This book addresses an important issue and debate in public administration: the politicization of civil service systems and personnel. Using a comparative framework the authors address issues such as compensation, appointments made from outside the civil service system, anonymity, partisanship and systems used to handle appointees of prior administrations in the US, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, New Zealand, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Greece.

This revised and expanded edition of a benchmark collection compares how civil services around the world have adapted to cope with managing public services in the 21st century. The volume provides insights into multi-level governance, juridification and issues of efficiency and responsiveness as well as exploring the impact of fiscal austerity.

The role and position of the civil service as core actors in the public sector has been seriously questioned in recent years. This volume provides a comparative study of civil service systems in Asia, Western Europe and Africa. The cast of international contributors provide new insights.

Continuing in the standard of excellence set by previous editions, this sixth edition assesses the bureaucracies and development of governments around the world-providing helpful and revealing analyses of the relationships between bureaucracies and political regimes. With over 1000 literature references, tables, and drawings, the book has been updated to reflect changes in the political systems of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the developing world. The editor clearly articulates recent developments in the shifting global political landscape and discusses how conditions in development administration and comparative public policy affect nation-states.

This comprehensive book compares the intersection of political forces and legal practices in five industrial nations--the United States, England, France, Germany, and Japan. The authors, eminent political scientists and legal scholars, investigate how constitutional courts function in each country, how the adjudication of criminal justice and the processing of civil disputes connect legal systems to politics, and how both ordinary citizens and large corporations use the courts. For each of the five countries, the authors discuss the structure of courts and access to them, the manner in which politics and law are differentiated or amalgamated, whether judicial posts are political prizes or bureaucratic positions, the ways in which courts are perceived as legitimate forms for addressing political conflicts, the degree of legal consciousness among citizens, the kinds of work lawyers do, and the manner in which law and courts are used as social control mechanisms. The authors find that although the extent to which courts participate in policymaking varies dramatically from country to country, judicial responsiveness to perceived public problems is not a uniquely American phenomenon.

This comparative study focuses on the changing relations between civil servants and politicians in the European Union in the last two decades. As well as national case studies this book also looks into politico-administrative relations in supranational institutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament.