Bücher der Reihe Elements in Public Policy

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.

Ideas are important in shaping the policy choices of governments. But many ideas that have not been successful in the past continue to be used by policymakers, and some good ideas tend not to be adopted. This Element will focus on why governments make these poor policy choices. We will discuss a number of examples of 'zombie ideas' that refuse to die, and then discuss the factors that are associated with their survival. Those factors occur at the elite, the organizational and the societal level. We will also examine some 'ghost' ideas that may well be successful but have a difficult time being adopted, and the factors that are associated with the exclusion of these ideas from the policy process.

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 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 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.

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.

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.