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Remote and thinly populated, Maine has been insulated from many of the demo-graphic and economic trends of states to the south. But Maine Politics and Government shows how rapidly this situation is changing. In the 1970s and 1980s, Maine?once dependent on agriculture, manufacturing, and maritime trades?underwent extensive commercial development. High-tech businesses and fashionable suburbs, concentrated in the southern counties, began to assert a new political force. The authors of this book view these changes in the context of the state's long history. Although Maine's population and economy have become more diversified, its public policies more complex, and its government more professionalized and centralized, there remains a remarkable degree of stability in political attitudes. And Maine still operates under its original 1819 constitution; the amendments added over time have largely maintained its original structure while allowing for changing conditions. This book illumi-nates the workings of Maine's executive, legislative, and judicial branches and its relations with the federal government, as well as local concerns, without losing sight of the Pine Tree State's uniqueness.
In recent decades, local governments across America have increasingly turned specialized functions over to autonomous agencies ranging in scope from subdivision-sized water districts to multi-state transit authorities. This book is the first comprehensive examination of the causes and consequences of special-purpose governments in more than 300 metropolitan areas in the United States. It presents new evidence on the economic, political, and social implications of relying on these special districts while offering important findings about their use and significance.
Remote and thinly populated, Maine was long insulated from many of the demographic and economic trends of states to the south. Maine Politics and Government traces recent changes in the state's system as agriculture, manufacturing, and maritime trades have ceded dominance to high-tech businesses, extensive commercial development, and an expanding governmental sector.
Define and Rule focuses on the turn in late nineteenth-century colonial statecraft when Britain abandoned the attempt to eradicate difference between conqueror and conquered and introduced a new idea of governance, as the definition and management of difference. Mahmood Mamdani explores how lines were drawn between settler and native as distinct political identities, and between natives according to tribe. Out of that colonial experience issued a modern language of pluralism and difference. A mid-nineteenth-century crisis of empire attracted the attention of British intellectuals and led to a reconception of the colonial mission, and to reforms in India, British Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. The new politics, inspired by Sir Henry Maine, established that natives were bound by geography and custom, rather than history and law, and made this the basis of administrative practice. Maine’s theories were later translated into “native administration” in the African colonies. Mamdani takes the case of Sudan to demonstrate how colonial law established tribal identity as the basis for determining access to land and political power, and follows this law’s legacy to contemporary Darfur. He considers the intellectual and political dimensions of African movements toward decolonization by focusing on two key figures: the Nigerian historian Yusuf Bala Usman, who argued for an alternative to colonial historiography, and Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who realized that colonialism’s political logic was legal and administrative, not military, and could be dismantled through nonviolent reforms.
An outspoken centrist, Senator Snowe stunned Washington in February 2012 when she announced she would not seek a fourth term and offered a sharp rebuke to the Senate, citing the dispiriting gridlock and polarization. After serving in the legislative branch at the state and federal levels for 40 years, including 18 years in the U.S. Senate, she explained that Washington wasn’t solving the big problems anymore.In this timely call to action, she explores the roots of her belief in principled policy-making and bipartisan compromise. A leading moderate with a reputation for crossing the aisle, Senator Snowe will propose solutions for bridging the partisan divide in Washington, most notably through a citizens’ movement to hold elected officials accountable. Senator Snowe recounts how the tragedies and triumphs of her personal story helped shape her political approach. Born in Augusta, Maine, Senator Snowe was orphaned at nine, and raised by an aunt and uncle. When she was twenty-six, her husband, a Maine state representative, was killed in an auto accident. Already dedicated to public service, she ran for and won her husband’s seat.The book will include anecdotes from throughout her career, and address her working relationships with Presidents Reagan through Obama, Senator Ted Kennedy, Majority Leader Bob Dole, and many others. As a senior member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, the high-profile Commerce and Intelligence Committees, and the Senate Small Business Committee, Senator Snowe has been directly involved with the most talked-about legislative challenges of recent decades: the country’s response to 9/11; the 2008 financial crisis; the Affordable Healthcare Act; the debt ceiling debacle, and much more.Her new book will draw on the lessons she's learned as a policymaker, and the frustration she shares with the American people about the government’s dwindling productivity. Senator Snowe passionately argues that the government has now lost its way, shows how this happened, and proposes ways for the world’s greatest deliberative body to, once again, fulfill its mission.
A Brookings Institution Press and the National Academy of Public Administration publication America's complex system of multi-layered government faces new challenges as a result of rapidly changing economic, technological, and demographic trends. An aging population, economic globalization, and homeland security concerns are among the powerful factors testing the system's capacity and flexibility. Major policy challenges and responses are now overwhelmingly intergovernmental in nature, and as a result, the fortunes of all levels of government are more intertwined and interdependent than ever before. This volume, cosponsored by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), defines an agenda for improving the performance of America's intergovernmental system. The early chapters present the current state of practice in intergovernmental relations, including discussion of trends toward centralization, devolution, and other power-sharing arrangements. The fiscal underpinnings of the system are analyzed, along with the long-term implications of current trends in financing at all levels. The authors identify the principal tools used to define intergovernmental management–grants, mandates, preemptions—in discussing emerging models and best practices in the design and management of those tools. In tergovernmental Management for the 21st Century applies these crosscutting themes to critical policy areas where intergovernmental management and cooperation are essential, such as homeland security, education, welfare, health care, and the environment. It concludes with an authoritative assessment of the system's capacity to govern, oversee, and improve. Contributors include Jocelyn Johnston (American University), Shelley Metzenbaum (University of Maryland), Richard Nathan (SUNY at Albany), Barry Rabe (University of Michigan), Beryl Radin (American University), Alice Rivlin (Brookings Institution), Ray Sheppach (National Governors Association), Frank Shafroth (George Mason University), Troy Smith (BYU–Hawaii), Carl Stenberg (University of Nor
Eight of the last twelve presidents were millionaires when they took office. Millionaires have a majority on the Supreme Court, and they also make up majorities in Congress, where a background in business or law is the norm and the average member has spent less than two percent of his or her adult life in a working-class job. Why is it that most politicians in America are so much better off than the people who elect them— and does the social class divide between citizens and their representatives matter? With White-Collar Government, Nicholas Carnes answers this question with a resounding—and disturbing—yes. Legislators’ socioeconomic backgrounds, he shows, have a profound impact on both how they view the issues and the choices they make in office. Scant representation from among the working class almost guarantees that the policymaking process will be skewed toward outcomes that favor the upper class. It matters that the wealthiest Americans set the tax rates for the wealthy, that white-collar professionals choose the minimum wage for blue-collar workers, and that people who have always had health insurance decide whether or not to help those without. And while there is no one cause for this crisis of representation, Carnes shows that the problem does not stem from a lack of qualified candidates from among the working class. The solution, he argues, must involve a variety of changes, from the equalization of campaign funding to a shift in the types of candidates the parties support. If we want a government for the people, we have to start working toward a government that is truly by the people. White-Collar Government challenges long-held notions about the causes of political inequality in the United States and speaks to enduring questions about representation and political accountability.