Public Policy and Administration

A compelling new approach to public policy-making as problem processing, bringing together aspects of puzzling, powering and participation and relating them to cultural theory, issues about networks, models of democracy and modes of citizen participation.

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.

This original and insightful reader provides a critical stock take of the state of user involvement and will be an important resource for students studying health and social care and social work, researchers and user activists.

An innovative and systematic overview of policy analysis in Colombia and an instructive view of how it might help studies elsewhere. Leading academics assess central and local policy in fields including health, education and the military, and explore their role in Colombia’s economic development, resolution of internal conflict and other successes.

Bringing together a range of expert contributions, this book is the first to address the relationship between the economic crisis and social policy within an international context. The key lesson to emerge is that 'the crisis' is better understood as a variety of crises, each mediated by national context.

Bringing together outstanding researchers, this book is the first to examine the theory and practice of policy analysis in South Korea. Drawing on case studies, it explores the development of policy analysis and procedures for decision making at different levels of government

By analysing the conceptual frameworks and methodologies used from a meta-theoretical perspective, this book provides a panoramic picture of the perspectives and challenges of policy analysis in Argentina.

This book explores economic, social and environmental transformations in Europe and the USA to inform the regeneration of 'weak market cities'. 

Pathways to Sustainable Welfare critically examines how cities can address the dual challenges of climate change and sustainability while ensuring the welfare of their populations. Focused on three Swedish cities, it explores the integration of environmental and welfare concerns in local policies, urban movements and public opinions.

Bringing together ten leading researchers in the field of deliberative democracy, this important book examines the features of a Deliberative Mini-Public (DMP) and considers the contributions that DMPs can make not only to the policy process, but also to the broader agenda of revitalising democracy in contemporary times.

Christopher O’Leary provides a fresh perspective on prosocial working choices in this first substantive critique of Public Service Motivation. The book reviews concepts of PSM and research to date and explores the rationales and aims of public and third sector workers before proposing alternative theories for people’s motivations to serve.

Economic and social change is accelerating under the twin impact of globalisation and the new information technologies. This book addresses questions of change with particular reference to the European Union, which has made the development of a socially cohesive, knowledge-based economy its central task for the present decade.