The three ages of government : [electronic resource] from the person, to the group, to the world / Jos C. N. Raadschelders.

Introduction: What Is Government? -- One. Understanding Government in Society: The Past Fifty Years -- 1. Government Today -- 2. What Positions Can State and Government Occupy in Society? -- 3. What Roles Can Government Play in Society? Government's Political Revolution -- 4. Trends in the Role of Government in Society -- 5. How the Study of Public Administration Contributes to Understanding Government -- 6. Why Study This? -- Two. Government in Society: The Conceptual and Historical Context for Understanding Government -- 1. Opening Salvo: On the Torture of Holistic Scholarship -- 2. Government as Artifice of Bounded Rationality: Simon and Vico -- 3. Social Ontology for Understanding Institutional Arrangements -- 4. Hierarchies of Knowledge: From Simple to Complex Phenomena -- 5. Government as Function of Instinct, Community, and Society -- 6. Institutional Changes and the Triple Whammy -- Changes at the Constitutional Level -- Changes at the Collective Level -- Changes at the Operational Level -- Enter the Triple Whammy: Industrialization, Urbanization, and Rapid Population Growth -- 7. The Stage Is Set for the Remainder of This Book -- Three. Instinct and Intent: Origins and Elements of Human Governing Behaviors -- 1. The Nature-Nurture Issue: From Dichotomy to Balanced Complex -- 2. Sociality among the Great Apes and Humans: Similarities and Differences -- Similarities -- Differences -- 3. Physical and Social Features of the Hominin Tribe -- 4. Human Instinct and Intent -- 5. How We Differ from Primates: Governing among and of Hunter-Gatherers -- 6. Conflicting Impulses Underlying Governing Arrangements -- 7. Concluding Comments: Relevance to Understanding What Government Is -- Four. Tribal Community: Governing Humans in Ever Larger, Sedentary Groups -- 1. The Growth, Dispersion, and Concentration of the Human Species -- 2. The Agricultural Revolution: Fraud or Inevitable? -- 3. Small and Large-Scale Governing Arrangements: Four Main Phases of Socioeconomic Development, Three Structuring Constants, and Two Governing Revolutions -- 4. The Rise and Fall of Governing Arrangements: Self-Governing Capacity as the Default -- 5. The Political-Administrative Revolution since the 1780s: A Very Brief Recap -- 6. The Triple Whammy Plus High-Speed Communication Technology -- 7. From Government as Instrument to Government as Container: The Role and Position of the Individual -- Five. Citizen and Government in a Global Society: Globalization and the Deep Current of Rationalization -- 1. What Is Globalization? What Is a Global Society? -- 2. The Impact of Globalization on People as Citizens and as Public Officeholders -- 3. The Impact of Globalization on the Structure and Functioning of Government -- 4. The Impact of Globalization on the Role and Position of Government.

It is only in the last 250 years that ordinary people (in some parts of the world) have become citizens rather than subjects. This change happened in a very short period, between 1780 and 1820, a result of the foundations of democracy laid in the age of revolutions. A century later local governments embraced this shift due to rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. During the twentieth century, all democratic governments began to perform a range of tasks, functions, and services that had no historical precedent. In the thirty years following the Second World War, Western democracies created welfare states that, for the first time in history, significantly reduced the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. Many of the reforms of that postwar period have been since rolled back because of the belief that government should be more like a business. Jos C.N. Raadschelders provides the information that all citizens should have about their connections to government, why there is a government, what it does, how it does it, and why we can no longer do without it. <i>The Three Ages of Government</i> rises above stereotypical thinking to show the centrality of government in human life.