Public Policy and Administration

This engaging book argues that imaginative place-based leadership can enable citizens to shape the urban future while advancing social justice, promoting care for the environment and bolstering community empowerment.

Set in the context of New Labour's emphasis on 'modernisation', and reflecting the growing emphasis on policy making as a skill, this unique book combines both academic and practitioner perspectives to provide critical consideration of contemporary policy-making and highlight examples of good practice at all levels of government.

This is an English version of a text on public policy analysis originally written for practitioners in Switzerland and France. It presents a model for the analysis of public policy and includes examples of its application in everyday situations. This English version introduces supplementary illustrations and examples from the United Kingdom.

This timely book explores how changing territorial politics are impacting on social citizenship rights across the UK.

"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.

This topical book takes a critical look at contemporary governance theory, arguing that there are structural impediments to achieving an ideology of networks and reconsidering it from Marxist and Gramscian perspectives. 

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 valuable book examines the development of evaluation and its impact on public policy by analysing evaluation frameworks and criteria which are available when evaluating public policies and services.

This book presents an academically rigorous yet practical guide to efforts to understand how knowledge, policy and power interact to promote or prevent change.

In the second, revised edition of this indispensable book, the author looks behind 'the mirror of power' to discover the reality of civil society - or 'Big Society', as it has become known.

Policy makers have become reliant on mechanistic top-down audit and inspection regimes as the means of implementing public service reforms. This book sets out to redress the balance. It outlines the theory behind whole systems development and gives good practice guidance on how to effectively develop 'systems' to improve joined-up working.

The widespread popularity of evaluation is based on the need to provide evidence of the effectiveness of policies and programmes. This book sees evaluation as an inherently political activity, and using a wide range of examples it relates practical issues in evaluation design to their political contexts.