Download PDF Public Management in Global Perspective Salvatore SchiavoCampo Hazel M McFerson 9780765617262 Books

Product details Paperback 536 pages Publisher Routledge; 1 edition (April 17, 2008) Language English ISBN-10 9780765617262 ISBN-13 978-0765617262 ASIN 0765617269

Public Management in Global Perspective Salvatore SchiavoCampo Hazel M McFerson 9780765617262 Books Reviews

• a must have for any public administration student.
• great
• I bought this book brand new from . However, there were entire chapters with missing pages where the pages did not print from the publisher. said they were not responsible for sending me a flawed product, but that it was the publishers problem. I had to contact the publisher to get missing pages. However, I use regularly and am thoroughly disappointed that they would not take responsibility for the flawed item that they sold me.
• In Fall 2014 I will be using this book for the fourth time in a graduate level course on international and comparative administration. There are a few competing books, but none of them come close to this one as comprehensive textbooks for this subject matter area. Its strengths are these
  
  Comprehensiveness it covers more aspects of international and comparative public management than I can realistically cover in a semester.
  
  Thoroughness topics are covered in depth, with references to original works from which readers can dig deeper in the literature if they wish to.
  
  Ample illustrations there are lots of little cases and sub-themes set out in boxes aside from the main text.
  
  Detail and accuracy the details of specific countries' activities in various administrative arenas seem to be quite accurate. Having done research in the Philippines, for example, I found their illustrations of activities there were accurate. This is probably due to Ms. McFerson's time spent there in a Philippine university. Other illustrations are similarly detailed; this kind of accuracy and authenticity can only be accomplished when authors have actually been in the field. The authors' experiences in the field show through in many ways in the book.
  
  Scholarly and practical related to the previous point, the many accurate and practical illustrations really help illuminate conditions on the ground in settings where many of us otherwise do not have first-hand knowledge; at the same time the book draws well on scholarly background literature and themes.
  
  Practical exercises and discussion questions these are provided at the end of each chapter; I can attest from experience that they work well to stimulate student discussion.
  
  Logical and coherent organization it is simply well planned out, and chapter distinctions and titles make sense.
  
  I confess that when I first saw the book I was concerned with the "public management" in the title, fearing that this might signal that it delivers a particular contemporary prescriptive approach known as "new public management" (NPM). This is not the case. It does discuss NPM, but it does so by offering competing perspectives about NPM. Nicely done.
  
  A person might ask whether the book has utility for purposes other than the graduate or upper division undergraduate classroom. The answer is yes. I also use the book as a bookshelf reference when I need to dig into a body of literature with which I am not fully familiar. It provides overviews of various perspectives and offers references to other foundational literature. For example, I recently became engaged in studying a particular case of corruption in Philippine government, and although I knew some of the relevant literature on corruption, this book offers a chapter on ethics and corruption that both helped put things in perspective, while also offering suggestions for further reading. So it can serve as a useful reference book for the broad subject matter of international and comparative administration.
  
  At this point I have four small quibbles, and these are what caused me to give it a four-star rating. It is quite pricey, but we should take that up with M. E. Sharpe.
  
  Second, it is now six years old. Although most of the thematic material is still applicable, I think some updated case illustrations might make it more appealing. Furthermore, some governments have changed in the ensuing years, and some of those details need updating.
  
  Third, I wish it contained more material on international and regional administrative entities -- the UN, World Bank, OECD, ASEAN, etc. There is some coverage for those types of institutions, but not enough in my opinion. In an increasingly globalized world, these entities become important, if not always effective, players.
  
  Finally, I wish there were more conscious treatment of the connection between governments and the "voluntary (or third) sector," and perhaps between both of these and what in some developing countries is referred to as the "informal sector." In various countries we refer to nonprofit organizations, NGOs, civil society organizations, and so on. In the U.S. we refer to them as nonprofits (for legal and historical reasons), and most of these organizations work in parallel with, and sometimes under contract with, government. In developing countries we often find NGOs that are primarily adversarial toward government. Europeans often refer to a "social economy," in order to acknowledge the distinctive political and social roles that third sector organizations play. So these relationships between government and the third sector vary considerably across the countries of the world. The book does discuss the growing tendency to refer to "governance" (involving all three sectors) as opposed to the more traditional focus on government alone. But the variety of these relationships around the world (and among international NGOs that in some cases have program reach and budgets larger than entire countries) probably deserves more attention in a subsequent edition. Similarly, in some developing countries, the majority of working adults are part of the informal economy rather than working in licensed and regulated companies. When this is so, the work of government regulation takes on a very different complexion. This reality is not well illustrated in the book.
  
  In summary, I have found ways to supplement with additional materials for the gaps I perceive. But I still believe this is the best book available for my purposes, and it would be a great loss if it were to go out of publication. This may be an issue, since this particular subject matter may represent a fairly narrow market niche.