The word 'governance' is ubiquitous. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund make loans conditional on 'good governance'. Climate change and avian flu appear as issues of 'global governance'. The European Union issues a White Paper on 'Governance'. The U.S. Forest Service calls for 'collaborative governance'. What accounts for the pervasive use of the term 'governance' and to what does it refer? It has a bewildering set of answers. The word 'governance' is used in a variety of c...

How do we arrange our collective affairs? Why do we live together in the ways we do? How ought we to live together? All humans think about the world they live in, its history and future, and the ideals by which they want to live in relation to others. How we think today decisively influences the world of tomorrow. This encyclopedia attempts to bring greater clarity and understanding to political debate.Drawing together a team of international scholars, the Encyclopedia of P...

Histories of Postmodernism reexamines the history of the constellation of ideas and thinkers associated with postmodernism. The increasingly dominant historical narrative depicts a relatively smooth development of ideas from Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, through a range of French theorists, most notably Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, to contemporary American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Edward Said, and Judith Butler. Histories of Postmodernism challe...

′A comprehensive, multidisciplinary examination of the concepts embodied in governance and their wide-ranging applications and implications. An important read and reference for students and academics in the social sciences, particularly those engaged in public policy studies′ - Professor Carolyn J. Heinrich, University of Wisconsin-Madison′An authoritative short survey for which students and teachers alike will be profoundly grateful′ - Professor Rod Rhodes, University ...

This Element denaturalises political science, stressing the contestability and contingency of ideas, traditions, subfields, and even the discipline itself. The history of political science is less one of scholars testing and improving theories by reference to data than of their appropriating and transforming ideas, often obscuring or obliterating former meanings, to serve new purposes in shifting political contexts. Political science arose in the late nineteenth century as part of a wider ...

Networks have become a prominent template for public service governance. Often seen as an alternative to hierarchies and contracts, networks cross institutionalized organizational or sectoral boundaries to promote collaboration and the sharing of resources when addressing complex problems. Nowhere is this more the case than in the field of health services modernization and improvement.Comprising unique empirical contributions, drawn primarily from the experience of the UK National ...

Since 1945 the United Kingdom has changed from a polity that was overwhelmingly white, ethnically British, and Christian to one constituted by creeds, cultures, and communities drawn from all over the globe. The term ‘multiculturalism’ evokes these demographic changes, the policies and laws that arose as a result, and connected public debates. Political and public support for multiculturalism has been called into question in the new millennium, with British multiculturalism—and Britain its...

Conforming neither to the hierarchical and bureaucratic organization of the European nation-state nor the anarchical structure of international organizations, the European Union (EU) and its predecessors provide an exemplary site for developing a decentred approach to the study of governance.The book offers an analysis of the formation and transformation of the EU as an example of governance above the nation-state and is framed by the recognition that the construction of the EU has...

In this book Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely set out to make the most comprehensive case yet for an 'interpretive' or hermeneutic approach to the social sciences. Interpretive approaches are a major growth area in the social sciences today. This is because they offer a full-blown alternative to the behavioralism, institutionalism, rational choice, and other quasi-scientific approaches that dominate the study of human behavior. In addition to presenting a systematic case for interpretivism and...

Interpretive political science focuses on the meanings that shape actions and institutions, and the ways in which they do so. This Handbook explores the implications of interpretive theory for the study of politics. It provides the first definitive survey of the field edited by two of its pioneers. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the Handbook’s 32 chapters are split into five parts which explore:the contrast between interpretive...

This wide-ranging and original study reveals how prevalent modernism has become in the social sciences. With contributions from a number of leading international scholars, Modernism and the Social Sciences explores the rise and nature of modernist tropes and approaches within social sciences such as economics, econometrics, behaviourism, sociology, administrative science, linguistics, history and anthropology. The essays demonstrate how the social sciences turned away from the developmenta...

Decentring Urban Governance seeks to rethink governance not as a particular state formation, but as the diverse policies emerging associated with the impact of modernist social science on policy making, considering the diverse meanings that inspire governing practices across time, space, and policy sectors in urban context.Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book goes beyond neoliberalism, and is interested in other webs of meaning through which actors encou...