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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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.
This book traces the history of nurseries in the UK, the types and levels of provision, the long-standing splits between welfare care and public education, and community-based attempts to improve the situation. It charts the shifts in public attitudes towards these various forms of childcare and argues that the privatization of childcare, as for many other privatized services, has been a profound mistake that has entrenched inequality and resulted in poor-quality, yet very costly, services for children.
The book recognizes the considerable difficulties in overhauling the way in which nursery education and care are delivered and paid for, but makes practical suggestions about the ways forward. These include more support for flexible state nursery education, a ban on the offshore privatized nursery companies that increasingly dominate nursery ownership, a substantial overhaul of Ofsted’s remit, and involvement of the many unqualified care workers at the fringes of nursery provision.
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.
Based on the findings of a major research project, this book investigates how European societies confront their troubled pasts today.
In particular, the text explores what kinds of measures can be taken and which strategies endorsed to facilitate the process of overcoming difficult historic legacies in seven European states, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Cyprus and Poland. The book is written by an international team of experts and examines strategies and actions in both policy-making and civil society of European countries, as well as throughout the EU as a collective.
Inequality is an ever-present danger in our society. This important book addresses the crucial nexus between the lived experience of inequality and how it shapes political responses.
With contributors from the UK and Continental Europe, the book compiles case studies with theoretically informed discussions of the relationship between affective polarisation, social inequality and the fall-out from Brexit and COVID-19. Using a broad concept of social inequality, the book incorporates aspects of economy and society, language and emotion culture as well as interviews and film in historical and transnational perspective.
The contributors offer a powerful examination of the ways in which the politics of the UK and the lived experiences of its residents have been reframed in the first decades of the 21st century.
What role does dialogue play in peacebuilding? How can community-based activities contribute to broader peace processes? What can participatory research methods add to local efforts to build peace?
In this book the authors examine these questions through their work with two different Colombian communities who have pursued dialogue amidst ongoing violence, environmental injustice and socio-economic challenges. By reflecting on what people in these contrasting places have achieved through participatory peacebuilding, the authors explore different forms of local agency, the prospects for non-extractive academic engagement, and practical and theoretical lessons for participating in peace in other conflict-affected settings.
Taking a unique and critical approach to the study of Public Law, this book explores the main topics in UK Public Law from a range of underexplored perspectives and amplifies the voices of scholars who are underrepresented in the field. As such, it represents a much-needed complement to traditional textbooks in Public Law.
Including insights from a diverse list of contributors, the book:
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Enriches students’ understanding of the dynamics that emerge within public law;
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Highlights the impact of historical and societal inequities on public law norms;
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Demonstrates the ways in which those norms may impact minorities and perpetuate inequalities.
With most chapters written by underrepresented or minoritised persons in the field, this text offers students a critical, rich, and insightful approach to public law.
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.
Negative emotions, including anger, fear and shame, have been at the heart of recent political events, such as the protests against COVID-19 restrictions. These negative emotions can be politically destructive, leading people to act rashly without due concern for democratic principles. However, they can also accurately signal wrongdoing and motivate acts to redress the situation, as displayed in the Black Lives Matter and climate change movements.
This volume brings together perspectives from political science and philosophy to shed new light on the political faces of negative emotions. Engaging with real-world political events from Europe, the US and Africa, contributors critically evaluate much-discussed emotions, such as anger and fear, but also less prominent ones, such as frustration and discomfort.
