A broad-ranging and pluralistic textbook which highlights the rich variety of approaches to studying politics. Written by an international team of experts, this fully revised fourth edition offers cutting-edge coverage from fundamental to contemporary issues. Integrating guides to further reading and clear examples of how research methods can be applied, it enables readers to feel confident about taking their study of politics forward. An ideal foundation for study and research in political science, this textbook will be essential to students at any stage of their degree. It serves as core reading on undergraduate and postgraduate political analysis, theory and methods courses. In demonstrating how independent research is undertaken in political science, the book allows students and early career researchers to begin thinking about formulating their own research agendas. This new edition: - Leads the way with fresh new ideas and perspectives with the help of new co-editor Vivien Lowndes - Includes new chapters on post-structuralism as a theoretical approach and on 'big data' as a methodological resource - Offers an international perspective on political science, with discussion of global as well as domestic politics and a range of international cases and examples.

Democracy is in crisis. Is there still time to save it? Democracies face external threat from aggressive authoritarian states. Internally, citizens have grown increasingly distrustful of politicians and more cynical about national and global governance institutions. The time is ripe for democracy to renew itself. This text offers a state-of-the art overview of democratic innovations today, moving beyond cries of the 'death' or 'end' of democracy to instead offer a range of practical solutions for how to save it and restore faith in democratic practice. 'Old' democratic power, represented by existing structures, is being challenged. 'New' power involves collaboration and rapid feedback loops, as well as increased citizen participation. The future of democracy, the authors demonstrate, will be about findings ways of melding 'old' and 'new' power practices. Offering a broad and accessible survey of what different forms of democracy and democratic innovations look like today, and how they can develop in future, Saving Democracy shows us the potential for transformation across the entire democratic process. Avoiding a reductive focus on simply getting citizens more involved in decision-making, this book uniquely argues for the importance of refining and monitoring how democratic decisions are made and followed through.

Profound social changes have made governance and political leadership more challenging than ever. The result is that politics in the democratic world faces a crisis in the 21st century. The revised edition of this highly successful text reassesses the gap between citizen expectation and the realities of government in light of new developments.

The search for a more holistic approach to policy and management looks set to be as much a hallmark of public service reform in the early twenty first century as the changes introduced under the rubric of 'new public management' or 'reinventing government' were in the closing decades of the twentieth. Towards Holistic Governance presents an authoritative assessment of successes and failures to date and a new framework for analysis and implementation based on extensive research both in the UK - where the New Labor government has been an early enthusiast and pathfinder for 'joined-up government' just as its predecessors were for privatization and contracting out - and elsewhere.

Offering a detailed and critical account of the many ways in which policy can be evaluated and the innovative methods that can be applied to studying policy, contributions from experts on public policy analysis create a valuable guide for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students, that can also be used as the basis of an intensive learning experience by policy makers.

What is the current state of local government in Britain and where is it going? Edited by two leading experts and with an all-star cast of contributors, British Local Government into the 21st Century brings together a set of specially-commissioned and tightly-edited chapters to provide a comprehensive assessment of the issues and challenges facing local authorities as they search for a new role in a new century.

Drawing on the author's unrivalled experience and expertise in both research and policy-making, this important new book provides a systematic assessment of the changing nature of local governance in Britain and a conceptual framework for understanding the new governance of localities. The author analyzes in detail what New Labour has been trying to do to local governance and management and assesses how and why it has achieved only a mixed record of change. The book concludes by providing a vision of good local governance and an assessment of future challenges for research and reform.

This book examines the changing nature of local politics, drawing on the latest research from the ESRC Local Governance Programme. It assesses the emergence of new forms of elite organisations and changing power relations in the context of increasing roles for business and other partners. Public responses to changes in local governance are covered in depth including new forms of participation and protest. The book concludes with a consideration of the extent to which the emerging system of local governance can meet the social and economic challenges created by globalization.

This book explores how different governments have leveraged their capacity to advance a revival of nuclear power. Presenting in-depth case studies of France, Finland, Britain and the United States, Baker and Stoker argue that governments may struggle to promote new investment in nuclear power.

What does political science tell us about important real-world problems and issues? And to what extent does and can political analysis contribute to solutions? Debates about the funding, impact and relevance of political science in contemporary democracies have made this a vital and hotly contested topic of discussion, and in this original text authors from around the world respond to the challenge. A robust defence is offered of the achievements of political science research, but the book is not overly sanguine given its sustained recognition of the need for improvement in the way that political science is done. New insights are provided into the general issues raised by relevance, into blockages to relevance, and into the contributions that the different subfields of political science can and do make. The book concludes with a new manifesto for relevance that seeks to combine a commitment to rigour with a commitment to engagement.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Griffiths, Kippin and Stoker bring together many of the country's leading academic and policy experts to explore the long-term challenges facing public services, and ask what the role of government, citizens and society should be in addressing them. The book sets out a new reform agenda, exploring possibilities for the future design and delivery of public services in the UK and beyond. Public Services: A New Reform Agenda is an important new contribution to the debate that will be invaluable for policymakers, practitioners and academics.

Surveys show a lack of trust in political actors and institutions across much of the democratic world. Populist politicians and parties attempt to capitalise on this political disaffection. Commentators worry about our current 'age of anti-politics'. Focusing on the United Kingdom, using responses to public opinion surveys alongside diaries and letters collected by Mass Observation, this book takes a long view of anti-politics going back to the 1940s. This historical perspective reveals how anti-politics has grown in scope and intensity over the last half-century. Such growth is explained by citizens' changing images of 'the good politician' and changing modes of political interaction between politicians and citizens. Current efforts to reform and improve democracy will benefit greatly from the new evidence and conceptual framework set out in this important study.

Remaking Planning challenges the common misconception that planning under the Conservative government has been dismantled and abandoned to market forces.
This new edition of a very well received text brings the original study up to date with an analysis of how planning in the 1990s has responded to continuing economic restructuring, political fragmentation and social change, and developed a new awareness of uncertainty and risk. The book illustrates how planning remains as a never-ending attempt to reconcile the demands of economic efficiency with those of democratic legitimacy.

Remaking Planning challenges the common misconception that planning under the Conservative government has been dismantled and abandoned to market forces. This new edition of a very well received text brings the original study up to date with an analysis of how planning in the 1990s has responded to continuing economic restructuring, political fragmentation and social change, and developed a new awareness of uncertainty and risk. The book illustrates how planning remains as a never-ending attempt to reconcile the demands of economic efficiency with those of democratic legitimacy.

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioural and rational choice theory issued by March and Olsen, institutional analysis has developed into an important alternative to more individualistic approaches to theory and analysis. This body of theory has developed in a number of ways, and perhaps the most commonly applied version in political science is historical institutionalism that stresses the importance of path dependency in shaping institutional behaviour. The fundamental question addressed in this book, newly available in paperback, is whether institutionalism is useful for the various sub-disciplines within political science to which it has been applied, and to what extent the assumptions inherent to institutional analysis can be useful for understanding the range of behaviour of individuals and structures in the public sector. The volume will also examine the relative utility of different forms of institutionalism within the various sub-disciplines. The book consists of a set of strong essays by noted international scholars from a range of sub-disciplines within the field of political science, each analysing their area of research from an institutionalist perspective and assessing what contributions this form of theorising has made, and can make, to that research. The result is a balanced and nuanced account of the role of institutions in contemporary political science, and a set of suggestions for the further development of institutional theory.

How can governments persuade their citizens to act in socially beneficial ways? This ground-breaking book builds on the idea of 'light touch interventions' or 'nudges' proposed in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's highly influential Nudge (2008). While recognising the power of this approach, it argues that an alternative also needs to be considered: a 'think' strategy that calls on citizens to decide their own priorities as part of a process of civic and democratic renewal. As well as setting out these divergent approaches in theory, the book provides evidence from a number of experiments to show how using 'nudge' or 'think' techniques works in practice. Updated and rewritten, this second edition features a new epilogue that reflects on recent developments in nudge theory and practice, introducing a radical version of nudge, 'nudge plus'. There is also a substantial prologue by Cass Sunstein. -- .

The last decade has seen an increase in political and ideological conflict in local government. This book analyzes this context and examines both the operation of elected local authorities and the rise of a non-directly elected local governement.

What does political science tell us about important real-world problems and issues? And to what extent does and can political analysis contribute to solutions? Debates about the funding, impact and relevance of political science in contemporary democracies have made this a vital and hotly contested topic of discussion, and in this original text authors from around the world respond to the challenge. A robust defence is offered of the achievements of political science research, but the book is not overly sanguine given its sustained recognition of the need for improvement in the way that political science is done. New insights are provided into the general issues raised by relevance, into blockages to relevance, and into the contributions that the different subfields of political science can and do make. The book concludes with a new manifesto for relevance that seeks to combine a commitment to rigour with a commitment to engagement.

Drawing on the insights of some of the world's leading authorities in public policy analysis, this important book offers a distinct and critical showcase of emerging forms of discovery for policy-making. Chapter by chapter this expert group of social scientists showcase their chosen method or approach, showing the context, the method's key features and how it can be applied in practice, including the scope and limitations of its application and value to policy makers. Arguing that it is not just econometric analysis, cost benefit or surveys that can do policy work, the contributors demonstrate a range of other methods that can provide evidenced-based policy insights and how they can help facilitate progressive policy outcomes. The book will be ideal for upper level undergraduate students as well as Public Policy post-graduates, and can be used as the basis of an intensive learning experience for policy makers.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Griffiths, Kippin and Stoker bring together many of the country's leading academic and policy experts to explore the long-term challenges facing public services, and ask what the role of government, citizens and society should be in addressing them. The book sets out a new reform agenda, exploring possibilities for the future design and delivery of public services in the UK and beyond. Public Services: A New Reform Agenda is an important new contribution to the debate that will be invaluable for policymakers, practitioners and academics.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Is citizenship in decline due to globalisation and an erosion of civic participation and democratic representation? Or is it merely transformed and extended to new levels and larger scales? Should we assess these challenges and changes primarily from a perspective of global justice, or consider also membership in a democratic polity as itself a basic good? Prospects for Citizenship addresses these broad questions in a unique collaborative effort. The result is an impressive book that looks at the future of citizenship from multiple research perspectives while remaining coherent in its overall purpose. Rainer Bauboeck, European University Institute, Florence This book offers a perspicuous overview of the prospects for citizenship in our contemporary political context. The authorial team draw on a wide range of empirical and normative research in order to offer an incisive analysis of the problems and pressures of citizenship in the twenty-first century. The authors focus in particular on the apparent decline of traditional forms of civic engagement, the emergence of new forms of participation and the relationship between citizenship and globalization.

This book presents a detailed analysis of the new management of public services at the local level, drawing on the work of the ESRC Local Governance Programme. The radical transformation of public service delivery is assessed in terms of its overall impact as well as its operation in particular service areas. Efficiency has improved and services have gained a user focus yet the new management appears to be full of contradictions and distortions, in many respects creating as many problems as it solves.

Surveys show a lack of trust in political actors and institutions across much of the democratic world. Populist politicians and parties attempt to capitalise on this political disaffection. Commentators worry about our current 'age of anti-politics'. Focusing on the United Kingdom, using responses to public opinion surveys alongside diaries and letters collected by Mass Observation, this book takes a long view of anti-politics going back to the 1940s. This historical perspective reveals how anti-politics has grown in scope and intensity over the last half-century. Such growth is explained by citizens' changing images of 'the good politician' and changing modes of political interaction between politicians and citizens. Current efforts to reform and improve democracy will benefit greatly from the new evidence and conceptual framework set out in this important study.

Profound social changes have made governance and political leadership more challenging than ever. The result is that politics in the democratic world faces a crisis in the 21st century. The revised edition of this highly successful text reassesses the gap between citizen expectation and the realities of government in light of new developments.