Ideas And Think Tanks In Contemporary Britain

This study looks at the influence of ideas and think tanks in Britain, contemplating how ideas have shaped politics and society. The purveyors of ideas for change - the think tanks - are examined, and academics and participants vieww are recorded in a number of interviews.

This study looks at the influence of ideas and think tanks in Britain, contemplating how ideas have shaped politics and society. The purveyors of ideas for change - the think tanks - are examined, and academics and participants views are recorded in a number of interviews.

This study looks at the influence of ideas and think tanks in Britain, contemplating how ideas have shaped politics and society. The purveyors of ideas for change - the think tanks - are examined, and academics and participants views are recorded in a number of interviews.

Think tank traditions is a follow up to the critically acclaimed monograph Think Tanks across Nations (Manchester University Press, 1998), edited by the same authors, which was widely acknowledged as a ground-breaking work in the comparative study of think tanks. The book looks at the historical role and contemporary significance of think tanks in the West, including Europe, the United States and Canada, as well as considering their activities in China, Eastern Europe and Argentina. In so doing, the book provides a broad-based and in-depth analysis of the role of think tanks in the processes of economic liberalization and democratization.

Investigating think tanks on both sides of the political divide, the author defines these groups in the context of British politics, explores their impact on the climate of opinion, and calculates how effective they have been in influencing government in general and key policy areas in particular. Think tanks have rarely come under the spotlight and the author offers a probing but balanced overview of a political phenomenon.; This book should prove to be valuable reading for students of political science, public administration and contemporary British history.

Writing about ideas, John Maynard Keynes noted that they are "more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else." One would expect, therefore, that political science--a discipline that focuses specifically on the nature of power--would have a healthy respect for the role of ideas. However, for a variety of reasons--not least of which is the influence of rational choice theory, which presumes that individuals are self-maximizing rational actors--this is not the case, and the literature on the topic is fairly thin. As the stellar cast of contributors to this volume show, ideas are in fact powerful shapers of political and social life. In Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, Daniel B?land and Robert Henry Cox have gathered leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology to provide a general overview of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics. Throughout, they hone in on three central questions. What is the theoretical basis for studying ideas in politics? What are the best methods? What sort of empirical puzzles can be solved by examining ideas and related phenomena such as discourse, policy paradigms, and framing processes? In sum, this is a state-of-the-art academic work on both the role of ideas in politics and the analytical utility that derives from studying them.

Introducing you to the public policy making process in Britain today, this book adopts an empirical approach to the study of policy making by relating theory to actual developments in Britain since the 1980s. It covers: Ideas, Problem Definition, Issues and Agenda-Setting Key Individuals Key Institutions Parliament and Public Policy Implementation The shift from Government to Governance (including marketization, and devolution) The increasing role of the private and voluntary sectors in policy delivery Internationalisation and Europeanization of policies and policy making Evaluation, audits and the New Public Management Each chapter is enriched by recent real-life case studies and boxes illustrating key arguments, concepts and empirical developments. Taking into account the 2010 election and beyond, the book addresses current issues, developments and debates. The result is a contemporary and engaging text that will be required reading for all students of British politics, public policy and public administration.