Lisa Schweitzer, Associate Professor and Bedrosian Center faculty affiliate, reviewed the book Majoritarian Cities: Policy Making and Inequality in Urban Politics by Neil Kraus in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. “What drives local policy decisions? In Majoritarian Cities: Policy Making and Inequality in Urban Read more…
by Martin Krieger I am not sure we teach our students what might be called bureaucratic politics. I have been reading the second edition of Graham Allison (and Philip Zelikow), Essence of Decision (1971, 1999). In Allison’s terms, this would be Model III (bureaucratic politics). I know we do his Model Read more…
by Martin Krieger Alan Blinder, When the Music Stopped Richard Haass, Wars of Necessity, Wars of Choice How did we end up in the meltdown of 2008? How did we end up fighting in Iraq in 2003? These are for me the big questions of the first decade of the 21st Read more…
by Martin Krieger Intelligence and US Foreign Policy, Paul Pillar War and Decision, Douglas Feith What was in Donald Rumsfeld’s mind when he demanded that the Iraq war would be launched with a much smaller number of troops than recommended by General Shinsheki? And, a propos of sufficient IED protection, “You Read more…
by Martin Krieger John Rawls. Political Liberalism Columbia University Press, 2005. I recall when Rawls’s Theory of Justice appeared. It was a thick book, and I was not philosophically sophisticated. But its main model, the original position, was appealing if not realistic. It was Kantian but with a modern game-theoretic twist. The Read more…
by Martin Krieger Naomi Standen, ed, Demystifying China: New Understandings of Chinese History, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013 It is a commonplace of historiography that national histories, at each time, are written so as to justify the current regimes. Scholars might well have alternative accounts, but in general these alternatives do Read more…
by Martin Krieger Shui Yan Tang, Ten Principles for a Rule-Ordered Society, Enhancing China’s Governing Capacity 2012 China Economic Publishing House Yan Tang of Price’s faculty has written a basic introduction to how rules lead to a stronger more vibrant and richer society. His audience here is Chinese administrators and government, Read more…
by Martin Krieger The Jewish Annotated New Testament (the NRSV translation), eds. Levine and Brettler, Oxford University Press, 2011. Most Bibles, Hebrew or Catholic or Protestant or…, have annotations and explanations. In general, those scholia or commentary are theological and sectarian, although sometimes they are academic. What we call the New Read more…
by Martin H. Krieger Professor in the Price School His blog is located at http://blogs.usc.edu/sppd/krieger I often find new books by scanning the new books shelves at USC’s various libraries. I surely miss lots of stuff, but I also find books I would never otherwise encounter. As I have mentioned, Read more…
by Anthony Bertelli Robert Caro‘s biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize, has become an indispensable book for scholars seeking to understand public administration. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find colleagues who agree with that assessment. Moses shaped the politics and infrastructure Read more…
by Donnajean Ward Landmark: The Inside Story of America’s New Health-Care Law and What It Means for Us All By The Staff of the Washington Post In about 200 clear and concise pages, the ins and outs of “Obamacare” are navigated and, guess what, it’s not all that complicated. From “How we got Read more…