Twenty-first Century America Research Articles

Book Reviews

GovernanceVolume 18, Issue 1 p. 135-146 Book Reviews First published: 08 December 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2004.00269.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Books reviewed: The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome. Yehzkel Dror. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001. 264 pp. $67.00 (hardback). Government's Greatest Achievements: From Civil Rights to Homeland Security. Paul C. Light. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002. 200 pp. $19.95 (hardcover). The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for Twenty-First Century America. Donald F. Kettl. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 240 pp. $17.95 (paperback). Reviewed by MARK CARL ROM, Georgetown University Politics and the Russian Army: Civil–Military Relations, 1689–2000. Brian D. Taylor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 355 pp. $25.00 (paperback), $75.00 (hardback). Reviewed by DONALD ABENHEIM, Naval Postgraduate School Defending Europe: The EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy. Jolyon Howorth and John T. S. Keeler, eds. New York: Palgrave, 2003. 247 pp. $55.00 (hardcover). Reviewed by MICHAEL BAUN, Valdosta State University Migration and the Externalities of European Integration. Sandra Lavenex and Emek M. Uçarer. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. 240 pp. $24.95 (paperback), $75.00 (hardback). Reviewed by SEBASTIEN GAGNON-MESSIER, University of Maryland Government: A Public Administration Perspective. Jos C. N. Raadschelders. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003. 464 pp. $39.95 (paperback), $ 79.95 (hardcover). Reviewed by MARGARET F. REID, University of Arkansas Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the 21st Century. Lisa Anderson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 158 pp. $27.50 (cloth). Reviewed by ROBERT W. RYCROFT, George Washington University Volume18, Issue1January 2005Pages 135-146 RelatedInformation

The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for Twenty-First Century AmericaThe Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for Twenty-First Century America. By Donald F. Kettl. (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Pp. 204. $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper)

The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for Twenty-First Century America<i>The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for Twenty-First Century America</i>. By Donald F. Kettl. (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Pp. 204. $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper)

Coming of age in twenty-first century america: Public attitudes towards the importance and timing of transitions to adulthood

This paper examines age norms on seven important transitions to adulthood. Americans rank finishing school as the most important hallmark of becoming an adult. This is followed closely by obtaining full-time employment, being able to support a family, and being financially independent. Among these seven standards of achieving adulthood the average transition age runs over a 5.3 year span, from being financially independent, living independently, and being employed full-time by the traditional age of majority (21) to being a parent by age 26. A large degree of consensus prevails across social groups on the importance of these transitions. The only notable pattern of differences is that on supporting a family, having a child, and getting married older adults and the widowed and married rate these as more important than younger adults and the never married do. Considerably more variation exists across social groups on the age or timing of these transitions. First, the young and never married favor earlier transitions on financial independence, living away from parents, and working full-time, and later transitions on supporting a family, getting married, and having children. Second, the better educated and those with higher incomes favor later transitions on all domains. Third, cultural differences related to race and religion appear. For example, blacks tend to favor the early transition model more than whites do.

The transformation of governance: public administration for twenty-first century America

The theory of public administration has long been based on the notions of hierarchy and authority. However, the way managers actually manage has increasingly become at odds with the theory. The growing gap between theory and practice poses enormous challenges for managers in determining how best to work - and for American government in determining how best to hold public administrators accountable for effectively doing their jobs. In the quest to improve the practice of public administration, Kettl explains, political scientists and other scholars have tried a number of approaches, including formal modelling, implementation studies, a public management perspective and even institutional choice. This book offers a new framework for reconciling effective administration with the requirements of democratic government. Instead of thinking in terms of organizational structure and management, Kettl suggests, administrators and theorists need to focus on or links between government and its broader environment - political, social, and administrative. Government is the collection of institutions that act with authority and create formal obligations; governance is the set of processes and institutions, formal and informal, through which social action occurs. Linking government and governance, Kettl concludes, is the foundation for understanding the theory and practice of government in 21st-century America - for making public programmes work better and for securing the values on which the American republic has been built.

Elections and Change under Voting with Dollars

Two important events occur in even-numbered years: federal elections and the Olympics. Each is marked by huge amounts of media spending, odd combinations of high ideals, jingoism, fierce competition in some events and preordained results in others, and, especially recently, accusations of partisan judging. If Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres's provocative new book, Voting with Dollars,' were an Olympic event, it would be the biathlon. The biathlon combines two sports that are usually quite distinct from one anothercross-country skiing and riflery. The biathlon's component events rely on very different skills and approaches. Yoking skiing and shooting together can reveal an athlete's strengths and weaknesses in a way that neither sport alone might do. The biathlon raises the questions of what should count as a sport and whether a streamlined and perhaps romanticized version of what it meant to be a soldier in nineteenth-century Scandinavia should be a model for athletic competition today. So too with Voting with Dollars. The book combines two originally distinct proposals-Bruce Ackerman's idea for decentralized public funding of political campaigns through Patriot dollars2 and Ian Ayres's idea for requiring anonymity in political contributions3-and uses them to offer a highly stylized vision of political life in twenty-first century America. Like the biathlon, the combination raises interesting questions, some about how we think about nineteenth-century history and some about how we

Twenty–first century United States governance: statecraft as reform craft and the peculiar governing paradox it perpetuates

The United States is commonly referred to as the last global superpower, exercising unrivalled political, economic, military and social influence. Yet, paradoxically, unlike any other nation, Americans were – and remain – radically antistatist. Until roughly the twentieth century the United States did not want, need, nor create a powerful administrative state to govern itself, let alone others abroad. This essay explores that peculiar paradox, namely how Americans govern as the last global superpower today, yet retain an inherently fierce hostility to government. The thesis that is developed argues that it is a deep–rooted reformist faith which ultimately shapes US statecraft as a unique style of reformcraft, with both benign and not–sobenign consequences.

Conspiracy Theories: Public Arguments as Coded Social Critiques: a Rhetorical Analysis of the Twa Flight 800 Conspiracy Theories

If we wish to more folly account for how conspiracy theories function in twenty-first century America, then we must be able to move beyond treating conspiracy theories solely as flawed arguments. This essay will argue that conspiracies fulfill two roles—the argumentative role traditionally studied that asserts that some powerful entity is engaged in a grand scheme to control or deceive the masses, and what I shall call the coded social critique role-an underlying message that critiques various social, political, or economic institutions and actors. In other words, the point of dispute in the competing theories and government accounts is equally over the different institutions' ethos and legitimacy as it is over the facts of the crash itself.

INFUSING GERONTOLOGICAL CONTENT INTO THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

The graying of the American population and the importance of religion in the lives of older individuals suggests that members of the clergy need to be well informed regarding the processes and realities of aging. For several years, gerontologists have been encouraging theological educators to place an increased emphasis on the needs and concerns of older adults in seminary curriculum. The purpose of the present study was to determine what seminaries are currently doing to prepare pastors for ministry with older adults and to compare the findings to a similar study undertaken more than a decade ago. The results of the current study are quite similar to those obtained in the past. Although several schools have added a course focusing on the needs and concerns of older adults within the last 20 years, gerontological content remains a minor consideration among the vast majority of seminaries. The major recommendation of the study is that seminaries need to infuse their curricula with gerontological content in order for their graduates to be adequately prepared for ministry in twenty-first century America.

America’s Banquet of Cultures: Harnessing Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration in the Twenty-First Century

Book Review| January 01 2002 America’s Banquet of Cultures: Harnessing Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration in the Twenty-First Century America’s Banquet of Cultures: Harnessing Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration in the Twenty-First Century, Ronald Fernandez. Debra L. DeLaet Debra L. DeLaet Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2002) 21 (2): 94–95. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502816 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Debra L. DeLaet; America’s Banquet of Cultures: Harnessing Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration in the Twenty-First Century. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2002; 21 (2): 94–95. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/27502816 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2002 Immigration and Ethnic History Society2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Keepin' It (Un)Real: Perusing the Boundaries of Hip Hop Culture

ONE MIGHT ASK WHETHER THERE REMAINS MUCH, IF ANYTHING, TO SAY about Rap music and Hip Hop culture given the mass of academic and quasi-academic texts that have been written about this recent artform. Tricia Rose, Michael Eric Dyson, and Robin Kelley are only the most prominent of many histories and interpretations. 1 At closer look, however, this may not be the case. Most monographs or books containing substantial treatises of Hip Hop appeared in the early to mid-1990s. 2 Although recently there have been a few considerations of Hip Hop and its cultural, political, social, economic, and aesthetic ramifications, these treatments appear to be scant compared to the riches of the mid-nineties. This seems rather odd since Hip Hop has "come of age" in recent years, both aesthetically and commercially; at this historical juncture Hip Hop not only enjoys unprecedented success, but there also exists a multitude of aesthetic, political, and geographical variants of the genre. Hip Hop currently dominates both the charts [End Page 291] and cultural landscape of the early twenty-first century America. This year alone has seen a spate of multi-platinum Hip Hop albums by such artists as DMX, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, Eminem, and Nelly, for instance, and Hip Hop releases routinely comprise the bulk of the Billboard album chart. 3 Hip Hop is increasingly used to sell everything from clothing and soft drinks to cars. Moreover, Hip Hop has expanded into a global cultural phenomenon, both by virtue of the success enjoyed by U.S. rappers abroad and through the proliferation of local Hip Hop cultures in countries such as Brazil, Germany, Thailand, Japan, France, and South Africa. 4 All these factors situate Hip Hop as a dominant cultural force. Given its popularity and the complexities resulting from the tension between this popularity and its often resistant rhetoric, why is it receiving so little academic attention? An easy answer is that there is a necessary time lag between cultural production and its resulting academic analyses. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that Hip Hop can no longer be constructed as simply an anti-hegemonic authentic African American artform, as it was often presented by early nineties pundits. Now critics are forced to confront its popularity and mainstream acceptance as well as its resistant forces, and few have risen to the challenge.

The Fate of NRMs and their Detractors in Twenty-first Century America

The Fate of NRMs and their Detractors in Twenty-first Century America

Editorial: Thoughts on the Possible Realignment of the Christian Right in Twenty-first Century America

Recent developments indicate that many within the Christian Right, frustrated with their inability to change American culture through political means over the last three decades, are prepared to pull back and adopt a less coercive strategy to ensure the Christian character of the nation. While the precise form and scope of this emerging realignment cannot yet be described with any clarity, it is suggested here that this emerging shift of emphasis bodes well not only for the integrity of Christianity within American culture, but for the progress of the United States as a principled democratic order in the twenty-first century.

Ecological Approaches to Mental Health Consultation with Teachers on Issues Related to Youth and School Violence

This article argues that ecological issues are at the core of concerns about the violence U.S. students, particularly those in low-income urban communities, are exposed to or experience within or outside of school. Consequently, it suggests that ecological systems theory-based mental health consultation for teachers should be an essential component of school violence prevention services. Further, it outlines a broadframeworkfor generating teacher- and school-based interventions based on empirical data from the youth and school violence literatures, ecological systems theory, and consultee-centered consultation models. It lies within our reach, before the end of the twentieth century, to change the future of disadvantaged children. The children who today are at risk of growing into unskilled, uneducated adults, unable to help their own children to realize the American dream, can, instead, become productive participants in a twentyfirst century America whose aspirations they will share. The cycle of disadvantage that has appeared so intractable can be broken. (Schorr, 1988). Almost every child in my class knows someone who was murdered or shot. I know it gets to them and they can't always think about the lesson or school-but it's hard for me to think about lessons too. I know that most of my kids are on the streets after school and they don't have any place to go and I'm afraid that some of them might get shot or beat up. Some of the kids come in and talk about walking to school by the boarded-up houses and I think.. .thank God they made it to school today. (a third-grade teacher, from an interview with the authors, January 1994) Such contrasting images of hope and despair have haunted many teachers working in American schools in the past few decades. Increasingly, problems related to issues such as child maltreatment, poverty, racism, and family and community violence tend to be systemic and overwhelming in some school settings. Additionally, many of the teachers in these schools are themselves experiencing problems similar to those of their students. Often, these adults neither confide nor consult with their fellow professionals about the violent experiences they and their students share or witness within and outside the school setting. Instead, their intense and profound feelings of hopelessness, frustration, isolation, and anger focus on their students and the problems these youth bring to school. Compounding this situation, most school-based initiatives aimed at eliminating or reducing the incidence and impact of youth and school violence are primarily directed toward students, implemented by nonteaching professionals from outside the school, and not part of the daily functioning of teachers or the school. As such, they often fail to recognize that teachers, principals, and other school personnel must address issues of violence in ongoing, intimate, and complex ways that are frequently overlooked in curricular packages, programs, or auditorium events aimed at addressing this issue.