Product Description: With the rush of calamitous events in recent years―the September 11 terror attacks, the Iraq imbroglio, and hurricanes Katrina and Rita―Americans feel themselves to be living in dark times. Trust in one another and in the government is at low ebb...read more

During the first two decades of the twentieth century in cities across America, both men and women struggled for urban reform but in distinctively different ways. Adhering to gender roles of the time, men working for independent research bureaus sought to apply scientific and business practices to corrupt city governments, while women in the settlement house movement labored to improve the lives of the urban poor by testing new services and then getting governments to adopt them.Although the two intertwined at first, the contributions of these "settlement women" to the development of the administrative state have been largely lost as the new field of public administration evolved from the research bureaus and diverged from social work. Camilla Stivers now shows how public administration came to be dominated not just by science and business but also by masculinity, calling into question much that is taken for granted about the profession and creating an alternative vision of public service.Bureau Men, Settlement Women offers a rare look at the early intellectual history of public administration and is the only book to examine the subject from a gender perspective. It recovers the forgotten contributions of women-their engagement in public life, concern about the proper aims of government, and commitment to citizenship and community-to show that they were ultimately more successful than their male counterparts in enlarging the work and moral scope of government. Stivers's study helps explain public administration's long-standing "identity crisis" by showing why the separation of male and female roles restricted public administration to an unnecessary instrumentalism. It also provides the most detailed examination in half a century of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research and its role in the development of twentieth-century public administration.By reconsidering the origins of the field and calling for a new sense of purpose in public service, Stivers suggests that public administrators need not rigidly emulate business practices but should instead strive to improve the ways in which they deal with people. Her well-researched critique will help students and professionals better understand their calling and challenge them to reconsider how they think about, educate for, and perform government service. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Extensively updated to reflect recent research and new theoretical literature, this much-anticipated Second Edition applies a gender lens to the field of public administration, looking at issues of status, power, leadership, legitimacy and change...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This anthology addresses several of the most central ideas in the field of public administration. These ideas are as relevant to public budgeting as they are to performance measurement or human resource management. Collectively and individually the essays explore what Dwight Waldo referred to as the “political theories” of public administration: issues that are ultimately unresolvable yet crucial to understanding the nature of public administrative practice...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: While skepticism about government is an enduring feature of North American political culture, today's climate of anti-government sentiment has grown aggressive and even violent. This volume, made up of a community of prominent voices in public administration theory and practice, examines the current anti-government climate and its effect on the working lives of administrators and their relationships with citizens...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: While skepticism about government is an enduring feature of North American political culture, today's climate of anti-government sentiment has grown aggressive and even violent. This volume, made up of a community of prominent voices in public administration theory and practice, examines the current anti-government climate and its effect on the working lives of administrators and their relationships with citizens...read more

Product Description: For the first time the key issues in public management are connected with the attitudes and concerns of the women's movement. Stivers describes how the various images of the public manager, such as the professional expert and the visionary leader, not only possess traditional masculine features but confer privileges on men and pose practical dilemmas for women...read more