Public policy and the policy process

Pat Thomson takes on England’s muddled education system and exposes fraudulent and unethical practices, including the skewing of the curriculum and manipulation of results. She argues for an urgent review of current practices, leading to a revitalised education system that has the public good at its heart.

Bringing together the voices of leading experts in the field, this edition offers an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship over the past year.

This illuminating study sets out why policy makers need to take culture seriously, how culture and values shape the political system and presents essential, practical recommendations for what governments should do differently.

Authored by two highly respected and experienced academics, this book demonstrates the rewards of studying social policy from an international perspective by avoiding the constraints of a single-nation focus.

50 years on from the Race Relations Act of 1968, this ‘state of the nation’ book provides an overview and commentary on how things currently stand in a wide range of sectors of society.

Setting a new benchmark for studies of technocracy, this book shows that a solution to the challenge of populism will depend as much on a technocratic retreat as democratic innovation.

The complex and self-serving nexus behind the UK’s housing crisis is laid bare in this passionate book from Bob Colenutt. Investigating the network of landowners, house-builders, financial backers and politicians, he reveals how we have been forced to accept the cycle of low supply and high prices, and proposes solutions to the housing emergency.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book examines the increasing importance of engagement with non-academic groups and actors in the co-production of knowledge and real-world influence in academic research.

This book examines poverty in the context of the economy, society and the political community, considering how states can respond to issues of inequality, exclusion and powerlessness. Drawing on examples in both rich and poor countries, this is an accessible contribution to the debate about the nature of poverty and responses to it.

Drawing on a two-year multi-platform initiative, this book by award-winning journalist and author Mary O’Hara, asks how we can overturn the portrayal of poverty once and for all. Crucially, she turns to the real experts to try to find answers – the people who live it.

Providing an in-depth exploration of the experiences of Ireland, Denmark and Finland in their various initiatives designed to end homelessness, this book presents an authoritative comparative account of policies and strategies that have worked, along with an exposition of those that have not.

Providing new research and thinking about cities, their governance and planning reform, this book compares the UK with multiple international examples in order to examine cutting-edge experimentation and innovation in new models of governance and urban policy in response to today's increasing global social and environmental challenges.