POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / General

This timely book explores how changing territorial politics are impacting on social citizenship rights across the UK.

"The consumer in public services" critiques established assumptions surrounding citizenship and consumption. Drawing on empirical research, it challenges existing stereotypes about the 'consumer as chooser' and shows how we must develop a more sophisticated understanding of consumers, examining their place and role as users of public services.

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. 

Written by leading academics in the field of local governance, this book provides a broad framework in which to analyse the impact of the financial crisis on public services and local government.

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.

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

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.

Policy makers have become reliant on mechanistic top-down audit and inspection regimes as the means of implementing public service reforms. This book sets out to redress the balance. It outlines the theory behind whole systems development and gives good practice guidance on how to effectively develop 'systems' to improve joined-up working.

This book offers a critical examination of both the discourse and practice of participation in order to understand the significance of this explosion in participatory forums, and the extent to which such practices represent a fundamental change in governance.

Australian public policy engages with the values and dilemmas of progressive public policy in Australia, bringing together leading authors to explore a wide range of issues which challenge and extend current thinking about Australian public policy.

The widespread popularity of evaluation is based on the need to provide evidence of the effectiveness of policies and programmes. This book sees evaluation as an inherently political activity, and using a wide range of examples it relates practical issues in evaluation design to their political contexts.

This valuable book offers a distinct and critical showcase of emerging forms of discovery for policy-making drawing on the insights of some of the world’s leading authorities in public policy analysis.