Rethinking Policy And Politics

In recent years the nature of policy and politics has witnessed significant transformations. These have challenged perceptions about the ways in which policy is studied, designed, delivered and appraised. This book –the first in the New Perspectives in Policy and Politics series - brings together world-leading scholars to reflect on the implications of some of these developments for the field of policy studies and the world of practice. First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, the book offers critical reflections on the recent history and future direction of policy studies. It advances the debate by rethinking the ways in which scholars and students of policy studies can (re)engage with pertinent issues in pursuit of both scholarly excellence and practical solutions to global policy problems.

A comprehensive but accessible examination of how elite Chinese politics work covering the period from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.

Political culture in Nunavut has long been characterized by different approaches to political life: traditional Inuit attitudes toward governance, federal aspirations for the political integration of Inuit, and territorial strategies for institutional development. Ailsa Henderson links these features to contemporary political attitudes and behaviour, concluding that a distinctive political culture is emerging in Nunavut. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork and quantitative analysis, this book provides the first systematic, empirical study of political life in Nunavut, offering comprehensive analysis of the evolving nature of aboriginal self-government in the Arctic and shedding crucial light on Inuit–non-Inuit relations.

Rethinking the Politics of Education provides an entirely original rethinking of the modern and contemporary mythology of education. Problematizing the ideas concerning education as fulfilment and redemption, the book critically reviews the association of education with projects of social justice, democracy and improvement. This book argues for a fundamental rethinking of what education is, exploring how things stand with education and educational apparatuses in the contemporary world. It examines relations between educational discourses and their implied ontological stances and offers new ways of thinking that draw on ontological positions from psychoanalytical, philosophical and social discourses. The book contends that education is an essential form of politics and must be understood through a careful examination of its history modes of operation and its basic structures, rather than an idealized version of what it might be. Presenting an original and alternative account of a theoretically informed political ontology of education, the book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students interested in the philosophy of education, the politics of education, educational theory and the sociology of education.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to re-establish the labour movement’s political capacity to exert collective power in ways that foster greater opportunity and equality for working-class people has taken on a greater sense of urgency. Understanding the strategic political possibilities and challenges facing the Canadian labour movement at this important moment in history is the central concern of this second edition of Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada. With new and revised essays by established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this edited collection assesses the past, present and uncertain future of Canadian labour politics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bringing together the traditional electoral-based aspects of labour politics with analyses of newer and rediscovered forms of working-class organization and social movement-influenced strategies, which have become increasingly important in the Canadian labour movement, this book seeks to take stock of these new forms of labour politics, understand their emergence and assess their potential impact on the future of labour in Canada.

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.

The essays collected here, by both eminent and emerging scholars, engage interlocutors from Machiavelli to Arendt. Individually, they contribute compelling readings of important political thinkers and add fresh insights to debates in areas such as environmentalism and human rights. Together, the volume issues a call to think anew about nature, not only as a traditional concept that should be deconstructed or affirmed but also as a site of human political activity and struggle worthy of sustained theoretical attention.

In recent years the nature of policy and politics has witnessed significant transformations. These have challenged perceptions about the ways in which policy is studied, designed, delivered and appraised. This book –the first in the New Perspectives in Policy and Politics series - brings together world-leading scholars to reflect on the implications of some of these developments for the field of policy studies and the world of practice. First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, the book offers critical reflections on the recent history and future direction of policy studies. It advances the debate by rethinking the ways in which scholars and students of policy studies can (re)engage with pertinent issues in pursuit of both scholarly excellence and practical solutions to global policy problems.