Introduction: What is government -- Understanding government in society: The past fifty years -- Government today -- What positions can state and government occupy in society? -- What roles can government play in society? Government's political revolution -- Trends in the role of government in society -- How the study of public administration contributes to understanding government -- Why study this? -- Government in society: The conceptual and historical context for understanding government -- Opening Salvo: On the torture of holistic scholarship -- Government as artifice of bounded rationality: Simon and Vico -- Social ontology for understanding institutional arrangements -- Hierarchies of knowledge: From simple to complex phenomena -- Government as function of instinct, community, and society -- Institutional changes and the triple whammy -- Changes at the constitutional level -- Changes at the collective level -- Changes at the operational level -- Enter the triple whammy: Industrialization, urbanization, and rapid population growth -- The stage is set for the remainder of this book -- Instinct and intent: Origins and elements of human governing behaviors -- The nature-nurture issue: From dichotomy to balanced complex -- Sociality among the great apes and humans: Similarities and differences -- Similarities -- Differences -- Physical and social features of the Hominin tribe -- Human instinct and intent -- How we differ from primates: Governing among and of hunter-gatherers -- Conflicting impulses underlying governing arrangements -- Concluding comments: Relevance to understanding what government is -- Tribal community: Governing humans in ever larger, sedentary groups -- The growth, dispersion, and concentration of the human species -- The agricultural revolution: Fraud or inevitable? -- Small and large-scale governing arrangements: Four main phases of socioeconomic development, three structuring constants, and and two governing revolutions -- The rise and fall of governing arrangements: Self-governing capacity as the default -- The political-administrative revolution since the 1780s : A very brief recap -- The triple whammy plus high-speed communication technology -- From government as instrument to government as container: The role and position of the individual -- Citizen and government in a global society: Globalization and the deep current of rationalization -- What is globalization? What is a global society? -- The impact of globalization on people as citizens and as public officeholders -- The impact of globalization on the structure and functioning of government -- The impact of globalization on the role and position of government -- Understanding globalization: The deep current of rationalization and its manifestation(s) -- How can citizens and governments deal with globalization and the perversions of rationalization? -- Governing as process: Negotiable authority and multisource decision-making -- The role and position of career civil servants in democratic political systems -- The nature of public authority -- Negotiable authority as key to understanding what democratic government is today -- The nature of public decision-making -- Multisource decision making as standard in democratic government -- The governing we can take for granted -- Citizens and government have come a long way in a very short time -- Democracy: Thriving by self-restraint, vulnerable to human instinct, tribal community, and global society -- The position and role of government in society -- The influence of human instinct -- The influence of tribal community -- The influence of global society -- Democracy as ideal and as vulnerable: Challenges from human behavior -- Democracy as ideal political system -- Declining trust in government -- Rent-seeking behavior by private actors: Business principles in the public realm -- Personality politics and populism: The enduring power of emotions -- Na-na-na-na-boo-boo politics: The price of polarization and partisanship -- The need for continuous civics education -- Democracy and bureaucracy: The delicate interplay of fairness and efficiency -- Democracy, self-restraint, and true guardians.
Summary:
For much of history, people have been treated as subjects to those with political and economic power and wealth. It is only in the last 250 years that people (in some parts of the world) have become citizens as opposed to subjects. This change happened in a very short period, between 1780 and 1820, when the foundation for democracy was laid. This was also the basis upon which a century later, local governments responded to rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. During the twentieth century, all democratic governments came to perform a range of tasks, functions, and services that had no historical precedent. In the thirty years following the Second World War, Western democracies created welfare states that, for the first time in history, significantly reduced the gap between the wealthy and the rest. Many of the reforms of that postwar period have been rolled back since then because of the belief that government should be more 'businesslike'. The changes in the role of government in society have been massive in the past 250 years, and so little is known about why. Jos C.N. Raadschelders examines the questions that citizens should have about their connections to government, why there is a government, what it does, how it does it, and why we can no longer do without government. What is Government? rises above stereotypical thinking about government.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.