Politics and Public Policy

"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.

"Children, politics and communication" questions many of the conventional ways in which children are perceived. It is about how they communicate and engage, how they organise themselves and their lives, and how they deal with conflict in their relationships and the world around them.

The politics of parental leave policies addresses how and why, and by whom, particular policies are created and subsequently developed in particular countries. It examines the factors that bring about variations in leave policy, covering fifteen countries in Europe and beyond.

Citizens' everyday conduct is shaped by governmental action, yet there is much evidence that both front-line public service staff and service users can sometimes act in ways that modify or disrupt intended policy outcomes. This book presents a highly original examination of how policy objectives can be 'subverted' through the actions of citizens.

Mixing policy discussion and empirical work by leading researchers in the field, "Changing local governance, changing citizens" aims to explain what debates about local governance mean for local people.

Drawing on contemporary research and debates from different Nordic countries, this book examines how social work and child welfare politics are produced and challenged as both global and local ideas and practices.

This lively and topical book provides a critique of choice in contemporary society and policy. Having choices empowers us, but constant extension of choice overwhelms us. In a concise and readable style, the author considers whether choice enhances or burdens our lives, and questions the blithe assumption that more choice is always for the better.

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

This book rethinks the public, public communication and public action in a globalising world. It looks at how publics are brought into being and how to develop research agendas into their formation, offering a rich set of methodological resources and stressing the need to examine the boundaries between theory, research and politics.

This insightful and progressive book proposes a new moral approach to public policy to replace Third Way governments' failed attempts to reconcile global markets with ethically-informed public policies.

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 book provides a new model for evidence-based policy in UK drug policy and will be essential reading for students and researchers in public policy and criminology.