Books in the Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy series

This book offers theoretical and methodological guidelines for researching the complex regulation of local infrastructure, utilities and public services in the context of rapid urbanisation, technological change, and climate change.

This book investigates the increasing circulation and transfer of public policy ideas between the UK, US and Australia since the 1990s.

Fear of geopolitical catastrophe drove China to open its economy, while GPNs enabled China to generate substantial export surpluses which could be recycled through state-owned banks as cheap credit and subsidies to large, vertically integrated and politically-controlled state-owned enterprises.

This book is about the role of agents in policy and institutional change. It draws on cross-country case studies. The focus on 'agency' has been an important development, enabling researchers to better reveal the causal mechanisms generating institutional change (i.e., how institutional change actually takes place). However, past research has generally been limited to specific intellectual silos or scholarly domains of inquiry. Policy scholars, for example, have tended to focus on the various mechanisms and levels at which agency operates, drawing on institutionalist perspectives but not always actively contributing to institutionalist theory. Institutionalist perspectives, by contrast, have tended to operate at macro-levels of enquiry, embracing the ontological primacy of institutions in processes of isomorphism but not necessarily contributing to or embracing policy perspectives that engage in more granular analyses of policy making processes, implementation, and the instantiation of institutional and policy change. Despite the obvious complementarities of these two intellectual traditions, it is surprising how little collaborative work, or indeed cross fertilization of theory and analytical design has occurred. The core novelty of this volume is thus its focus on agential actors within institutional settings and processes of entrepreneurship that facilitate isomorphism and policy change. The book's theoretical framework is grounded in variants of institutional theory, especially historical, sociological and organisational institutionalism and policy entrepreneurship literature. The overall conclusion is that that both institutionalists and public policy scholars have largely overlooked the importance of complex interactions between interdependent structures, institutions, and agents in processes of institutional and policy change.

This book examines the socio-political conflicts which have arisen since Hong Kong's return to China and confronts the fundamental problems in the design of the One Country, Two Systems (OCTS) Model.

This book revises the existing account of the first Rudd Government's engagement with China, placing Australian foreign direct investment screening policy at the centre of the story.

This book provides a comprehensive discussion of the public policy and management issues that are encountered in the regulation of infrastructure and utilities. Drawing from theoretical arguments and several case studies, the book is divided into three parts, namely devising regulation, installing regulation, and making regulation work.

This book is about the role of agents in policy and institutional change. It draws on cross-country case studies. The focus on 'agency' has been an important development, enabling researchers to better reveal the causal mechanisms generating institutional change (i.e., how institutional change actually takes place). However, past research has generally been limited to specific intellectual silos or scholarly domains of inquiry. Policy scholars, for example, have tended to focus on the various mechanisms and levels at which agency operates, drawing on institutionalist perspectives but not always actively contributing to institutionalist theory. Institutionalist perspectives, by contrast, have tended to operate at macro-levels of enquiry, embracing the ontological primacy of institutions in processes of isomorphism but not necessarily contributing to or embracing policy perspectives that engage in more granular analyses of policy making processes, implementation, and the instantiation of institutional and policy change. Despite the obvious complementarities of these two intellectual traditions, it is surprising how little collaborative work, or indeed cross fertilization of theory and analytical design has occurred. The core novelty of this volume is thus its focus on agential actors within institutional settings and processes of entrepreneurship that facilitate isomorphism and policy change. The book's theoretical framework is grounded in variants of institutional theory, especially historical, sociological and organisational institutionalism and policy entrepreneurship literature. The overall conclusion is that that both institutionalists and public policy scholars have largely overlooked the importance of complex interactions between interdependent structures, institutions, and agents in processes of institutional and policy change.

Proceeding from a synthetic critique of political economy, this book places welfare and inequality at the center of a more encompassing comparative approach to political economy that construes countries as dynamic, globally embedded social orders defined and animated by distinctive social relational and institutional features.

This book provides unique insights into the role of policy capacity in policymaking and policy change, as it is being uncovered at the research frontier in contemporary policy studies.

This book examines the decade from 2004 to 2013 during which people in China witnessed both a skyrocketing number of food safety crises, and aggregating regulatory initiatives attempting to control these crises.

Linda Matar examines Syria's failure to promote employment-generating investment prior to the uprising.

With Asia as its backdrop, this book investigates the role played by the World Bank Group (WBG) in conceptualising and promoting new mining regimes tailored for resource-rich country clients. It details a particular politics of mining in the Global South characterised by the transplanting, hijacking and contesting of the WBG's mining agenda.

The contributors investigate policy paradigms and their ability to explain the policy process actors, ideas, discourses and strategies employed to provide readers with a better understanding of public policy and its dynamics.

Ironically, the "developmental state" that has historically driven Asia's rapid economic transformation is now threatened by an increasingly dominant neoliberal agenda that aims to roll back the state in the name of market fundamentalism.

According to the author, rather than alleviating poverty, microfinance financialises poverty. By indebting poor people in the Global South, it drives financial expansion and opens new lands of opportunity for the crisis-ridden global capital markets. This book raises fundamental concerns about this widely-celebrated tool for social development.

This edited collection examines various facets of governance - the organization and steering of political processes within society - for a better understanding of the complexities of contemporary policy making.

Escaping the economic and security-centered approaches, prevalent in contemporary U.S. debate the contributors explore political relations between the European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).Their inter-disciplinary perspectives touch on domains such as security, comparative integration, human rights, energy.

This book examines the socio-political conflicts which have arisen since Hong Kong's return to China and confronts the fundamental problems in the design of the One Country, Two Systems (OCTS) Model.

This edited collection examines various facets of governance - the organization and steering of political processes within society - for a better understanding of the complexities of contemporary policy making.

Philippe Zittoun analyses the public policymaking process focusing on how governments relentlessly develop proposals to change public policy to address insoluble problems. Rather than considering this surprising Sisyphean effort as a lack of rationality, the author examines it as a political activity that produces order and stability.

Escaping the economic and security-centered approaches, prevalent in contemporary U.S. debate the contributors explore political relations between the European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).Their inter-disciplinary perspectives touch on domains such as security, comparative integration, human rights, energy.

Ironically, the "developmental state" that has historically driven Asia's rapid economic transformation is now threatened by an increasingly dominant neoliberal agenda that aims to roll back the state in the name of market fundamentalism.

"This is not only the best collection of essays on the political economy of Southeast Asia, but also, as a singular achievement of the "Murdoch School", one of the rarest of books that demonstrates how knowledge production travels across generations, institutions and time periods, thereby continually enriching itself.