Public Policy

This enlightening book challenges conventional distinctions between the family and civil society as it uncovers how civic values and practices are inherited and fostered within the home.

This book explores how the uncertainties of the 21st century present existential challenges to civil society. Presenting original empirical findings, it highlights transferable lessons that will inform policy and practice in today’s age of uncertainty.

Challenging conventional thinking, leading academics explore how individuals’ relationships with civil society change over time as different lifecourse events and stages trigger and hinder civic engagement and political participation, and highlight the implications for those promoting greater civic and political engagement.

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY licence.. Informed by practical action, lived experience and international research, this book shines new light on the theory and reality of co-creation, highlighting the possibilities and potential in a range of contexts through practical service dilemmas and lived experience.

This unique book explores the growing practice of participatory democracy and uses comparative analysis of cases in the UK, the Netherlands and Italy to show how policy makers, practitioners, students and academics can communicate more effectively.

This book examines the policy approaches of Conservative governments since 2015 in key social policy areas including education, health, housing, employment, children and young people and more.

Drawing on extensive survey data and written accounts of citizen engagement, this pioneering book charts change and continuity in voluntary activity since 1981. Part of the Third Sector Research Series.

Curating rigorous academic, policy and practice-based research, this book explores the response and adaptation of the UK voluntary sector to the COVID-19 pandemic and considers what can be learned to maximise its contribution in the event of future crises.

In this engaging and original book, John Clarke is in conversation with twelve leading individual scholars about the dynamics of critical thinking in the social sciences, and he reflects on the necessity of thinking collaboratively and dialogically.

Stuart Rees exposes politicians’ fascination with cruelty in their deliberations about policies. Through empirical analysis, human stories and poetic commentary, he identifies non-destructive exercise of power, courageous public action and compelling humanitarian alternatives as the key to achieving a future in which dignity and equality flourish.

This illuminating study sets out why policy makers need to take culture seriously, how culture and values shape the political system and presents essential, practical recommendations for what governments should do differently.