This book explores the unintended and unanticipated effects associated with 'modernization' projects and tackles the key question that they provoke - why do policy-makers persist in such enterprises in the face of evidence that they tend to fail? Paradoxes of Modernization first discusses what is meant by 'modernization' and 'unintended consequences', placing public policy reform within more general intellectual and social trends. It presents eight case study 'modernization' projects. Their architects promised faster trains, a more efficient and reactive health service, a more motivated public service, better performing local government, enhanced information for prospective US university students, reduced rates of child malnutrition in developing countries, and a free, open, safe, interconnected cyberspace for people to conduct their social and political life. Each case provides a neat story with a paradox that varies the modernization theme and tackles the question: why was the project pursued? The conclusion categorizes the cases in terms of their outcome, from success to disappointment, and suggests some strategies for a more balanced version of modernization for current and future policy-makers.

Paradoxes of Modernization: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy Reform

Reference

Perri 6

Helen Margetts

Atlases & Maps

OUP Oxford

<p>The search for a more holistic approach to policy and management looks set to be as much a hallmark of public service reform in the early twenty first century as the changes introduced under the rubric of 'new public management' or 'reinventing government' were in the closing decades of the twentieth. Towards Holistic Governance presents an authoritative assessment of successes and failures to date and a new framework for analysis and implementation based on extensive research both in the UK - where the New Labour government has been an early enthusiast and pathfinder for 'joined-up government' just as its predecessors were for privatisation and contracting out - and elsewhere.</p>

Towards Holistic Governance: The New Reform Agenda

Politics & Social Sciences

Stoker, Gerry

Leat, Diana

Seltzer, Kimberly

Seltzer, Kimberley

Politics & Government

Red Globe Press

Towards Holistic Governance: The New Reform Agenda (Government beyond the Centre, 21)

Diana Leat

Kimberly Seltzer

Gerry Stoker

Holistic Government (Demos Paper) (Demos Papers)

Self-Help

Demos

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Books by Perri 6