POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Economic Policy

Combining robust evidence with real-life stories, this book reveals the shocking impact of austerity policies on life expectancy and offers an optimistic vision of what can be done to restore life expectancy and reduce health inequality.

The past two decades have seen a global financial crisis, increasing levels of inequality, a pandemic and the intensification of the climate emergency. As debate rages about how to ensure a fairer society, this book asks where we want to be in 20 years’ time and how we might get there.

Portugal has recently achieved a five-fold increase in solar capacity and its National Energy and Climate Plan has set an ambitious future target. This book considers whether this ambition will bear out in practice, and how social justice might be addressed, in a one-stop resource for policy makers, practitioners and scholars.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s new government pursued a monetarist economic policy in response to double-digit inflation, rising unemployment and flatlining economic growth. Tim Lankester's insider’s account offers fascinating insights into one of Britain's most unsuccessful economic episodes and also examines monetarism's legacy today.

This book offers a holistic view of Julio Boltvinik’s vast and important work on poverty conceptualisation and measurement. It provides the foundations, application and empirical examples of Boltvinik’s Integrated Poverty Measurement Method, which could potentially transform poverty narratives globally as it has done in Mexico.

Based on in-depth interviews with over 80 precarious workers in Korea, this book introduces the concept of ‘melting labour’ and provides a real depiction of how workers lose control over their lives and experience precariousness in labour markets.

In this timely book, Ed Atkins asks: are we getting decarbonisation right? And how could it be made better for people and communities? In doing so, this book proposes a different type of energy transition. One that prioritises and takes opportunities to do better – to provide better jobs, community ownership and improve people’s homes and lives.

This book explores tax and social policy and how they interact with each other. It covers key interactions, debates and challenges of tax and social policy and examines how analyses might be combined and policy options developed for effective delivery in both areas.

This book offers a systematic exploration of the drivers and key ideas behind the Labour Party’s economic ideology. In demonstrating how crises have affected the party’s economic policy, the book presents a historical analysis of the party’s evolution since its formation and offers insights into how future changes may occur.

Drawing on the German ordoliberal tradition, this book argues that liberalism’s reliance on a utilitarian policy framework has resulted in increased concentrations of power, restricting freedom and equality. It proposes an alternative public policy framework and offers a practical pathway to realign policy making with liberal ideas.

Experts from around the world review the complex and rapidly changing politics and policies of austerity in this comprehensive collection of essays. The book details the many different means and expressions of austerity since the financial crisis of 2008, as well as backlashes and emerging political alternatives.

Matt Ryan draws on ten years of research to deliver this landmark comparative review of participatory budgeting, or collective decisions on spending and taxation around the world. With examples of both positive change and notable failure, the book shows when and why citizens achieve this, and how policy makers can foster democratic engagement.