Public Administration With Infotrac ─ Clashing Values in the Administration of Public Policy

A part of our successful new ADVANTAGE SERIES in Political Science—offering lower student prices for introductory texts—Public Administration, by Michael LeMay, uses a "clash of values" approach that gets to the heart of how administrators make decisions and implement public policy. Engaging, disparate case studies and examples grab the reader's imagination, capturing the full essence and intricacies of this unique area of political science. Fully integrated Internet resources keep the material up-to-date, and encourage students to explore topics through independent research. The "clash of values" theme loosely organizes the text and infuses every chapter, providing students with a sense of how values connote principles, goals, or standards that an individual, class, organization, or society holds dear. A secondary theme investigates the roles that public administrators play throughout the policy process, including targeting a problem, placing it on the government's agenda, structuring the alternatives that elected officials use, implementing public policy through the programs and procedures they largely determine, and finally, evaluating the success or failure of a policy. The second edition updates the value discussion to include the clash of uniformity versus diversity. It describes the reorganization of the national bureaucracies following the 9/11 attacks that prompted the enactment of the PATRIOT Act and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security.