Robert F. Durant's Books

Building the Compensatory State

An Intellectual History and Theory of American Administrative Reform

By: Robert F. Durant

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Building the Compensatory State

An Intellectual History and Theory of American Administrative Reform

By: Robert F. Durant

Contemporary public administration research has marginalized the importance of “taking history seriously.” With few exceptions, little recent scholarship in the field has looked longitudinally (rather than cross-sectionally), contextually, and theoretically over extended time periods at “big questions” in public administration. One such “big question” involves the evolution of American administrative reform and its link since the nation’s founding to American state building. This book addresses this gap by analyzing administrative reform in unprecedented empirical and theoretical ways. In taking a multidisciplinary approach, it incorporates recent developments in cognate research fields in the humanities and social sciences that have been mostly ignored in public administration. It thus challenges existing notions of the nature, scope, and power of the American state and, with these, important aspects of today’s conventional wisdom in public administration. Author Robert F. Durant explores the administrative state in a new light as part of a “compensatory state”—driven, shaped, and amplified since the nation’s founding by a corporate–social science nexus of interests. Arguing that this nexus of interests has contributed to citizen estrangement in the United States, he offers a broad empirical and theoretical understanding of the political economy of administrative reform, its role in state building, and its often paradoxical results. Offering a reconsideration of conventional wisdom in public administration, this book is required reading for all students, scholars, or practitioners of public administration, public policy, and politics.

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317

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1000586871

ISBN 13

9781000586879

The Greening of the U.S. Military

Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change

By: Robert F. Durant

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The Greening of the U.S. Military

Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change

By: Robert F. Durant

By the Cold War's end, U.S. military bases harbored nearly 20,000 toxic waste sites. All told, cleaning the approximately 27 million acres is projected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And yet while progress has been made, efforts to integrate environmental and national security concerns into the military's operations have proven a daunting and intrigue-filled task that has fallen short of professed goals in the post-Cold War era. In The Greening of the U.S. Military, Robert F. Durant delves into this too-little understood world of defense environmental policy to uncover the epic and ongoing struggle to build an environmentally sensitive culture within the post-Cold War military. Through over 100 interviews and thousands of pages of documents, reports, and trade newsletter accounts, he offers a telling tale of political, bureaucratic, and intergovernmental combat over the pace, scope, and methods of applying environmental and natural resource laws while ensuring military readiness. He then discerns from these clashes over principle, competing values, and narrow self-interest a theoretical framework for studying and understanding organizational change in public organizations. From Dick Cheney's days as Defense Secretary under President George H. W. Bush to William Cohen's Clinton-era-tenure and on to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, the battle over "greening" the military has been one with high-stakes consequences for both national defense and public health, safety, and the environment. Durant's polity-centered perspective and arguments will evoke needed scrutiny, debate, and dialogue over these issues in environmental, military, policymaking, and academic circles.

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Page Count

326

Publisher

Georgetown University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1589014464

ISBN 13

9781589014466

The People's Network

The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age

By: Robert MacDougall

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The People's Network

The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age

By: Robert MacDougall

The Bell System dominated telecommunications in the United States and Canada for most of the twentieth century, but its monopoly was not inevitable. In the decades around 1900, ordinary citizens—farmers, doctors, small-town entrepreneurs—established tens of thousands of independent telephone systems, stringing their own wires to bring this new technology to the people. Managed by opportunists and idealists alike, these small businesses were motivated not only by profit but also by the promise of open communication as a weapon against monopoly capital and for protection of regional autonomy. As the Bell empire grew, independents fought fiercely to retain control of their local networks and companies—a struggle with an emerging corporate giant that has been almost entirely forgotten. The People's Network reconstructs the story of the telephone's contentious beginnings, exploring the interplay of political economy, business strategy, and social practice in the creation of modern North American telecommunications. Drawing from government documents in the United States and Canada, independent telephone journals and publications, and the archives of regional Bell operating companies and their rivals, Robert MacDougall locates the national debates over the meaning, use, and organization of the telephone industry as a turning point in the history of information networks. The competing businesses represented dueling political philosophies: regional versus national identity and local versus centralized power. Although independent telephone companies did not win their fight with big business, they fundamentally changed the way telecommunications were conceived.

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Page Count

344

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812245695

ISBN 13

9780812245691

Altered Policy Landscapes

Fracking, Grazing, and the Bureau of Land Management

By: Robert E. Forbis Jr.

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Altered Policy Landscapes

Fracking, Grazing, and the Bureau of Land Management

By: Robert E. Forbis Jr.

This book documents the United States Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) shift from a rancher-dominated agency to an energy-dominated agency. This shift is analyzed by identifying the conditions under which the expansion of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Rocky Mountain West triggered a political conflict between ranching and energy stakeholder groups. Through scrutiny of federal actions and policies implemented by the Executive Branch between 2004 and 2010, the book sheds light on the emphasis of domestic energy production during this time period, and how the traditional ranching and energy alliance was split by shifting policy interests. The book is meant for policy makers, natural resource agencies, and students and researchers engaged in political science, public administration, and natural resource management. Chapter 1 introduces readers to the case study at hand, and reviews literature on public land agencies and policies. Chapter 2 summarizes the legal history of public land management by the federal government, and the conditions that caused the BLM to favor energy development over ranching in the mid-2000's. Chapter 3 details the role of the Executive Branch (Bush-Cheney administration) in affecting the BLM's domestic energy policies and resource allocation, and chapter 4 analyzes the role of subgovernments in affecting the BLM's motivations too. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 contain first-hand accounts from government officials, state petroleum associations, and ranching supported interest groups to explore the concept of subgovernment stakeholder domination in policymaking, and analyze the similarities and differences between different policy-making elites. Chapter 8 concludes the text by summarizing subgovernment theory, mapping the behaviors of subgovernment actors, and discussing the implications for future political appointees in the direction of land-management agencies like the BLM.

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Page Count

182

Publisher

Springer

Published Date

ISBN 10

3030047741

ISBN 13

9783030047740

Crossing Boundaries for Intergovernmental Management

By: Robert Agranoff

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Crossing Boundaries for Intergovernmental Management

By: Robert Agranoff

Introduction : politics, government, management across boundaries -- Federal framing of intergovernmental relations and intergovernmental management -- Integrating the federal system through law and politics -- Legally and politically based intergovernmental relations in practice -- Jurisdictional interdependence -- Managing interdependency -- Intergovernmental management partnerships with nongovernmental organizations -- Managing intergovernmental management partnerships -- The network era -- Organized intergovernmental management networks -- Conclusion : the past and future of intergovernmental management

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Page Count

312

Publisher

Georgetown University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1626164800

ISBN 13

9781626164802

Presidential Power

Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-first Century

By: Robert Y. Shapiro,Martha Joynt Kumar,Lawrence R. Jacobs

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Presidential Power

Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-first Century

By: Robert Y. Shapiro,Martha Joynt Kumar,Lawrence R. Jacobs

A collection of essays that reevaluates Richard Neustadt's place in presidential studies and shows that, while Neustadt's classic work remains a beacon for the study of the presidency, it no longer offers a reliable roadmap embodying the consensus among contemporary scholars.

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Page Count

544

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231109326

ISBN 13

9780231109321

Building the Compensatory State

An Intellectual History and Theory of American Administrative Reform

By: Robert F. Durant

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Building the Compensatory State

An Intellectual History and Theory of American Administrative Reform

By: Robert F. Durant

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Page Count

317

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1000586871

ISBN 13

9781000586879

The Greening of the U.S. Military

Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change

By: Robert F. Durant

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The Greening of the U.S. Military

Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change

By: Robert F. Durant

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

326

Publisher

Georgetown University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1589014464

ISBN 13

9781589014466

Book's by Robert F. Durant

Building the Compensatory State

Building the Compensatory State

The Greening of the U.S. Military

The Greening of the U.S. Military

The People's Network

The People's Network

Altered Policy Landscapes

Altered Policy Landscapes

Crossing Boundaries for Intergovernmental Management

Crossing Boundaries for Intergovernmental Management

Presidential Power

Presidential Power

Building the Compensatory State

Building the Compensatory State

The Greening of the U.S. Military

The Greening of the U.S. Military

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