The State At Work, Volume 1 Public Sector Employment in Ten Western Countries

The State At Work, Volume 1 Public Sector Employment in Ten Western Countries

Edited by : Hans-Ulrich Derlien

Release date: Jan 2010

Edward Elgar Publishing

Number of pages: 320

ISBN: 978 1 84376 516 5


More About this Book

Edited by Hans-Ulrich Derlien, Professor of Public Administration, Social Science and Economics Faculty, Bamberg University, Germany and B. Guy Peters, Maurice Falk Professor of American Government, University of Pittsburgh, US and Honorary Professor, City University of Hong Kong. He also served as one of the co-editors at the founding stage of the journal Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration Representing the most extensive research on public employment, these two volumes explore the radical changes that have taken place in the configuration of national public services due to a general expansion of public employment that was followed by stagnation and decreases. Part-time employment and the involvement of women also increased as a component of the public sector and were linked to the most important growth areas such as the educational, health care and personal social services sectors. The two volumes that make up this study shed important insight on these changes. Scholars and professionals in the fields of public administration, politics and economics will find this two-volume compendium informative and practical. Volume 1 offers a unique internationally comparative multi-dimensional analysis of ten public service systems belonging to different families of major advanced western countries. It contains the most comprehensive and comparable quantitative analyses available anywhere of ten public service systems; Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the US, Germany, Spain, France, Denmark and Sweden. Contents: 1. Introduction: The State at Work Hans-Ulrich Derlien and B. Guy Peters 2. Public Employment in Britain: From Working in to Working for the Public Sector? Brian W. Hogwood 3. Breaking Sharply with the Past: Government Employment in New Zealand Robert Gregory 4. Public Employment in Australia: In Competition with the Market Helen Nelson 5. Public Employment in Canada: Downsizing in a Multi-layered State James Iain Gow and Sharon L. Sutherland 6. Public Employment in the United States: Building the State from the Bottom Up B. Guy Peters 7. The German Public Service: Between Tradition and Transformation Hans-Ulrich Derlien 8. Working for the Government in Spain: From Authoritarian Centralism to Democratic Political Devolution Carlos R. Alba and Carmen Navarro 9. The French Paradox: A Huge but Fragmented Public Service Luc Rouban 10. The Political Allocation of Incessant Growth in the Danish Public Service Lotte Bøgh Andersen, Jørgen Grønnegaard Christensen and Thomas Pallesen 11. The Welfare State is Female: Trends in Public Sector Employment in Sweden Jon Pierre 12. Conclusion Hans-Ulrich Derlien Index