Expert contributors analyze the evolution of theoretical approaches and best practices for public service delivery in light of fundamental changes to the socio-political and cultural environment. Tracing connections between different aspects, they illustrate the flexible, collaborative and innovative modes of delivery that are supplementing traditional centralized models. Chapters investigate how to manage important considerations including citizen expectations, economic efficiency, democratic accountability and limitations on capacity. Ultimately, the Handbook demonstrates that in order to be effective, public service delivery must be adapted to specific local and national contexts.

Examining both the theory and practice of public service delivery, this Handbook is an essential resource for students and scholars in public administration and management, public sector economics and public policy. It will also be of great use to professionals in government and NGOs seeking to optimize public service delivery.

The rekindling of the European Union enlargement talks and Brexit require a reappraisal of the law of the EU's proximity policies. In that light, this book turns Wider Europe into an analytical concept to capture the legal and political facets of the extension of the EU's legal space in the Union's neighbourhood.

The book follows three lines of inquiry. Firstly, it reflects on the similarities and differences between internal and external integration, drawing a distinction between EU membership law and EU neighbourhood law. Secondly, it unravels the techniques for the extension of the EU's legal space across different partnerships in the Union's neighbourhood. Thirdly, it sheds light on the political covenants underlying the variety of institutional arrangements of the extended EU's legal space.

The book discusses how EU neighbourhood law entails a reconfiguration of how sovereignty is exercised both in the EU and in third countries participating in the Wider Europe.

Providing historical analyses of colonization, liberalism, and democracy, John A. Doces challenges the prevailing notions of liberal democracy and instead identifies its promotion as a form of political control and the latest manifestation of the colonial endeavor. Utilizing original data from 11 African case studies, the book finds that non-Western countries do not have the foundations to support competitive processes like democratic elections, which are associated with spikes in violence and fear. Adopting a comparative approach, Doces concludes that imposing Western liberal democracy upon developing societies inflicts harm that persists over time, limiting rather than promoting prosperity.

This topical book is invaluable for students and scholars of international relations, political science and public policy, security studies, democracy, regulation and governance, and development studies. Its empirical research will also be of use to policymakers and advisors working in developing countries.

As Europe finds itself once again caught between two superpowers - the USA and a rising China - little has been written about a relationship that will have a profound influence on the international order: the relationship between the People's Republic of China and Germany.

In Germany and China, leading international relations expert Andreas Fulda looks critically at the increasingly interdependent relationship between the two countries. Drawing on examples from politics, industry, development aid and technology sectors and academia, the book explores how successive governments from Helmut Kohl to Angela Merkel have pursued ever-closer ties to China in the interests of short term economic gain. Fulda explores the danger of this increasing entanglement not just for Germany, but for Europe and the international world order.

Scholars from countries both in and outside of the EU provide a full stocktake of the political and economic benefits of EU membership. They critically assess monetary integration and the path it has followed in the wake of the global financial crisis. Chapters delineate key comparisons between the EU and other governance models, between EU members and non-EU members, and between euro and non-euro member States of the Union.

Students of law, economics and politics will benefit from this timely book. It should also be of interest to policymakers around the world who interact with EU countries and those who may be contemplating similar forms of economic and monetary integration in their region.

How can a nation's archaeological treasures help explain its history, especially one as richly complex as Syria's? Ross Burns chooses 40 among Syria's outstanding range of sites, accompanied by over 200 colour illustrations, to take the reader through the tangled paths of this crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean where numerous world cultures intersected.

Given the last 12 years of savage conflict, the author reports too on the plight of many of these monuments, addressing the common but unhelpful assumption that much of the country's archaeological treasures have been 'destroyed'. A better approach is to recognise that Syria's heritage can play a role in the country's recovery and cannot simply be declared a write-off.

This is a history which tells us much about how Syria's mixture of traditions defy simplistic categorisation through modern definitions of cultures and identities.

As technological development and diffusion have greatly increased the resources states can recover from maritime space, the stakes of these conflicts have grown. Nowhere is this clearer than in East Asia. This book examines how technological change and diffusion impact East Asian maritime conflicts, and approaches for conflict management and resolution.

This groundbreaking study examines the unlikely merger of two Japanese cultural phenomena, an 11th-century aristocratic text and contemporary manga comics. It explores the ways in which the manga versions of The Tale of Genji use gender, sexuality, and desire to challenge perceptions of reading and readership, morality and ethics, and what is translatable from one culture to another.

Lynne K. Miyake shows that, through their girls, ladies, Boy Love, boys and young men, and informational comics remediations of the tale, the manga Genjis visually, narratively, and affectively rework male and female gazes; Miyake reveals how they gently inject humor, eroticize, gender flip, queer, and simultaneously re-inscribe and challenge heteronormative gender norms. The first full-length study of Genji manga, this book analyses these adaptations within manga studies and the historical and cultural moments that fashioned and sustained them. It also interrogates the circumscribed, in-group aristocratic society and the consumer and production practices of the Heian society that come full circle in the manga versions.

The Tale of Genji through Contemporary Manga utilizes western queer, feminist, sexuality and gender theory and Japanese cultural practices to illuminate the ways in which the Genji tale redeploys itself. Yet it also provides much needed context and explanation regarding the charges of appropriation of prepubescent (fe)male and gay bodies and the utilization of (sexual) violence mounted against Genji manga-and manga and anime in general once they went global.

This book investigates the source from which the pressure to conform arises in Japanese society. Even though the contemporary Japanese word for "society" (Shakai) has a history of 140 years, it does not include the concept of respecting the individual but refers mainly to social frameworks and institutional aspects. At the same time, the traditional Japanese terms for "society", primarily Seken, that have been in use for 1,400 years have embraced human relationships of the members of the group.

The hypothesis of this book is that there is no "society" as such in Japanese people's minds. By proposing a new model (the Hand-Carved Tripod Model) of conformity in Japan, the book shows the structure of the pressure to conform. The tripod is composed of ambiguous words, the sense of belonging, and the "air", or understanding, that represents the unwritten rules and regulations of Seken.

Conformity in Japanese people's minds takesdifferent forms, from small residential groups to corporations at work, and to nationwide associations, but always dictates that people follow everyone else in the organization.

This book examines the sense of being blocked in Japan that has prevailed over 30 years, during the period of the so-called Three Lost Decades in Japan. Examining phenomena such as low worker engagement, karoshi (death by overwork), high middle-age male suicide rates, bullying in school and at work, sex discrimination, hereditary membership in the Diet, and failure to provide adequate protection for whistle-blowers, this book reveals a common structure in Japanese minds: lack of respect for individuality, and the traditional and narrow sense of the world, i.e., Seken.

This book will be beneficial to scholars and graduate students as well as to businesspeople who are interested in understanding the behavior and minds of Japanese people from the psychological,cultural, and historical viewpoints. It provides an integrated view of Japan's Seken as the platform that generates their conformity.

Euro-American misrepresentations of the non-West in general, and in particular on Hinduism and ancient India, run deep and have far greater colonial connections than that have been exposed in academia. This book analyzes the psycho-social consequences that Indian American children face after they are exposed to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. The authors show that there is an intimate connection-an almost exact correspondence-between James Mill's colonial-racist discourse and the current school-textbook discourse. The very parameters and coordinates on which James Mill constructed the discourse are the ones that are being used to describe Hinduism, Hindus, and ancient India in the textbooks currently. Consequently, this archaic and racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces in the Indian American children a psychological impact quite similar to what racism is known to produce: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon similar to racelessness where the children dissociate from the tradition and culture of their ancestors. This book argues that the current school textbook discourse on Hinduism and India needs to change so that the Indian American children do not become victims of overt and covert racism. For the change to occur, the first step is to recognize the overarching and pervasive influence of the colonial-racist discourse of James Mill on the textbooks. For the reconstruction of the discourse to take place, the first step is to engage in a thorough deconstruction, which is what the book attempts.

This book focuses on how Burmanization created and reinforced ethnic divides since the 1962 coup d'etat. when General Ne Win concentrated all authority in the Burmese speaking army. Background research for the book includes Burmese language materials from the Burmese Socialist Party (BSP) and others that describe with what the BSP believed in their own terms. This is unique from previous works on the topic which either simply pointed out that the policies "didn't work" and therefore are uninteresting, or to claim that they were "necessary" given the chaos of the previous regime. The authors agree that Ne Win's policies "didn't work." However, the book goes further by elaborating why Burmanization policies developed in the 1960s are important for understanding Burmese society today. Most importantly, Ne Win's ideology reflects how patterns of interethnic relationships in Myanmar lead to the "intractability" of the battles in early twenty-first century Myanmar.

What does it mean to become a sound mind in a healthy body and harmonious environment? This engaging introduction to the new field of philosophical health, written by its forerunner, presents the core tenets of the discipline. It explains in clear and elegant prose how a reflexive practice of sense-making can create a eudynamic balance between six existential senses: body, self, belonging, possibility, purpose, and the philosophical sense.

Luis de Miranda, inspired by nearly a decade of practice as a philosophical counsellor - with individuals, groups, institutions, NGO's and corporations - offers a pragmatic open system that is supported with evidence from psychological science, various philosophical traditions or contemporary theories, as well as fascinating real stories from world wisdom.

Meaning in action is clearly the new way ahead for philosophy, rediscovered here as the responsible and practical big sister - if not queen - of all disciplines and ways of life. The international philosophical health movement is the long-awaited response, globally and locally, to the overall confusion the world fell into due to mindless processes and unexamined behaviour. This book shows us how, in a spirit of compossibility and oneness in diversity we now can, at last, intercreate a harmonious, rich, and diverse planetary civilisation.

Exploring the philosophical writings of Simone Weil, this extensive work documents the key thinkers who influenced her political, philosophical and religious outlook. It also offers a critical analysis of her wide-ranging philosophical concepts through incisive and insightful essays, revealing how they connect throughout her writings to form an organic whole.

Part I explores Weil's boundary-crossing interests in radical politics, science, mathematics, history, and religious phenomena. Part II traces the intellectual history of Weil's own writings by mapping her most important philosophical influences including Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, and Marx. Part III turns to the distinctive terms that tie Weil's body of thinking together: terms such as amor fati, attention, beauty, force, gravity and grace, receive full explication alongside important themes of justice, obedience, compassion, and method as they figure in her work.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil provides readers with clarifying and comprehensive coverage of Weil's ideas and writings, leading the reader through her expansive oeuvre alongside an overview of the critical literature.