Rethinking policy and politics: reflections on contemporary debates in policy studies

Forty years of public management reform in UK central government: promises, promises ... -- Politcal anthropology and civil service reform: prospects and limits -- Just do it differently? Everyday making, Marxism and the struggle against neoliberalism -- Performing new worlds? Policy, politics and creative labour in hard times -- Weathering the perfect storm? Austerity and institutional resilience in local goverment -- Complex causality in improving underperforming schools: a complex adaptive systems approach -- Toward policy coordination: alternatives to hierarchy -- Governing local partnerships: does external steering help local agencies address wicked problems? -- All tools are informational now: how information and persuasion define the tools of government -- The politics of engaged scholarship: impact, relevance and imagination -- Reflections on contemporary debates in policy studies.

The book offers critical reflections on the recent history and future direction of policy studies, advancing the debate by rethinking the ways in which scholars and students of policy studies can (re)engage with pertinent issues. First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics.

In recent years the nature of policy and politics has witnessed significant transformations. These have challenged perceptions about the ways in which policy is studied, designed, delivered and appraised. This book –the first in the New Perspectives in Policy and Politics series - brings together world-leading scholars to reflect on the implications of some of these developments for the field of policy studies and the world of practice. First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, the book offers critical reflections on the recent history and future direction of policy studies. It advances the debate by rethinking the ways in which scholars and students of policy studies can (re)engage with pertinent issues in pursuit of both scholarly excellence and practical solutions to global policy problems