Policymakers around the world often aim to learn from ordinary people through participatory institutions like consultations, petitions, complaint mechanisms, townhalls, constituent communications, crowdsourcing platforms, participatory budgeting, and citizen assemblies. But when faced with large volumes of complex information inputs, they can struggle with information overload challenges that leave them unable to learn meaningful and actionable information outputs. This book develops and i...

What the Open Government Partnership tells us about how international initiatives can and do shape domestic public sector reform.At the 2011 meeting of the UN General Assembly, the governments of eight nations—Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States—launched the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative aimed at promoting transparency, empowering citizens, fighting corruption, and harnessi...

The authors examine developments in labor standards in global supply chains over the past thirty years, analyzing factors that create challenges and opportunities for improving working conditions. They illustrate the complex dynamics within and among key groups, including brands, suppliers, governments, workers and consumers.Using extended examples from China, Honduras, Bangladesh and the United States, as well as new quantitative evidence, the authors analyze stakeholders and mech...

Around the world, citizens in local communities are utilising ICTs to underpin the creation of a participatory and democratic vision of the network society. Embedded in the richness and diversity of community practice, a vision of a 'civil network society' is emerging. A society where ICTs are harnessed as tools to improve the quality of life and reflect the diversity of social networks; where people are viewed as citizens, not just as consumers, and where heterogeneity is perceived as a s...

This comprehensive textbook explores the policy process from a multitude of perspectives, including rationalism, culturalism, institutionalism and from a political point of view. This allows students to discover key concepts from the policy science literature and gain a deeper understanding of how public policy is discussed academically and shaped empirically.Public Policy in Action gives a detailed breakdown of all stages of the policy process by discussing the emergence ...

This open access book explores the agenda of education policies in the 21st century. In the first part of the book, education is handled from a historical and political framework, and the effects of the change of states and policies on education are examined. In the second part, the effects of changes in the economy on education policies and economies’ demands from educational institutions are examined. In the last section, current policies in the international education sector, which is g...

The most important climate agreement in history, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change represents the commitment of the nations of the world to address and curb climate change. Signed in December 2015, it entered into force on 4th November 2016. Countries are moving into implementation, and efforts at all levels will be needed to fulfill its ambitious goals. The Paris Climate Agreement: Commentary and Analysis combines a comprehensive legal appraisal and critique of the new Agreem...

The Development Communication Sourcebook illlustrates why the field of development communication is important and how its tools and methods enhance long-term and sustainable results. The book presents basic concepts and explains key challenges faced in daily practice. Each of the four modules is self-contained, with examples, toolboxes, and more.

This new edition of The SAGE Handbook of International Corporate and Public Affairs builds on the success of the first edition (2005) by comprehensively updating and enhancing the material and structure, setting a new standard for the practitioner and student of the global public affairs discipline. The new edition includes increased international coverage of the field, and a strong focus on emerging trends, as well as providing a comprehensive overview of the foundations ...

In recent years public management research in a variety of disciplines has paid increasing attention to the role of citizens and the third sector in the provision of public services. Several of these efforts have employed the concept of co-production to better understand and explain this trend. This book aims to go further by systematizing the growing body of academic papers and reports that focus on various aspects of co-production and its potential contribution to new public governance. ...

Public organizations matter, now more than ever. Be it hospitals providing us healthcare, schools offering us education, police officers keeping our streets safe, museums safeguarding our cultural heritage, one can provide multiple examples of how public organizations impact our daily lives. But running public organizations is complex and expectations towards these organizations have never been greater — they need to be efficient and effective, provide high-quality and equitable services, ...

This open access book is a comparative analysis of recent large scale education reforms that broadened curriculum goals to better prepare students for the 21st century. The book examines what governments actually do when they broaden curriculum goals, with attention to the details of implementation. To this end, the book examines system level reforms in six countries at various levels of development. The study includes system level reforms in jurisdictions where students achieve high level...