Here are 7 books that Governance Handbook fans have personally recommended if you like
Governance Handbook.
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As a development economist I've been on a long quest for policies that actually help promote lives and create long-term wealth. After much searching, I've found special economic zones and other special jurisdictions as holding the key to radical prosperity for the world’s poor today and for humanity at large. Privately governed institutions leverage the power of incentives that we find in a capitalism market system to provide for social services and public goods. Any economists out there looking for hopeful projects to benefit the world economy should start with this short list of core books on this topic. Fortunately, as time goes by, the reading list in this field keeps expanding.
This book allows you to think radically about how to create new community and novel forms of governance.
To unshackle ourselves from a history of destructive governance, the idea of Seasteading is to start afresh, in territories not yet governed by anyone, those at sea.
The authors make a compelling case for a seemingly wild idea.
In these “thought-provoking visions of the future” (The Wall Street Journal), Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute explain how ocean cities can solve many of our environmental, technological, and civic problems, and introduce the visionaries and pioneers who are now making seasteading a reality.
Our planet has been suffering from serious environmental problems and their social and political consequences. But imagine a vast new source of sustainable and renewable energy that would also bring more equitable economies. A previously untapped source of farming that could produce significant new sources of nutrition. Future societies where people could choose…
As a development economist I've been on a long quest for policies that actually help promote lives and create long-term wealth. After much searching, I've found special economic zones and other special jurisdictions as holding the key to radical prosperity for the world’s poor today and for humanity at large. Privately governed institutions leverage the power of incentives that we find in a capitalism market system to provide for social services and public goods. Any economists out there looking for hopeful projects to benefit the world economy should start with this short list of core books on this topic. Fortunately, as time goes by, the reading list in this field keeps expanding.
This book opens your eyes to the power of jurisdictional competition and brings hope of a future where governance is conducted for the benefit of the people being governed, rather than the benefit of government bureaucrats as is the case today.
An increasing amount of SEZs, startup societies, and privately run cities are springing up across the world. Judging by their progress, this optimistic part of human development is likely to continue.
This book opens your eyes to those developments and current opportunities for new and better governance.
Governments across the globe have begun evolving from lumbering bureaucracies into smaller, more agile special jurisdictions - common-interest developments, special economic zones, and proprietary cites. Private providers increasingly deliver services that political authorities formerly monopolized, inspiring greater competition and efficiency, to the satisfaction of citizens-qua-consumers. These trends suggest that new networks of special jurisdictions will soon surpass nation states in the same way that networked computers replaced mainframes. In this groundbreaking work, Tom W. Bell describes the quiet revolution transforming governments from the bottom up, inside-out, worldwide, and how it will fulfill its potential to bring more freedom, peace, and…
As a development economist I've been on a long quest for policies that actually help promote lives and create long-term wealth. After much searching, I've found special economic zones and other special jurisdictions as holding the key to radical prosperity for the world’s poor today and for humanity at large. Privately governed institutions leverage the power of incentives that we find in a capitalism market system to provide for social services and public goods. Any economists out there looking for hopeful projects to benefit the world economy should start with this short list of core books on this topic. Fortunately, as time goes by, the reading list in this field keeps expanding.
Startup Societies are the next generation of SEZs.
In this book, the authors lay out not only the technical, but also the cultural aspects of founding startup societies.
While mainstream people still see the prospects of these kinds of societies as radical, unrealistic, or even harmful, this book allows you not only to dream, but to realize that full-scale projects of new societies, and even new cities, are possible.
These can be governed in radically different ways than the towns and cities we are accustomed to, to the benefit of prosperity and cultural fulfillment of its people.
As a development economist I've been on a long quest for policies that actually help promote lives and create long-term wealth. After much searching, I've found special economic zones and other special jurisdictions as holding the key to radical prosperity for the world’s poor today and for humanity at large. Privately governed institutions leverage the power of incentives that we find in a capitalism market system to provide for social services and public goods. Any economists out there looking for hopeful projects to benefit the world economy should start with this short list of core books on this topic. Fortunately, as time goes by, the reading list in this field keeps expanding.
This book lays out the logic of governance without state-sanctioned governments.
For those not already convinced, it explains in detail how society functions, at its best, when run by a private corporation rather than entities with monopoly of force.
In the world of commerce at large, those who serve reaps the rewards. Governance is supposed to be about service.
When incentives of service align with those of profits, the probability of good governance is at its highest.
Imagine a system in which a private company offers you protection of life, liberty and property as a "government service provider". This service includes internal and external security, a legal and regulatory framework and independent dispute resolution. You pay a contractually fixed fee for these services per year. The government service provider, as the operator of the community, cannot unilaterally change this "citizens' contract" with you later on. As a "contract citizen", you have a legal claim to compliance and a claim for damages in the event the provider does not perform. You take care of everything else by yourself,…
I have a passion for people who do whatever it takes to improve themselves and their circumstances under the worst of conditions. I grew up very poor in north Texas country towns and knew I’d be a successful writer while in the second grade, only hardly anyone encouraged me. The most inspiring movie I saw growing up was To Kill A Mockingbird and it got me orientated toward helping people find justice. I was only in jail once, overnight on a driving while intoxicated charge, and that was enough. I saw the error of my ways, and I appreciate other writers who not only do the same but inspire others to improve no matter what.
Most people don’t realize that modern federal criminal laws are often so broad and vague that prosecutors can find a way to convict just about anyone if given enough time. Once indicted, all too often, both defense attorneys and prosecutors will look for a plea deal in doing their jobs. The situation has worsened in recent decades, and most indictees simply don’t have the financial wherewithal to fight the accusation. Silvergate explains how much the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance and makes very convincing arguments about how things must change.
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the…
I am a historian with a PhD in history from American University. My research has focused on the changing nature of U.S. citizenship after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In particular, my newly released book, Gendered Citizenship, sheds light on the competing civic ideologies embedded in the original conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from the 1920s through the 1960s. My research has won recognition through several grants and fellowships and my writing has appeared in the Washington Post, History News Network, New America Weekly, Gender on the Ballot, and Frontiers.
Linda Kerber’s No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies offers a fantastic insight into the maleness of rights-bearing citizenship embedded within the United States legal tradition. As Kerber demonstrates, the notion that women were incapable of performing certain civic obligations formed a central reason for why early U.S. political and legal authorities had excluded women from certain rights of citizenship. I found Kerber’s study especially helpful for dissecting the history of the common law tradition of domestic relations, or the doctrine known as coverture. As I discuss in the first chapters of my own book, and as Kerber brilliantly illustrates in No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies, the doctrine of coverture deprived women of having self-ownership over their own bodies, which led to intense restrictions on women’s opportunities and their overall civic autonomy.
This pioneering study redefines women's history in the United States by focusing on civic obligations rather than rights. Looking closely at thirty telling cases from the pages of American legal history, Kerber's analysis reaches from the Revolution, when married women did not have the same obligation as their husbands to be "patriots," up to the present, when men and women, regardless of their marital status, still have different obligations to serve in the Armed Forces.
An original and compelling consideration of American law and culture, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies emphasizes the dangers of excluding women from other civic…
I am a historian with a PhD in history from American University. My research has focused on the changing nature of U.S. citizenship after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In particular, my newly released book, Gendered Citizenship, sheds light on the competing civic ideologies embedded in the original conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from the 1920s through the 1960s. My research has won recognition through several grants and fellowships and my writing has appeared in the Washington Post, History News Network, New America Weekly, Gender on the Ballot, and Frontiers.
In Public Vows, Nancy Cott explores how the history of marriage in the United States reflects the creation of a very public and political institution. As Cott shows, in the early years of the United States, the common law doctrine of coverture allowed white men to hold a monopoly over the country’s civil and political institutions. For Cott, marriage has always been a public institution with political implications. As Cott explains, the political undercurrents and legal aspects of marriage have often allowed men to have control over women in law and in custom. Cott’s study was a vital component for my own work as her analysis helped me to better understand how the early U.S. legal system privileged husbands and fathers over wives and daughters with regard to property, earnings, contracting, and guardianship rights.
We commonly think of marriage as a private matter between two people, a personal expression of love and commitment. In this pioneering history, Nancy F. Cott demonstrates that marriage is and always has been a public institution.
From the founding of the United States to the present day, imperatives about the necessity of marriage and its proper form have been deeply embedded in national policy, law, and political rhetoric. Legislators and judges have envisioned and enforced their preferred model of consensual, lifelong monogamy--a model derived from Christian tenets and the English common law that posits the husband as provider and…
