Rethinking Public Policies

Rethinking Social Policy is a comprehensive introduction to, and analysis of, the complex mixture of problems and possibilities within the study of social policy. Contributors at the cutting edge of social policy analysis reflect upon the implications of new social and theoretical movements for welfare and the study of social policy. Topics covered include: criminology and crime control; race, class and gender; poverty and sexuality; the body and the emotions; violence; work and welfare in Europe. Examples are drawn from a variety of welfare sectors such as: social services and community care, health, education, employment, and criminal justice. This is a course reader for The Open University course (D860) Rethinking Social Practice.

This volume explores new directions of governance and public policy arising both from interpretive political science and those who engage with interpretive ideas. It conceives governance as the various policies and outcomes emerging from the increasing salience of neoclassical and institutional economics or, neoliberalism and new institutionalisms. In doing so, it suggests that that the British state consists of a vast array of meaningful actions that may coalesce into contingent, shifting, and contestable practices. Based on original fieldwork, it examines the myriad ways in which local actors - civil servants, mid-level public managers, and street level bureaucrats - have interpreted elite policy narratives and thus forged practices of governance on the ground. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of governance and public policy.

Success and failure are key to any consideration of public policy but there have been remarkably few attempts to assess systematically the various dimensions and complex nature of policy success. This important new text fills the gap by developing a systematic framework and offering an entirely new way of introducing students to policy analysis.

The dominant approach to economic policy has so far failed to adequately address the pressing challenges the world faces today: extreme poverty, widespread joblessness and precarious employment, burgeoning inequality, and large-scale environmental threats. This message was brought home forcibly by the 2008 global economic crisis. Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice shows how human rights have the potential to transform economic thinking and policy-making with far-reaching consequences for social justice. The authors make the case for a new normative and analytical framework, based on a broader range of objectives which have the potential to increase the substantive freedoms and choices people enjoy in the course of their lives and not on not upon narrow goals such as the growth of gross domestic product. The book covers a range of issues including inequality, fiscal and monetary policy, international development assistance, financial markets, globalization, and economic instability. This new approach allows for a complex interaction between individual rights, collective rights and collective action, as well as encompassing a legal framework which offers formal mechanisms through which unjust policy can be protested. This highly original and accessible book will be essential reading for human rights advocates, economists, policy-makers and those working on questions of social justice.

Productive transformation requires seizing the opportunities available and opening new ones in a competitive world. Rethinking Productive Development examines the market failures impeding transformation and the government failures that may make the policy remedies worse than the market illness. To address market failures, the authors propose a simple conceptual framework based on the scope and nature of the policy approach. They then systematically analyze country policies through this lens in key areas such as innovation, new firms, financing, human capital, and internationalization to show the power of this way of thinking. Still, the book warns that policymakers cannot be sure what the right policy interventions are and must set up a process to discover them that calls for public-private collaboration. Recognizing that the risk of capture needs to be checked and that even the best policies will fail without the technical, organizational, and political capacity to implement them, the book concludes with ideas on how to design institutions fostering the right incentives and how to grow public sector capabilities over time.

Success and failure are key to any consideration of public policy but there have been remarkably few attempts to assess systematically the various dimensions and complex nature of policy success. This important new text fills the gap by developing a systematic framework and offering an entirely new way of introducing students to policy analysis.

While a growing private sector and a vibrant civil society can help compensate for the shortcomings of India’s public sector, the state is—and will remain—indispensable in delivering basic governance. In Rethinking Public Institutions in India, distinguished political and economic thinkers critically assess a diverse array of India’s core federal institutions, from the Supreme Court and Parliament to the Election Commission and the civil services. Relying on interdisciplinary approaches and decades of practitioner experience, this volume interrogates the capacity of India’s public sector to navigate the far-reaching transformations the country is experiencing. An insightful introduction to the functioning of Indian democracy, it offers a roadmap for carrying out fundamental reforms that will be necessary for India to build a reinvigorated state for the twenty-first century.

Public private partnerships (PPPs) have been a controversial approach to procuring public infrastructure services. Against a background of recent trenchant criticism of PPPs, Mervyn K. Lewis, a leading scholar in the area, re-examines their utility. He questions what PPPs can and cannot do, why governments choose this route and whether PPPs can ever be good value for money.