1 comments about Management Control In Nonprofit Organizations.

1. The book is very comprehensive and uses very good learning methodology. One can find all that is important in the area of management control. I can highly recomend the book to anyone interested in this field looking for a methodological guide to management control.

No comments about Accounting and Financial Reporting for Governmental and Nonprofit Organizations.

No comments about Incentives, Organization, and Public Economics: Papers in Honour of Sir James Mirrlees.

No comments about Preparing for the Future: Strategic Planning in the U.S. Air Force.

No comments about Public/Private Finance and Development: Methodology/Deal Structuring/Developer Solicitation.

3 comments about Introduction to Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting, Fifth Edition.

1. I would rate this book very highly for the non-accounting professional. The book takes the high level of technical terms and reduces it so that it is user friendly for all groups of business professionals.

   I would strongly recommend this book to those readers who have a basic understanding of governmental accounting.




2. This book concentrates on govermental accounting, and really only has two chapters that specifically apply to non-profit accounting.



3. It's a text book with lots of great examples of business challenges. I was required to purchase this book for my class but I also enjoy reading it (as much as I could any textbook) because the concepts are pretty easy to understand. There are also a lot of internet resources to enhance understanding of the concepts.

No comments about Dancing with Saddam: The Strategic Tango of Jordan-Iraq Relations.

1 comments about Participatory Budgeting (Public Sector Governance) (Public Sector Governance).

1. This is the very best book on Participatory Budgeting I could find (other than those on Puerto Alegre specifically, I will review one of those later) and once in hand, it has fully satisfied. The higher than normal cost for a book of this type is fully justified by the CD ROM.
   
   Use the Search Inside This Book line under the book cover to see the Table of Contents and other elements of the book. I did not do that but if you have any doubts at all, reading the Table of Contents should be more than enough to overcome them.
   
   For my purposes the two most important parts of the book were overview by the editor Anwar Shah (top expert with the World Bank); the guide to participatory budgeting by Brian Wampler; and the concluding appendix by Alan Folscher, on Citizen Participation and State Effectiveness, and also--very important--Preconditions and Enabling Factors for Citizen Engagement with Public Decisions. The rest of the book is regional case studies, and the CD ROM is country case studies.
   
   From the Overview
   
   + Participatory Budgeting is direct democracy
   + It empowers citizens to deliberate, debate, and influence
   + It is a tool for educating, engaging, and empowering citizens
   + Transparency can reduce inefficiency as well as corruption
   + It strengthens governance by including the marginalized
   + It comes with significant risks (this was the new stuff for me)
   - Process can be captured by interest groups
   - Can cover up existing injustices
   - Tyranny of group dynamics can overpower good intentions
   - Tyranny of method can exclude other democratic means (much as the fine print in many legal agreements excludes access to courts and juries by including a concealed agreement to abide by arbitration)
   
   Introduction to Participatory Budgetng
   
   + Four factors for success
   - Strong mayoral support
   - Civil society willing and able to engage in the debate (harder to find that I realized)
   - Supportive policy environment that can withstand legislative pressure\
   - Financial resources to actually fund programs sponsored by citizens
   
   Guiding Tenets Include:
   
   + Division of municipality into regions for easier discussion and implementation
   + Government-sponsored meetings throughout the year
   + Quality of Life Index is created to weight program toward less well off
   + Deliberation and negotiatiion is public
   + Bus caravan visits all the proposed projects before voting on them
   + Elected representatives vote on all the projects (open or secret)
   + Municipal councel is elected with two representatives from each region
   + Year end report is published
   + Everything in monitored publicly year round
   
   The above cannot possibly capture the nuances and complexities of each individual case study, so that is where ethnographic specificity must be applied.
   
   Appendix on Citizen Participation
   
   + Types of participation
   - Information sharing
   - Consultation
   - Joint decision making
   - Initiation and control by citizen stakeholders
   
   + Preconditions and Enabling Factors
   - Openness and democratic depth of the political and governance systems
   - Existence of enabling legal frameworks
   - Capacity for participation inside and outside government
   - Existence of functional and free media institutions
   - Willingness and capacity of government to make budget information open
   
   What most surprise me as a lay reader (i.e. I claim no expertise at all, I simply believe to direct democracy) was the MANY OBSTACLES to participatory budgeting. I have heard that WikiCalc is coming along, which would along for budget information to be commented on and then different perspectives aggregated from the individual to the neighborhood or political preference level; and I hope that EarthGame will become a reality in which each person plays themselves and has access to full information, but in the context of populations that struggle day to day, it is going to take much more than an "invitation" to achieve participatory budgeting. In a nutshell, we know now that it can work, but getting it to work anywhere is going to be a real challenge.
   
   Great book. A solid academic endeavor that if I were repeating my MPA this year, should certainly be in the Budgeting Course.
   
   See also:
   The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
   The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
   Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
   How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
   The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
   Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
   The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
   Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
   Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
   Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

1 comments about Studies in the Formation of the Nation-State in Latin America.

1. This edited work focuses on the formation of the republics of Latin America. It covers countries such as Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina. The book shows how politics, economy, war, conscription, and nationalism affected the formation of states in Latin America. Each chapter is original and authored by expert scholars in their respective fields. This work should be read by students of Latin America and people who are interested in nation-states.

4 comments about Development Centre Studies The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Development Centre Studies).

1. This book is seemingly a culmination of the painstaking works taken by Angus Maddison for decades. As I liked his previous works such as the Phases of Capitalist Development, so I like this book very much. Of course, the book contains many 'guesstimations' that are unacceptable to today's economists' rigor. This is more so when the author ventures into almost two millenia before 1820, for which he did relatively little work previously. But even here the book apparently provides reasonable figures synthesizing existing evidences with a lucid interpretation, providing illuminating starting points for future studies.



2. Attempting to put numbers on past economic activity is a deeply fraught exercise, as the author freely admits.

   That being said, this is a book full of useful information and striking estimates. I know of no better place to get a genuine feel for the economic history of the last millennia, but particularly the last two centuries. There is something to startle or surprise anyone within these pages. A necessary edition to the library of anyone seriously interested in history.




3. Angus Maddison's The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective is highly unique because of the long historical perspective it brings to the understanding of global economic development and fluctuations. Maddison provides data on population growth, per-capita income, and gross domestic product on regional, national, and global levels for the last 1000 years. The last two centuries receive special attention. For more books on economic development go to my profile and see my Amazon Listmania "Future Studies Reading List."



4. In the last few years I have been searching books offering a general overview of the past, and I have realized that many books entitled "History of ...whatever" only provide information about the West, the rest of the world being almost ignored.
   
   Maddison's on world economy is different, it is truly global. It offers historical statistics of the last two thousand years and is to be read together with "The world economy: Historical Statistics " (a combined edition of both volumes is to be published on December 2007). In my opinion this is masterful work that can be savored by the professional historian and educated layperson alike, so my rate is between 5 (content) and 4 (pleasure, sometimes falling to 3, sometimes raising to 5). I highly recommend the two volumes.
   
   Other works whose scope is as amazingly global as Maddison's and which I would suggest reading (hoping that will be of use for those looking for a broad framework to understand ourselves) are the following: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 3. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 4. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 5. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.