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 of over 1500 titles.
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
This book explores the relationship between the state and war within the context of seismic technological change.
As we experience a fourth industrial revolution, technology already exerts a huge impact on the character of war and military strategies in the form of drones and other types of ‘remote’ warfare. However, technological developments are not confined to the defence sector, and the diffusion of military technology inevitably also affects the wider economy and society.
This book investigates these possible developments and speculates on their ramifications for the future. Through its analysis, the book questions what will happen to war and the state and whether we will reach a point where war leads to the unmaking of the state itself.
Carrie Manning’s illuminating book examines how policies to limit taxation at state and local levels in the U.S. have direct and lasting consequences for equity, accountability, and ultimately for democracy.
Tax structures embed, and reproduce, an implicit social contract between government and citizens, creating path-dependent outcomes that produce unintended consequences that are rarely traced back to state and local revenue models. This book combines historical American political development with the study of state formation. It provides a clear-eyed investigation into the past, present, and future of the social contract between America’s local governments and citizens.
In this challenging and original study, Wistow positions social policy within political economy and social contract debates.
Focusing on individual, intergenerational and societal outcomes related to health, place and social mobility in England, he draws on empirical evidence to show how the social contract produces longstanding, highly patterned and inequitable consequences in these areas. Globalisation and the political economy simultaneously contribute to the extent and nature of social problems and to social policy’s capacity to address them effectively.
Applying social contract theory, this book shows that society needs to take ownership of the outcomes it produces and critically interrogates the individualism inherent within the political economy.
