POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Published to coincide with the first anniversary of the election, this book looks at the Coalition government in the context of conservative ideas and seeks to assess what, if anything, is new about it.

This book focuses on how personalisation - the idea that public services should be tailored to the individual, with budgets devolved to the service user or frontline staff - evolved as a policy narrative and has mobilised wide-ranging political support.

The appeal of voluntary action as a solution to growing welfare needs in advanced capitalist countries raises important questions about the social impacts and spatial equity of such provision. For the first time, these issues are addressed within a single book, exploring the complex relationship between voluntary action, society and space.

This topical book takes a critical look at contemporary governance theory, arguing that there are structural impediments to achieving an ideology of networks and reconsidering it from Marxist and Gramscian perspectives. 

Offering insight into the key debates on services for young children, this book tells how Sure Start was set up, the numerous changes it went through, and how it has changed the landscape of services for all young children in England.

Collaborative working explores the influence of agency through the role of individual actors in collaborative working processes, known as boundary spanners. 

This book presents an academically rigorous yet practical guide to efforts to understand how knowledge, policy and power interact to promote or prevent change.

This valuable book examines the development of evaluation and its impact on public policy by analysing evaluation frameworks and criteria which are available when evaluating public policies and services.

Human Rights Watch's twenty-third annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide.

How Europe shapes British public policy examines the development of the EU as a sectarian issue in the UK. It discusses the effects of disengagement through the political practices of policy making and the implications that this has had for depoliticisation in government and the civil service.

In the second, revised edition of this indispensable book, the author looks behind 'the mirror of power' to discover the reality of civil society - or 'Big Society', as it has become known.

The voluntary sector in transition explores the extensive growth and re-shaping of the voluntary sector following sweeping changes to social and welfare policy over 30 years.