Public Policy and Administration

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Involving citizens in policy decision-making has been a central goal of the Labour government since it came to power. But what happens when the public are drawn into debate with unfamiliar others in the unknown world of policy making at national level? This book sets out to understand the contribution that citizens can realistically make.

This study, by a qualitative sociologist, uses interpretive methods to examine the impact of auditing and inspection on professional work in schools, hospitals, local government and the police and provides a true sense of what is practically involved in the work of counting, measuring and managing quality.

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.

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.