Brookings Institution Press
Boomburbs; the rise of America's accidental cities.
As surprising as it might seem, among the booming American population centers above 100,000 in population as of 2000 that have sustained double-digit population growth since 1970, most are more like such sunbelt suburbs as Henderson, Nevada, outside of Las Vegas, or Chandler, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, with little identity of their own outside their region. Suggesting that these "boomburbs" have been neglected in the field of metropolitan studies, the authors (the co- director and former deputy director of the Metropolitan Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) offer a profile of America's 56 boomburbs and 86 baby boomburbs (those with the same growth characteristics but only 50,000-100,000 in population as of 2000). They present individual chapters describing growth characteristics of the boomburbs, demographic profiles, economic and business environments, housing and development issues, politics and governance, buildout planning, and future trends. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Child protection; using research to improve policy and practice.
The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) is the first nationally representative study of children who have been reported to authorities as suspected victims of abuse or neglect, and of the public programs that aim to protect them. This book reports on the results of the NSCAW, interprets the findings, and places them in a broader policy context. It also suggests new ways of designing and implementing future programs. Issues addressed include intimate partner violence in the child welfare system, improving parent training, Medicaid and mental health care, kinship care and nonkinship foster care, and maltreatment recurrence among children remaining at home. Haskins is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Decentralizing governance; emerging concepts and practices.
As the concept of governance expanded beyond an exclusive focus on the state to include other societal institutions such as the private sector and civil associations from the 1980s onwards, so did the concept of decentralization undergo a transformation from focusing on deconcentration, devolution, and delegation within government towards privatization, strengthening market power, and forms of autonomous rule. In this collection of 16 papers, prepared by Cheema (Department of Public Administration and Development Management, part of the United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and the late Rodinelli (formerly, public policy studies, Duke U. Center for International Development), contributors analyze these emerging forms and concepts of decentralization as they have developed in the administrative, political, fiscal, and economic realms, focusing on issues pertinent to weak and developing states. Co-published by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Failed diplomacy; the tragic story of how North Korea got the bomb.
Veteran US diplomat Pritchard offers a first-hand account of the development and implementation of US policy towards North Korea during the first term of George W. Bush; analyzes events after August 2003 when he resigned as special envoy for negotiations; and recommends developing a permanent organization that can serve as a forum for security dialogue in Northeast Asia. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
New financial instruments and institutions; opportunities and policy challenges.
Fuchita (Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research, Tokyo) and Litan (senior fellow, economics studies, Brookings Institution) present original research on new financial institutions and instruments in Japan and the US. Contributors from the financial industry and academia highlight innovative ways in which Japanese financiers and government officials have learned from their American counterparts. They explain the roles of instruments such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) in each country, and contrast the development of innovations such as hedge funds, private equity funds, and securitized residential mortgages. Chapters originated as papers at a September 2006 meeting at the Brookings Institution, and include commentary by other contributors who are not authors of the papers in the book. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Out of business and on budget; the challenge of military financing in Indonesia.
According to Rieffel (Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings Institution, US) and Pramodhawardani (National Institute of Sciences, Indonesia), there are two basic factors that currently contribute to the tension between Indonesian civil society and the country's military establishment: a vast range of off-budget revenue generating activities that make it possible for the military to act independently of the government and popular pressure on the government to keep the military's share of the central government budget low. Finding these factors to be two sides of the same coin, they assess current challenges to reforms that will bring the Indonesian military out of business and on budget. Two major conclusions result from their analysis: that the amount of money the military's business activities generate "for operational purposes" is much smaller than commonly believed and that it is not feasible to put the military fully on budget by 2009, the deadline set by law. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Too poor for peace?; global poverty, conflict, and security in the 21st century.
Scarce natural resources, inadequate education and employment opportunities for youths, and corrupt institutions lead to violence directed at the poor by the poor, combined with the violence directed at them by those who would exploit or hurt them. This collection of articles gives the details on the poverty/insecurity nexus, indications of recent research and implications for foreign aid, demography and the environment and their mutual relationship to civil strife, resources and environmental insecurity, working with at-risk youth, the role of leadership in overcoming poverty and achieving security in Africa, operating agencies in insecure environments, and offering democracy as an answer. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
