Jul 14
Jason Zasky of Failure Magazine interviewed me last week about America’s First Great Depression. Read the interview. And there’s a Washington Post story about Failure Magazine itself here.
So-Called Experts: How American Consultants Remade the Canadian Civil Service, 1918-1921, is now available in a Kindle edition. This short book was originally published by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada in 1996. The book “examines the critical role of an emerging group of civil service experts whose view of the reform problem was driven by their experience in the corrupt world of Chicago’s municipal government. Struggling to establish their own credentials, these experts refused to concede that their prescriptions were irrelevant to the problems that the Canadian government faced at the end of the First World War.”
The Governance newsletter for July is now available here. It features a commentary by Theodore Marmor of Yale University (right) examining the politics of healthcare reform in the United States.
Prospect Magazine has just posted my column on the “anti-politics” of the Occupy movement. Read the article.
The current issue of Journal of European Integration has a review of Logic of Discipline. “An excellent introduction to the issue of the attempt to remove policy from politics. The implications of the analysis for Europe are sobering, as they suggest that its continued belief in strengthening euro area economic governance with stronger rules is wishful thinking.” Access the review (behind paywall).
The journal Canadian Public Administration has a review of Logic of Discipline by Professor Jeffrey Roy in its June 2012 issue. “An insightful and timely examination of the the global political economy and its increasingly unstable institutional architecture.” Access the review.
Roger Lowenstein reviews America’s First Great Depression in today’s Wall Street Journal. Read the review.
The June newsletter for Governance is now available here. Features articles on the role of NGOs in Kenya, lobbying strategies in the European Union, and Norway’s approach to regulation of its oil and gas industry.
Foreign Policy has just published my article, The Government We Deserve. “Something is rotten in these United States, and Americans know it. As usual, the focal point of their anger is Washington’s dysfunctional politics and partisan bickering. But the problem isn’t just the decline of civility in the halls of the Capitol. It’s much bigger. Today the country is reaping the foul harvest of policy decisions it has enthusiastically endorsed over the last 30 years.”
Bloomberg’s Echoes blog has just published my short piece, Can Occupy Wall Street Replace the Labor Movement?, in time for International Workers Day. Photo: Solidarity Day in Washington, September 1981.
Alasdair S. Roberts 
