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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A Political Essay

In this first English-language edition of a sole-authored book from Frédéric Ramel, benevolence is defined as a moral principle which promotes temperance and attention to vulnerability. Ramel unpacks this concept, analyses its received meanings in different contexts and spells out its practical and ethical implications in detail.

In preparing this work for an English-speaking readership, the author undertook extensive revisions and included two additional chapters. It also includes a foreword from Chris Brown, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The French edition was published as La Bienveillance Dans Les Relations Internationales.

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A Troubled Membership and Its Legacy

Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe (CoE) after 26 years following the invasion of Ukraine.

This timely and in-depth analysis explores Russia's tumultuous relationship with the CoE/ECHR institutions. It examines Russia’s membership record and the profound impacts of its expulsion for Europe’s human rights system. The authors provide valuable insights for future policy to safeguard the integrity of international human rights institutions.

The book fills an important gap in legal scholarship by exploring the legality and legitimacy of its membership and expulsion, and represents a key reference in understanding the challenge of protecting human rights in the face of rising authoritarianism.

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Are Social Media Campaigns Really Making Laws Better for Women and Girls?

With over five billion internet users globally, it is crucial to understand social media activism and legal change for women and girls.

This insightful book examines the impact of international Twitter (now X) campaigns on domestic laws affecting women and girls. Exploring the complexities of legal change for women and girls across seven countries from Latin America to Middle East and Africa, the book offers empirical insights into the effectiveness of hashtag advocacy and sheds light on the role of social media in shaping different outcomes.

This is a key resource for understanding the dynamics driving social media activism and its potential impact on the rights of women and girls worldwide.

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Inertia, Emergence and Transformation in Swedish Cities

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Pathways to Sustainable Welfare critically examines how cities can address the dual challenges of climate change and sustainability while ensuring the welfare of their populations.

Focused on three Swedish cities, it explores the integration of environmental and welfare concerns in local policies, urban movements and public opinions. Based on theories of inertia, emergence and transformation, it identifies factors driving or obstructing sustainable welfare advancements.

This book is a crucial resource for scholars interested in sustainable transformation, urban governance and social policy. It offers frameworks and empirical evidence relevant to academics, policymakers and practitioners seeking to understand and engage in urban sustainable welfare development.

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Exclusion Despite Inclusion
Author:

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

Civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations have increased at the United Nations (UN) since the 1990s. Yet few studies discuss the notion of inclusion and what it entails in intergovernmental negotiations.

This book delves into the UN’s relationship with CSOs, exploring who participates in negotiations and how their input is integrated into ratified documents. Drawing on ethnographic research, the author uncovers the complexities of accreditation, participation, and the interpretation of CSOs’ contributions. Offering a sociological analysis, she highlights the increased exclusion of CSOs despite their apparent inclusion in institutions of global governance unbounded to public accountability.

Leah R. Kimber examines the practices of exclusion CSOs are subjected to in UN negotiations by opening the machinery of intergovernmental negotiations in light of the UN’s future and legitimacy.

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Troubling Testimonio in Post-war Peru

This book traces the process of producing testimonio with the children of Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), an insurgent group during Peru’s internal war (1980-2000). It examines how the group navigates the postwar struggles over memory while dealing with “the children of terrorists” stigma.

Drawing from a cycles of inquiry approach, the book theorises three movements for memory work: a realist presentation of testimonial narratives, a ‘politics of memory’ engaging with the conditions of production, and a ‘poetics of memory’ that troubles memory, voice, and representation for qualitative inquiry in postwar contexts.

Challenging the notion of war-torn countries as pure devastation, the author invites readers to see them as sites of knowledge and creativity with much to offer for education, peace studies, and social justice research.

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Focusing on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) screening, this book provides an in-depth analysis of how European states’ economic interactions with China have become a security issue.

Based on 100 interviews with scholars, journalists, policy makers, and politicians from across Europe, the book underscores the importance of the policy making process that led to the adoption of investment screening in European nations. It adopts the theory of securitization to analyse the passage of the status of Chinese FDI from economy to security. In doing so, it shows how the shifting view of Europeans is attributed to changes such as China’s growing economic presence, the persistence of non-market practices, the loss of competitiveness, and the use of economic statecraft.

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Reclaiming the Margins
Editors: and

Since the 2010s, populism and illiberal politics have been on the rise. Demagogue leaders preach simplified rhetoric to vilify the powerless, polarising city and rural areas and sparking such shocking events as the US insurrection on 6th January 2021.

This interdisciplinary book argues for a politics of representativity and accountability to help transform people’s experiences, showing that where they live matters and, therefore, so do they.

This book demonstrates how place-based politics can draw on, and benefit from, collective local knowledge, rather than deferring to a nameless central government. Analysing democratic theory and using rich case studies, from protest movements to citizens’ assemblies it shows how it can return a sense of control to the people.

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Chinese World Ordering before the West
Author:

A rich and enlightening study of Chinese international relations, this book shows how engaging China’s history can contribute to our search for global foundations of international thought. It examines international thought in ancient China, Chinese international relations in deep world history, and the evolution of contemporary Chinese academic IR as intellectual history.

Offering a distinctive English School perspective, this volume is a call to put studies of Chinese international relations in their proper historical context, arguing that such an approach leads to a better understanding of Chinese ideas and statecraft and contributes to a fruitful pursuit of IR knowledge production in the construction of global IR.

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Why the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Matters and How to Save It
Author:

In this book, a former US Department of State senior arms control official critically analyses two pivotal nuclear arms control treaties: the established Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the rising Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The book offers a concise and critical analysis of the two, illuminating both their strengths and shortcomings. The author acknowledges the idealistic goal of the TPNW but argues that its immediate abolitionist stance lacks a roadmap for achievement. Instead, the book advocates realistic progress within the NPT framework. It provides twelve key negotiation topics for fostering meaningful dialogue among nuclear-weapon states, while emphasizing the urgency of concrete action in a world facing growing nuclear threats.

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