Pragmatic, progressive and global in its approach, this Handbook centres around the key question: how can we teach public policy? Presenting a wide variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, it expertly examines current approaches to teaching public policy and critically reflects on potential future developments in the field. Bringing together contributions from over sixty leading public policy scholars, chapters examine the many different orientations to teaching and learning public policy, spanning traditional, current and emerging approaches. Employing a multi-jurisdictional approach, contributors discuss key theories surrounding the policy process, analyse diverse teaching strategies, and investigate the different publics engaged in learning about public policy. Through detailed case studies, the Handbook also explores the differences in international public policy programmes, and suggests possible explanations for the plurality in content. This forward-thinking Handbook will be an essential resource for educators in the field of public policy looking to enhance their teaching practices as well as those interested in the latest developments within the discipline. Offering a comprehensive overview of modern public policy pedagogy, it will also be of interest to academics and students.

Working to demystify the enigmatic process behind unexpected policymaking, this important book proposes to understand the significance of meaning struggles and the uncertainty provoked by the multiple pressures in governmental decision making. Using the French case, where the government shifted position 3 times before banning hydraulic fracturing, The Politics of Meaning Struggles addresses the wider phenomenon of governmental shifts in policy decisions through a new perspective, a pragmatist constructivism approach. This controversial governmental U-turn is thoroughly analysed through the meticulous reconstitution of multiple debates which took place not only in the public arena but also in the privacy of government. Based on 3 years of investigation and 52 lengthy qualitative interviews across the hierarchical levels of the bureaucracy including former ministers, and through exclusive access to the archive of Prime Minister, the authors allow us to better understand the complexity and uncertainty in the policy process, which has yet to be explained by classical theories, frameworks and concepts. It builds from the oversights of existing policy approaches to create a more comprehensive understanding as to why State decisions, pressured by power struggles and mutating proposals, are never written in advance. > Working towards gaining a better grasp of the complexity and diversity of public policies, this insightful book will be invaluable to public policy students and scholars. It will also be particularly useful to policy makers working within the gas industry and wider governmental roles that involve policy and decision making.

In this book, an international group of public policy scholars revisit the stage of formulating policy solutions by investigating the basic political dimensions inherent to this critical phase of the policy process. The book focuses attention on how policy makers craft their policy proposals, match them with public problems, debate their feasibility to build coalitions and dispute their acceptability as serious contenders for government consideration. Based on international case studies, this book is an invitation to examine the uncertain and often indeterminate aspects of policy-making using qualitative analysis embedded in a political perspective.

This book considers a range of contemporary approaches to public policy studies. These approaches are based on a number of theoretical perspectives on decision-making, as well as alternative perspectives on policy instruments and implementation. The range of approaches covered in the volume includes punctuated equilibrium models, the advocacy-coalition framework, multiple streams approaches, institutional analyses, constructivist approaches, behavioural models, and the use of instruments as an approach to public policy. The volume concludes with a discussion of fundamental issues of democracy in public policy.

Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.