Research

 

You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.

Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
 

Books: Research

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Evidence-Based Policy and Practice

EPUB and EPDF available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

How can we use evidence to improve deradicalisation and violence prevention outcomes?

Based on work developed during the implementation of the cross-European INDEED project, this is an essential reference book for practitioners, researchers and policy makers. It sets out the three pillars of best evidence-based practice – scientific evidence, professional judgement and consideration of clients’ preferences, values and beliefs. Demonstrating both successful and unsuccessful approaches with case studies from the field, the book offers practical strategies for prevention teams designing and evaluating their programmes.

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The Circles of Analysis
Author:

Traffickers are ever more sophisticated in their recruitment and control of victims, their seizure of new opportunities and ability to adapt to changing social conditions and efforts to prevent the trade in human beings.

This book presents a unique model to assist professionals, researchers and policy makers by providing a new theory that describes and explains how patterns of trafficking and exploitation emerge and are sustained over time.

It critically evaluates the international development of current legal, policy and practice developments in the field of anti-trafficking and argues that these are based on overly simplistic and reductive analyses of the problem. As such they are inadequate in addressing the complex, non-linear and adaptive nature of the phenomenon.

Focusing on factors that influence the relationships and interactions between the victim, offender and environment, this innovative model equips professionals to consider prevention, protection, intervention and disruption activity rather than limiting action to criminal justice-related outcomes.

Each point is illustrated with case study examples from the author’s own practice experience and research and from the work of his colleagues involved in investigating, disrupting and prosecuting traffickers and identifying and supporting victims towards safety and recovery.

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Becoming Enemy Friends
Author:

Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, this book examines the challenges youth and their teachers face in the post-conflict settings of Bougainville and Solomon Islands.

Youth in these places must reconcile with the violent past of their parents’ generation while also learning how to live with people once on opposing ‘sides.’ This book traces how students and their teachers form connections to the past and each other that cut through the forces that might divide them. The findings illustrate novel ways to think about the potential for education to assist post-conflict recovery.

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A New Subfield

How can feminist scholarship advance the field of foreign policy analysis to better understand contemporary foreign policy actions and challenges?

This groundbreaking book provides the state-of-the-art in the study of gender, feminisms and foreign policy. Bringing together contributors from around the world, chapters offer new analyses of foreign policy topics, including diplomacy, trade, defence, environment, peacebuilding, disinformation and development assistance. The book advances new theories, concepts and empirical knowledge for the emerging field of feminist foreign policy analysis.

The book stands as a vital resource for scholars, students and practitioners seeking to understand and respond to the multifaceted gendered dynamics of global politics.

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Analysing Role Selection and Impact through Role Theory

International Organizations (IOs) have been at the forefront of responding to crises in the 21st century, and yet there is little comparative research on how, and how effectively, they have done this.

This book fills this gap by exploring what roles IOs take in response to global crises and to what effect. Bringing together a range of international contributors, the book examines a vast array of international and regional organizations, including the International Organization for Migration, World Health Organization, African Union and European Union. Aiming to answer key questions about IO behaviour, the book investigates these IOs’ responses to pressing issues including the global COVID-19 pandemic, the liberal order and security, and the climate crisis.

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Representing and Ordering the World

Comparative practices are integral to global security politics. The balance of power politics, status competitions and global security governance would be possible without them. Yet, they are rarely treated as the main object of study.

Exploring the varied uses of comparisons, this book addresses three key questions:

• How is comparative knowledge produced?

• How does it become politically relevant?

• How do comparative practices shape security politics?

This book makes a bold, new step in uniting disparate streams of research to show how comparative practices order governance processes and modulate competitive dynamics in world politics.

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The Complex Impact of Peacebuilding Institutions in Post-Conflict Societies
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This book explores how to establish peace in societies recovering from large-scale, armed conflicts by introducing the sustaining peace scale as a continuous measure for peacebuilding success.

Drawing on an extensive data collection of peacebuilding episodes over almost three decades, the author analyses the impact of four peacebuilding practices - international commitment, power-sharing, security sector reform and transitional justice. Having established the framework, the author applies it to the peacebuilding processes in Sierra Leone and South Africa.

An important contribution to the literature on successful peacebuilding, this book will be essential reading for peacebuilding scholars and practitioners.

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Transatlantic Relations and the Return of the Taliban
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The return of the Taliban has undermined EU external action, reversed twenty years of state-building efforts and represents the most significant failure of EU foreign policy to date.

Drawing on over 100 hours of interviews with key actors and an in-depth examination of the EU’s state-building efforts, this book offers unparalleled insights into the complex interplay between transatlantic relations and the resurgence of the Taliban. It critically evaluates the EU's strategies, advocating for a nuanced, historically informed approach to international relations.

Indispensable for academics, policy makers and anyone vested in the intricacies of foreign interventions in an ever-complex global environment.

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US–China Relations in the 21st Century
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The last decade or so has seen US-China relations enter a negative spiral. The evolution of this complex relationship has triggered a fast-growing debate on whether this is a New Cold War.

Building on a deconstruction of concepts such as cold wars and Cold War, this book illustrates how the relationship between the US and China has been a “marriage of convenience” - with both cooperation and competition - for years, but also that we might be close to the end of it. The US and China, it is argued, are locked in a “new type of cold war” where mechanisms of deterrence and competition differ compared to those of the Cold War, and which makes the return of bloc politics possible.

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Critiquing the Past, Plotting the Future

In 2003, the UN adopted a zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers and aid workers. The policy arrived amid a series of scandals revealing sexual misconduct perpetrated against the very people peacekeeping and humanitarian missions were meant to protect.

This edited collection, including contributions from academics and practitioners, highlights the challenges of preventing and responding to abuse in peacekeeping and aid work, and the unintended consequences of current approaches. It lays bare the structures of power, coloniality and racism that underpin abuse and hinder accountability while charting a path for future action.

This eye-opening book will appeal to academics and students of the politics and practice of peacekeeping and humanitarianism, and to practitioners, policy makers and those working within the field.

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