Every year, editor Kevin Smith pulls cutting-edge selections from publications such as Governing, State Legislatures, State News, and Campaigns & Elections to grab your students’ interest with highly readable and up-to-date articles that hit close to home. Nearly 40 new articles cover the significant issues facing state and local government with the same context and currency you have come to expect as hallmarks of this reader. The 2011–2012 edition will help bring the latest analysis into your state and local government course.

The Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government is an historic undertaking. It contains a wide range of essays that define the important questions in the field, evaluate where we are in answering them, and set the direction and terms of discourse for future work. The Handbook will have a substantial influence in defining the field for years to come. The chapters critically assess both the key works of state and local politics literature and the ways in which the sub-field has developed. It covers the main areas of study in subnational politics by exploring the central contributions to the comparative study of institutions, behavior, and policy in the American context. Each chapter outlines an agenda for future research.

This book offers an overview of the legal, political, and broad intergovernmental environment in which relations between local and state units of government take place, the historical roots of the conflict among them, and an analysis of contemporary problems concerning local authority, local revenues, state interventions and takeovers, and the restructuring of local governments. The author pays special attention to local governmental autonomy and the goals and activities of local officials as they seek to secure resources, fend off regulations and interventions, and fight for survival as independent units. He looks at the intergovernmental struggle from the bottom up, but in the process examines a variety of political activities at the state level and the development and effects of several state policies. Berman finds considerable reason to be concerned about the viability and future of meaningful local government.

Supplements include a Companion Website (www.oup.com/us/simon) as well as a comprehensive Test Bank for instructors. --

This brief version of the top-selling "State and Local Government" retains the unique thematic and historical approach of the comprehensive text in 12 chapters compared to 16. The condensed format provides explanations of the structure of state and local government, as well as their functions in the current political scene. In addition, descriptions of public policy issues appear at relevant points throughout the text and are better integrated into discussed topics.Coverage of e-government and the Internet explores how technology affects state and local government and citizen participation.Up-to-date policy focus addresses important issues facing government at this level and includes topics such as education, economic development, criminal justice, the environment, social welfare, and healthcare.Discussion of the slowed pace of "devolution" since September 11 is included in Chapter 2.