Politics and Public Policy

In this book, the authors use the latest research to explore financial differences across the UK’s three main parties in the four years leading up to the 2010 General Election, revealing an unhealthy picture of grassroots party organisation in which the capacity to engage with many voters is concentrated in a few constituencies.

The appeal of voluntary action as a solution to growing welfare needs in advanced capitalist countries raises important questions about the social impacts and spatial equity of such provision. For the first time, these issues are addressed within a single book, exploring the complex relationship between voluntary action, society and space.

There is widespread commitment across public service agencies in the UK and elsewhere to ensuring that the best available evidence is used to improve public services. The challenge is not only making research evidence accessible and available but also getting it used. This book provides a timely contribution to enhancing evidence use.

Can and should asset-based policies become a new pillar of the welfare state? Can they form the basis for a more egalitarian form of market economy? The citizen's stake throws open the debate by bringing together the ideas of leading thinkers in academia and policy to explore the future scope of asset-based policies in Britain.

Published to coincide with the first anniversary of the election, this book looks at the Coalition government in the context of conservative ideas and seeks to assess what, if anything, is new about it.

This unique book presents a new perspective on citizenship by treating it as a continuing focus of dispute. The authors develop a view of citizenship as always emerging from struggle through an exploration of the entanglements of politics, culture and power that are both embodied and contested in forms and practices of citizenship.

Using core concepts of policy analysis "Understanding the policy process" builds up a full explanation of social policy change that can be applied to any aspect of welfare policy, public and social policy. This second edition of the book updates the first edition for the post-Blair era with international case studies from numerous countries.

Spanning religion, moral philosophy and scientific understanding of the human conditions, this unique book adds to the latest thinking on morality, proposing ways to enhance the capacity of public policy to respond to morality and associated shifts in social mores in different cultural settings.

Obama and the Biracial Factor is the first book to explore the significance of mixed-race identity as a key factor in the election of President Obama and examines the sociological and political relationship between race, power, and public policy in the United States.

This book, the third in Martin Powell's New Labour trilogy, analyses the legacy of Tony Blair's government for social policy, focusing on the extent to which it has changed the UK welfare state.

This book examines existing cycling structures and the current policies and practices used to promote cycling. Its interdisciplinary analysis considers the cultural politics of infrastructural provision and connects this to questions of sustainability, citizenship and justice in cities.

In this engaging and original book, John Clarke is in conversation with twelve leading individual scholars about the dynamics of critical thinking in the social sciences, and he reflects on the necessity of thinking collaboratively and dialogically.