Books in the Elements in Public Policy series

Focuses on state-of-the-art theories that highlight policymaking complexity and explains complexity in a way that is simple enough to understand and use. Provides an authoritative guide to multi-centric policymaking for policy scholars which is equally accessible to practitioners, students, and new researchers seeking an introduction to policy theory.

An examination of the origins of the policy sciences in the School of Pragmatism at the University of Chicago in the period 1915-38. Characteristics of the policy sciences include orientations that are normative, policy-relevant, contextual, and multi-disciplinary. These principles are central to the future development of the policy sciences.

Illuminates a distinctive politics of protection that transcends policy sectors. Adopts a comparative and historical perspective to identify common drivers of protective state-building as well as cross-national differences in the politics of protection. Concludes by examining political theories of the protective state.

This Element assesses the current state of knowledge on policy entrepreneurs, their actions, and their impacts. It explains how various global forces are creating new demand for policy entrepreneurship, and suggests directions for future research on policy entrepreneurs and their efforts to drive dynamic change.

This Element goes beyond traditional texts which focus on public policy as an activity of states to outline how global policy making has driven many global and regional transformations over the past quarter-century. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element will integrate competing views of governance through the lens of the emerging technology of nanotechnology. The governance of these technologies represents one of the most promising and exciting areas for future research on policy governance processes generally.

This Element shows that the effort to understand the phenomenon of post truth has to go beyond the emphasis on facts to include an understanding of the social meanings that get attached to facts in the political world of public policy.

This Element explores the uncertain future of public policy practice and scholarship in an age of radical disruption. Building on foundational ideas in policy sciences, we argue that an anachronistic instrumental rationalism underlies contemporary policy logic and limits efforts to understand new policy challenges. We consider whether the policy sciences framework can be reframed to facilitate deeper understandings of this anachronistic epistemic, in anticipation of a research agenda about epistemic destabilization and contestation. The Element applies this theoretical provocation to environmental policy and sustainability, issues about which policymaking proceeds amid unpredictable contexts and rising sociopolitical turbulence that portend a liminal state in the transition from one way of thinking to another. The Element concludes by contemplating the fate of policy's epistemic instability, anticipating what policy understandings will emerge in a new system, and questioning the degree to which either presages a seismic shift in the relationship between policy and society.

This Element provides a critical review of existing literature on the role of ideas and institutions in the politics of public policy with the aim of contributing to the study of the politics of public policy. Because most policy scholars deal with the role of ideas or institutions in their research, such a critical review should help them improve their knowledge of crucial analytical issues in policy and political analysis. The following discussion brings together insights from both the policy studies literature and new institutionalism in sociology and political science, and stresses the explanatory role of ideas and institutions.

This element shows, based on a review of the literature, how digital technology has affected liberal democracies with a focus on three key aspects of democratic politics: political communication, political participation, and policy-making. The impact of digital technology permeates the entire political process, affecting the flow of information among citizen and political actors, the connection between the mass public and political elites, and the development of policy responses to societal problems. This element discusses how digital technology has shaped these different domains, identifies areas of research consensus as well as unresolved questions, and argues that a key perspective involves issue definition, that is, how the nature of the problems raised by digital technology is subject to political contestation.