Three Ages of Government : From the Person, to the Group, to the World / Jos C.N. Raadschelders.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Raadschelders, Jos C. N., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political participation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 316 pages)

Other Title:

Three Ages of Government

Place of Publication:

2020.

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2020.

Summary:

It is only in the last 250 years that ordinary people (in some parts of the world) have become citizens rather than subjects. This change happened in a very short period, between 1780 and 1820, a result of the foundations of democracy laid in the age of revolutions. A century later local governments embraced this shift due to rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. During the twentieth century, all democratic governments began 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 everyone else. Many of the reforms of that postwar period have been since rolled back because of the belief that government should be more like a business. Jos C.N. Raadschelders provides the information that all 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 it. The Three Ages of Government rises above stereotypical thinking to show the centrality of government in human life.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-472-12736-5