Friday, June 29, 2018

Successful Public Governance

We’re assuming that "Successful Public Governance," a new book series at Edward Elgar, is aimed mostly at scholars fo public administration, but it is of interest to historians as well.  The Series Editors are Paul ‘t Hart, Utrecht University, and Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University.
Societies can only have a serious shot at thriving when they are governed through public institutions that are trustworthy, reliable, impartial, and competent. Yet in the first decades of the 21st century, governments and public institutions worldwide have been challenged by deep and fast changes in their operating environment. There is therefore an urgent need for concepts, designs, and practices for successful public governance, which this groundbreaking new book series will seek to present.

Under the direction of the Series Editors, the series will present a number of approaches to the topic of successful public governance, including:
  • Conceptualizations and critiques of the notion and ideal of ‘success’ in public sector and political settings.
  • Methodological strategies for designing and conducting ‘positive’ evaluations of public policies, organisations, networks, initiatives, and other forms of public governance.
  • Empirical studies that provide close-up, comparative, experimental, and large-n/big data research identifying, describing, explaining, and/or interpreting highly effective, highly adaptive, highly democratic, highly reputed, highly resilient public governance institutions and practices.
  • Pleas, proposals, designs giving ideational accounts of ‘what should and might be’ when it comes to successful public governance.
The Series Editors welcome contributions from scholars across the social sciences and law, tackling a wide range of governance phenomena including levels of governance, governmental and non-governmental settings, and formal and informal institutions and practices, and employing the full range of methodological approaches. 

Books in the series should advance scholarly debate, and/or be usable as advanced texts for (post)graduate students. Relatively compact (70-80.000 words) manuscripts are preferred, though persuasive proposals for longer manuscripts will also be considered.
For more information on this series, including details on submitting a proposal, please contact: Alex Pettifer, Editorial Director, Edward Elgar Publishing, alex.pettifer@e-elgar.co.uk