How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy

How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy PDF Author: Daniel Béland
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781108634700
Category : Policy sciences
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
This Element provides a critical review of existing literature on the role of ideas and institutions in the politics of public policy with the aim of contributing to the study of the politics of public policy. Because most policy scholars deal with the role of ideas or institutions in their research, such a critical review should help them improve their knowledge of crucial analytical issues in policy and political analysis. The following discussion brings together insights from both the policy studies literature and new institutionalism in sociology and political science, and stresses the explanatory role of ideas and institutions.

How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy

How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy PDF Author: Daniel Béland
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781108634700
Category : Policy sciences
Languages : en
Pages : 62

Get Book

Book Description
This Element provides a critical review of existing literature on the role of ideas and institutions in the politics of public policy with the aim of contributing to the study of the politics of public policy. Because most policy scholars deal with the role of ideas or institutions in their research, such a critical review should help them improve their knowledge of crucial analytical issues in policy and political analysis. The following discussion brings together insights from both the policy studies literature and new institutionalism in sociology and political science, and stresses the explanatory role of ideas and institutions.

Policy Feedback

Policy Feedback PDF Author: Daniel Béland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108945414
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Although the idea that existing policies can have major effects on politics and policy development is hardly new, the last three decades witnessed a major expansion of policy feedback scholarship, which focuses on the mechanisms through which existing policies shape politics and policy development. Starting with a discussion of the origins of the concept of policy feedback, this element explores early and more recent contributions of the policy feedback literature to clarify the meaning of this concept and its contribution to both political science and policy studies. After exploring the rapidly expanding scholarship on policy feedback and mass politics, this element also puts forward new research agendas that stress several ways forward, including the need to explain both institutional and policy continuity and change. Finally, the element discusses the practical implications of policy feedback research through a discussion of its potential impact on policy design. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Ideas and Foreign Policy

Ideas and Foreign Policy PDF Author: Judith Goldstein
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501724991
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Do people's beliefs help to explain foreign policy decisions, or is political activity better understood as the self-interested behavior of key actors? The collaborative effort of a group of distinguished scholars, this volume breaks new ground in demonstrating how ideas can shape policy, even when actors are motivated by rational self-interest. After an introduction outlining a new framework for approaching the role of ideas in foreign policy making, well-crafted case studies test the approach. The function of ideas as "road maps" that reduce uncertainty is examined in chapters on human rights, decolonialization, the creation of socialist economies in China and Eastern Europe, and the postwar Anglo-American economic settlement. Discussions of parliamentary ideas in seventeenth-century England and of the Single European Act illustrate the role of ideas in resolving problems of coordination. The process by which ideas are institutionalized is further explored in chapters on the Peace of Westphalia and on German and Japanese efforts to cope with contemporary terrorism.

Rethinking Political Institutions

Rethinking Political Institutions PDF Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814740561
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Institutions shape every dimension of politics. This volume collects original essays on how such institutions are formed, operated, and changed, both in theory and in practice. Ranging across formal institutions of government such as legislatures, courts, and bureaucracies and intermediary institutions such as labor unions and party systems, the contributors show how these instruments of control give shape to the state, articulate its relationships, and express its legitimacy. Rethinking Political Institutions captures the state of the art in the study of the art of the state. Drawing on some of the leading scholars in the field, this volume includes essays on issues of social power, public policy and programs, judicial review, and cross-national institutions. Rethinking Political Institutions is an essential addition to the debate on the significance of political institutions, in light of democracy, social change and power. Contributors: Elisabeth S. Clemens, Jon Elster, John Ferejohn, Terry M. Moe, Claus Offe, Paul Pierson, Ulrich K. Preuss, Rogers M. Smith, Kathleen Thelen, Mark Tushnet, R. Kent Weaver, Margaret Weir, Keith E. Whittington

Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research

Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research PDF Author: Daniel Beland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199830879
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
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.

Public Policy in the United States

Public Policy in the United States PDF Author: Rushefsky
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 0765628503
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
This widely respected book offers a unique dualistic view of the policy process. First, it introduces readers to the American approach to public policy making as it has been shaped by our political institutions, changing circumstances, and ideology. Second, it informs readers concisely and even-handedly about U.S. policies in eight major policy realms, with well selected illustrations, case studies, and study questions. In addition to providing analytical tools and empirical information, the book imparts an appreciation of the widely shared but often competing values that must be balanced and rebalanced in the ongoing policy-making process, affecting issues of the highest concern to the American public. For this new edition, all of the policy chapters, especially those on economic policy, foreign policy, the environment, and education, have been very substantially revised and updated.

Ideas, Political Power, and Public Policy

Ideas, Political Power, and Public Policy PDF Author: Daniel Beland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315517795
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Through the last couple of decades, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have increasingly emphasized the importance of political ideas in understanding processes of change and stability in politics and public policy. Yet, surprisingly, relatively little has been done to more clearly and stringently conceptualize the relationship between political power and the role of ideas in public policy and political development. This volume addresses this major lacuna in the policy and political studies literature by bringing some of best scholars in the field, who each write about the relationship between ideas and power in politics and public policy. The contributions frame the concept of ideational power and explore ways in which ideas shape power relations, across a number of distinct countries and policy areas. The topics covered include austerity, coalition building, monetary policy, social policy, tax policy, and macroeconomic indicators. The volume features a short introduction written by the co-editors, and a final, recapitulative essay prepared by Mark Blyth, one of the most cited scholars in the field. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy

How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy PDF Author: Daniel Béland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108721837
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
This Element provides a critical review of existing literature on the role of ideas and institutions in the politics of public policy with the aim of contributing to the study of the politics of public policy. Because most policy scholars deal with the role of ideas or institutions in their research, such a critical review should help them improve their knowledge of crucial analytical issues in policy and political analysis. The following discussion brings together insights from both the policy studies literature and new institutionalism in sociology and political science, and stresses the explanatory role of ideas and institutions.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy

The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy PDF Author: Michael Moran
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191563382
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1000

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science is a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. Each volume focuses on a particular part of the discipline, with volumes on Public Policy, Political Theory, Political Economy, Contextual Political Analysis, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Law and Politics, Political Behavior, Political Institutions, and Political Methodology. The project as a whole is under the General Editorship of Robert E. Goodin, with each volume being edited by a distinguished international group of specialists in their respective fields. The books set out not just to report on the discipline, but to shape it. The series will be an indispensable point of reference for anyone working in political science and adjacent disciplines. Public policy is the business end of political science. It is where theory meets practice in the pursuit of the public good. Political scientists approach public policy in myriad ways. Some approach the policy process descriptively, asking how the need for public intervention comes to be perceived, a policy response formulated, enacted, implemented, and, all too often, subverted, perverted, altered, or abandoned. Others approach public policy more prescriptively, offering politically-informed suggestions for how normatively valued goals can and should be pursued, either through particular policies or through alternative processes for making policy. Some offer their advice from the Olympian heights of detached academic observers, others as 'engaged scholars' cum advocates, while still others seek to instil more reflective attitudes among policy practitioners themselves toward their own practices. The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy mines all these traditions, using an innovative structure that responds to the very latest scholarship. Its chapters touch upon institutional and historical sources and analytical methods, how policy is made, how it is evaluated and how it is constrained. In these ways, the Handbook shows how the combined wisdom of political science as a whole can be brought to bear on political attempts to improve the human condition.

Policy Problems and Policy Design

Policy Problems and Policy Design PDF Author: B. Guy Peters
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1786431351
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Public policy can be considered a design science. It involves identifying relevant problems, selecting instruments to address the problem, developing institutions for managing the intervention, and creating means of assessing the design. Policy design has become an increasingly challenging task, given the emergence of numerous ‘wicked’ and complex problems. Much of policy design has adopted a technocratic and engineering approach, but there is an emerging literature that builds on a more collaborative and prospective approach to design. This book will discuss these issues in policy design and present alternative approaches to design.