency, and quality of service. These concerns, combined with rising confidence in private markets, motivate the widespread shift of federal and state government work to private organizations. This shift typically alters only who performs the work, not who pays or is ultimately responsible for it. “Government by contract” now includes military intelligence, environmental monitoring, prison management, and interrogation of terrorism suspects. Outsourcing government work raises questions of accountability. What role should costs, quality, and democratic oversight play in contracting out government work? What tools do citizens and consumers need to evaluate the effectiveness of government contracts? How can the work be structured for optimal performance as well as compliance with public values? Government by Contract explains the phenomenon and scope of government outsourcing and sets an agenda for future research attentive to workforce capacities as well as legal, economic, and political concerns.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers
Author: Alexander Hamilton
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2018-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1528785878

Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

This Republic of Suffering

This Republic of Suffering
Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2009-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0375703837

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

I Am Not a Tractor!

I Am Not a Tractor!
Author: Susan L. Marquis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2017-12-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501714309

I Am Not a Tractor! celebrates the courage, vision, and creativity of the farmworkers and community leaders who have transformed one of the worst agricultural situations in the United States into one of the best. Susan L. Marquis highlights past abuses workers suffered in Florida’s tomato fields: toxic pesticide exposure, beatings, sexual assault, rampant wage theft, and even, astonishingly, modern-day slavery. Marquis unveils how, even without new legislation, regulation, or government participation, these farmworkers have dramatically improved their work conditions. Marquis credits this success to the immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala who formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a neuroscience major who takes great pride in the watermelon crew he runs, a leading farmer/grower who was once homeless, and a retired New York State judge who volunteered to stuff envelopes and ended up building a groundbreaking institution. Through the Fair Food Program that they have developed, fought for, and implemented, these people have changed the lives of more than thirty thousand field workers. I Am Not a Tractor! offers a range of solutions to a problem that is rooted in our nation’s slave history and that is worsened by ongoing conflict over immigration.

The Warping of Government Work

The Warping of Government Work
Author: John D. Donahue
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2008-05-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780674027886

It’s a long-standing pattern: elite workers spurn public jobs, while less skilled workers cling to government work as a refuge from a harsh private economy. Donahue documents government’s isolation from the rest of the U.S. economy and arrays the stark choices we confront for narrowing, or accommodating, the divide between public and private work.

Holding Bishops Accountable

Holding Bishops Accountable
Author: Timothy D. Lytton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2012-02-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674068351

The prevalence of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and its shocking cover-up by church officials have obscured the largely untold story of the tort system's remarkable success in bringing the scandal to light. The lessons of clergy sexual abuse litigation give us reason to reconsider the case for tort reform and to look more closely at how tort litigation can enhance the performance of public and private policymaking institutions.