In the context of the debate on the future of Europe, this book makes the case for a new approach to structural transformation, growth and cohesion in the EU. It explores both the opportunities and challenges from globalisation and technological change, the widening differences in productivity between leading and lagging regions, and the need for a new policy framework capable of delivering inclusive growth.The Regional Studies Association’s Policy Impact Books form a series of pun...

In an increasingly interconnected environment, shocks, crises, cascading failures, and surprising breakthroughs are features of our age. The ability to anticipate, intervene, innovate, and adapt is now seen as essential for governments. Public officials serve in an expanded public space that is being reshaped by the rise of social networking and modern information and communication technologies. The desired results on many public issues exceed the reach and resources of government....

The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has become a focus of discussion across the world. Political leaders, in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America claim to be following its principles. Yet the notion has also attracted much criticism. Some say it is an empty concept without any real content. Critics from the more traditional left argue that it is a betrayal of left-wing ideals.Anthony Giddens's The Third Way (Polity Press, 1998) is regarded by many as the key te...

How public affairs are run depends upon the degree of authority and control central government decides to relinquish to regional and local governments, and the extent to which it favors citizen involvement in the governing process. Public administrators do not operate in a vacuum. The context within which decision-making takes place greatly influences public administrators approach to public issues. Consequently, what government decides to do and how it decides to carry it out affects the ...

The strategies adopted by governments and public officials can have dramatic effects on peoples' lives. The best ones can transform economic laggards into trailblazers, eliminate diseases, or sharply cut crime. Strategic failures can result in highly visible disasters, like the shrinking of the Russian economy in the 1990s, or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. This book is about how strategies take shape, and how money, people, technologies, and public commitment c...

"A comprehensive and highly readable review of the conceptual underpinnings of economic geography. Students and professional scholars alike will find it extremely useful both as a reference manual and as an authoritative guide to the numerous theoretical debates that characterize the field."- Allen J. Scott, University of California"Guides readers skilfully through the rapidly changing field of economic geography... The key concepts used to structur...

Actors and institutions in localities and regions across the world are seeking prosperity and well-being amidst tumultuous and disruptive shifts and transitions generated by: an increasingly globalised, knowledge-intensive capitalism; global financial instability, volatility and crisis; concerns about economic, social and ecological sustainability, climate change and resource shortages; new multi-actor and multi-level systems of government and governance and a re-ordering of the i...

From schools to hospitals, from utilities to food banks, over the past thirty years corporatization has transformed the public sector in Canada. Economic elites take control of public institutions and use business metrics to evaluate their performance, transforming public programs into corporate revenue streams.Senior managers use corporate methodology to set priorities in social services and create “market-friendly” public sector cultures. Even social activist organizations increa...

Canadian universities are being slowly but inexorably corporatized. Casualizing academic labour, remaking students into consumers of education, implementing corporate management models and commercializing academic research all point to the ascendance of business interests and values in Canada’s higher education system.Academia, Inc. examines the tensions that result from the merging of two fundamentally incompatible institutions — the university and the corporation. Brownl...

Since the third edition of this authoritative volume, most of Western Europe and North America have entered an era of austerity which has pervasive effects on programmes of public management reform. Even in Australasia extensive measures of fiscal restraint have been implemented. In this fourth edition the basic structure of the book has been retained but there has been a line-by-line rewriting, including the addition of extensive analyses and information about the impacts of austerity. Ma...

A detailed examination of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and the shift in governance strategy they represent.In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goals built on and broadened the earlier Millennium Development Goals, but they also signaled a larger shift in governance strategies. The seventeen goals add detailed con...

Community is an elusive yet frequently invoked concept. Terms like community health, community living, community schools, community policing, community development, and community renewal have become part of the contemporary lexicon.What has led organizations, and particularly Western governments, to take such an interest in community, and why this interest now? What has caused the increasing acceptance of community as the primary vehicle through which a wide variety of government p...