The Tools of Government in the Digital Age Second Edition

by Hood, Christopher C.; Margetts, Helen Z.

• ISBN13: 9780230001435
• ISBN10: 0230001432
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-08-15
• Publisher: Red Globe Pr

Summary

This work updates the arguments of Christopher Hood's classic work The Tools of Government for the twenty-first century. Revised and updated throughout and drawing its examples from a wide range of places and contexts, it includes substantially increased coverage of how government gets information and an assessment of how the tools available to government have changed over time--especially with new developments in digital technologies.

Author Biography

Christopher C. Hood is Gladstone Professor of Government, and Helen Z. Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet, both at University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
Exploring Government's Toolshed	p. 1
Government as a toolkit	p. 2
Pay-offs of the 'toolkit perspective'	p. 11
The focus and limits of the book	p. 14
Where do we go from here?	p. 19
Nodality	p. 21
Detecting with nodality: nodal receivers	p. 21
Effecting with nodality	p. 28
The toolset in context	p. 34
Conclusion	p. 48
Authority	p. 50
Detecting tools based on authority: requisitions	p. 51
Effecting with authority: tokens of authority	p. 56
The toolset in context	p. 68
Conclusion	p. 77
Treasure	p. 78
Detecting with treasure: rewards	p. 80
Effecting with treasure: from customized to open payments	p. 85
The toolset in context	p. 93
Organization	p. 102
Detecting with organization: ergonomic detectors	p. 103
Effecting with organization: direct action or treatment	p. 106
The toolset in context	p. 116
Comparing the Tools of Government	p. 126
Government tools or tools of government?	p. 126
Tools of which government?	p. 128
Inside government: comparing government agencies	p. 130
Retooling: change over time	p. 134
The measurability of the toolkit approach	p. 138
Conclusion	p. 143
Evaluating Government's Toolkit	p. 144
Appraising government's use of tools: intelligent policy design	p. 144
Reviewing alternatives: a rational choice?	p. 146
Matching the tool to the job	p. 149
Economizing on bureaucracy	p. 152
A moral dimension?	p. 161
Conclusion	p. 165
Alternative Approaches to the Tools of Government	p. 167
The institutions-as-tools approach: the tools of government as forms of organization	p. 168
The politics-of-instrument-choice approach	p. 169
Generic institution-free typologies of tools	p. 171
The three approaches compared: a phoney war?	p. 173
How the tools analysis of this book relates to other generic institution-free analyses of public policy instruments	p. 174
The challenge of digital-age technology for the analysis of public policy instruments	p. 177
Conclusion	p. 183
Looking Ahead: The Tools of Government in the Digital Age	p. 184
The future as an extrapolation of the past: a new world of cyber-detection, group-targeting and variable nodality	p. 184
Same tools, different governments	p. 192
Sharpening government's tools?	p. 196
References	p. 204
Index	p. 215
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