Public policy and the policy process

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.

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.

This valuable book offers a distinct and critical showcase of emerging forms of discovery for policy-making drawing on the insights of some of the world’s leading authorities in public policy analysis.

A critical analysis of neighbourhood planning. Setting empirical evidence from the UK against international examples, the Editors engage in broader debates on the purposes of planning and the devolution of power to localities.

International contributors from academia, research, policy and practice use their experience and knowledge to explore on-going efforts to improve spatial resilience across the globe and predict future trends.

Providing a new cross-national and international narrative on how global competition has reshaped welfare states this book captures the complexity of social policy reform process that have taken place over the past 25 years.

This ground-breaking book explores the relationship between the media, child abuse and shifting adult–child power relations which, in Western countries, has spawned an ever-expanding range of laws, policies and procedures introduced to address the ‘explosion’ of interest in the issue of child abuse.

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.