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
With trust in parliament and politicians at a seriously low level, there is an increasing need to rebuild our public institutions. This innovative book questions what parliament should be in the 21st century and how it can be reimagined. It shows how a new democratic parliamentary space can be created to better represent and engage with citizens; to furnish a safe, inclusive and fair working environment for all staff and members; and to secure greater responsiveness and accountability of government.
Bringing together a vibrant group of parliamentary scholars and practitioners, it proposes an institutional world of possibilities beyond the present Westminster village, to help restore faith in democracy.
Defying the current pessimistic narrative, this book challenges the prevailing assumptions that the political Left is spent, hopeful ideological discourse has collapsed and social media has corroded public debates about politics.
Instead, the book argues that ideological activism remains vibrant on the Left, but there is currently no clear way of recognizing and analysing this phenomenon. The book fills this gap by first defining what political social media is and then by taking a morphological approach to investigating political ideologies and revealing the ways in which interconnected concepts are arranged. It concludes by coining the term ‘proto-ideologies’ to approach the construction of concepts that generate ideologies in the making.
Within International Relations scholarship, the nature of international organizations and their relationship with each other and nation-states has been widely contested. This edited volume brings together a team of experts to shed new light on inter-organizational relations in world politics.
The book covers areas from the rule of law and international security to business and sport. Through its analysis, it demonstrates that, just as inter-organizations relations themselves are diverse and complex, research on this topic should also be pluralistic in order to draw new and valuable results and insights.
This book addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe.
Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture.
Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.
Analyses of humour often focus primarily on the Global North, with little consideration for examples and practices from elsewhere. This book provides a vital contribution to humour theory by developing a Global South perspective.
Taking a wide-ranging view across the whole of the continent, the book examines the relationship between humour and politics in Africa. It considers the context of the production and reception of humour in African contexts and argues that humour is more than just symbolic. Moving beyond the idea of humour as a mode of resistance, the book investigates the ‘political work’ that humour does and explores the complex entanglements in which the politics, practices and performances of humour are located.
This book explores civil-military relations in Asia. With chapters on individual countries in the region, it provides a comprehensive account of the range of contemporary Asian practices under conditions of abridged democracy, soft authoritarianism or complete totalitarianism.
Through its analysis, the book argues that civil-military relations in Asia ought to be examined under the concept of ‘Asian military evolutions.’ It demonstrates that while Asian militaries have tried to incorporate standard, western-derived frameworks of civil-military relations, it has been necessary to adapt such frameworks to suit local circumstances. The book reveals how this has in turn led to creative fusions and novel changes in making civil-military relations an asset to furthering national security objectives.
This book reviews the formative years of the United Nations (UN) under its first Secretary-General Trygve Lie.
This welcome appraisal shows how the foundations for an expanded secretary-general role were laid during this period, and that Lie’s contribution was greater than has later been acknowledged. The interplay of crisis decision-making, institutional constraints and the individuals involved thus built the foundations for the UN organization we know today.
Addressing important wider questions of IGO creation, governance and autonomy, this is an incisive account of how the UN moved from paper to practice under Lie.
Young people are often at the forefront of democratic activism, whether self-organised or supported by youth workers and community development professionals. Focusing on youth activism for greater equality, liberty and mutual care – radical democracy – this timely collection explores the movement’s impacts on community organisations and workers. Essays from the Global North and Global South cover the Black Lives Matter movement, environmental activism and the struggles of refugees.
At a time of huge global challenges, youth participation is a dynamic lens through which all community development scholars and participants can rethink their approaches.
India will soon be the world’s most populated country and its political development will shape the world of the 21st century. Yet Hindu Nationalism – at the helm of contemporary Indian politics – is not well understood outside of India, and its links to the global neoliberal trajectory have not been much explored.
This important book shows for the first time why it is education, not a failed political system, that led to the rise of Modi and the right-wing nationalist ideology of Hindutva. It provides in depth insight into contemporary Indian politics and wider societal acceptance of India’s Hindu nationalist trajectory, as well as examining the role of class.
The first five years of Modi rule failed to bring about the development that had been promised and have seen India’s rapid change from a largely inclusive society to one where minorities are denied their basic rights.
This book traces the economic ideology of the UK Labour Party from its origins to the current day. Through its analysis, the book emphasises key crises, including the 1926 general strike, the 1931 Great Depression, the 1979 Winter of Discontent and the 2007 economic crisis.
In analysing this history, the ideology of the Labour Party is examined through four core themes:
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the party’s definition of socialism;
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the role of the state in economic decision making;
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the party’s understanding of inequalities;
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its relationship with external groups, such as the Fabian Society and the trade union movement.
The result is a systematic exploration of the drivers and key ideas behind the Labour Party’s economic ideology. In demonstrating how crises have affected the party’s economic policy, the book presents a historical analysis of the party’s evolution since its formation and offers insights into how future changes may occur.
