Making effective public policies is a difficult task, but considering policymaking as a problem of design analogous to architecture or engineering can assist in that process. This book outlines three vital components of policy design: understanding the causes behind the problem being addressed; identifying means of intervention, including selection and implementation of policy instruments; and evaluation and development of good policy understanding.

Institutional Theory in Political Science provides an in-depth analysis of contemporary institutional theory, an essential tool to understand the world of politics and government.Written by B. Guy Peters, a prominent expert in the field, the book argues that the new institutionalism comprises eight variations on the theme of institutional analysis. Through a series of questions, the author assesses the possibility of a unified theory within institutionalism and its potenti...

From the first, specialization and coordination have presented governments with a conundrum: specialized program might be best for delivering one service to the public, but combining such programs for all public services inevitably produces costly redundancies and inefficiencies. In this long-awaited book, Guy Peters brings his expertise and extensive experience to bear on the problem of administrative and policy coordination. Through theory and four real-world case studies, he explores ho...

B. Guy Peters presents a critique of conventional policy design methods, placing emphasis on the need to formulate interconnecting designs for issues that cross multiple policy areas. He advocates the use of analytic categories for understanding problems rather than functional categories, such as defence and health, to change the perspective of problems and modernise policy design.Whereas previous literature takes a top-down, technocratic approach, this new perspective emphasises t...

Contemporary public administration reflects its historical roots, as well as contemporary ideas about how the public bureaucracy should be organized and function. This book argues that there are administrative traditions that have their roots centuries ago but continue to influence administrative behaviour. Further within Western Europe, North America, and the Antipodes there are four distinctive administrative traditions: Anglo-American, Napoleonic, Germanic, and Scandinavian. These are n...

The articles on which Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are based are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.Design approaches to policy-making have gained increasing popularity among policy makers in recent years.First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this book presents original critical reflections on the value of design approaches and how they relate to the classical idea of public administration as a design science, with a new concluding chapter. Contributors ...

Although merit system selection and management of public personnel is thought of as the standard for good governance, public employees frequently are appointed by political officials rather than being members of a career civil service. In fact, there has been an increase in the level of patronage appointments and politicization of public administration over the past several decades as political leaders attempt to impose their control over the public bureaucracy. Although widespread, patron...

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 ...

Having started out as a new and alternative way of thinking about policy making and governing more broadly, governance is now established as a dominant paradigm in understanding national, subnational and global politics.The long-awaited second edition of this textbook takes into account the significant growth and proliferation of the field in recent years and offers a state of the art introduction to how governance is being theorised and studied today.Written by two leading...

This book assesses a range of contemporary scholarly approaches to public policy. Bringing together leading scholars in policy studies, each chapter addresses a different theoretical approach to policy design and implementation, drawn from the fields of political science, economics and behavioral science. These include the advocacy coalition framework, discursive approaches, institutional analysis, punctuated equilibrium theory, and multiple streams approaches. The book examines how these ...

Written by B. Guy Peters, a leading authority in the field, this comprehensive exploration of the political and policy making roles of public bureaucracies is now available in a fully revised seventh edition, offering extensive, well-documented comparative analysis of the effects of politics on bureaucracy.Updates to this edition include:All new coverage of public administration in Latin America and Africa, with special attention paid to the impact of New Public Manag...

"This book is an excellent choice for anyone looking to bring the complicated world of public policy to their classroom." – Ben Galloway, University of ArkansasNow in its Thirteenth Edition, American Public Policy provides a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the policymaking process, from procedural approaches and policy instruments to in-depth analysis of specific policy issues. Not shying away from the complexity of governmental p...