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
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.
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.
Written by a leading expert in the field, this book analyzes the complex relations between the European Union (EU) as a regional organization and the United Nations (UN) as an international, global governance institution.
The book explores how collaboration between the EU and the UN has evolved and how the two entities collaborate both structurally and in day-to-day work. It shows how the EU acts within institutions such as the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and how UN funds and entities, such as UNHRC, UNICEF or UN Women, interact with the EU and its member states.
Through its analysis the book demonstrates how, despite recent criticism, patterns of multilateralism and cooperation between regional and international institutions can be central to stable patterns of rules-based regional and global governance.
This volume analyses the impact of globalization on civil service systems across the Middle East and North Africa.
A collaboration between practitioners and academic public policy experts, it presents an analytical model to assess how globalization influences civil servants, illustrated by case studies of countries where there has been an increased engagement with international actors. It demonstrates how this increased interaction has altered the position of civil servants and traces the shifting patterns of power and accountability between civil servants, politicians and other actors.
It is an original and important addition to debate about globalization’s role in transnational public administration and governance.
Liberal democracies are under increasing pressure. Growing discontent about inequality, lack of political participation and identity have rekindled populism and a shift away from liberal values.
This book argues that liberalism’s reliance on a utilitarian policy framework has resulted in increased concentrations of power, restricting freedom and equality. It examines five key areas of public policy: monetary policy, private property and liability, the structure of the state, product markets and labour markets.
Drawing on the German ordoliberal tradition and its founding principle of the dispersal of power, the book proposes an alternative public policy framework. In doing so, it offers a practical pathway to realign policy making with liberal ideas.
This timely analysis of security in Europe identifies the factors that enable and hinder the creation of networks of defence cooperation across the continent.
Going beyond regional arrangements established by NATO and the European Union, the book considers the sub-regional level by focusing on bilateral and minilateral defence collaborations. It provides a new conceptual framework to assess the rationales, leadership and the complex dynamics within these alliances, and highlights how they shape and interact with NATO and EU initiatives.
In this enlightening analysis, Julia Gurol unpicks the complex security relations between the European Union (EU) and China.
She investigates the principles, rationales and shifting dynamics of collaboration on a range of security issues, and their consequences for China, the EU and other regions. She pays particular attention to EU–China relations in the realm of anti-terrorism, anti-piracy and energy security, and disentangles their cooperation efforts in the context of increasing political and economic tensions.
Systematic and accessible, this is an essential guide to the past, present and future of one of the world’s most important, yet most complicated, security relationships.
International Organizations (IOs) are vital institutions in world politics in which cross-border issues can be discussed and global problems managed.
This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in IO activities. It draws attention to the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops an original model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide.
Drawing on extensive qualitative data, including more than 80 interviews conducted for this book, the authors find that the strategies which both IOs and small states adopt to balance their respective dilemmas can explain both continuity and change in their interactions with institutions ranging from UN agencies to the World Trade Organization.
What does it mean to be secure in the 21st century?
Mark Beeson argues that some of the most influential ideas about national and even global security reflect untenable, anachronistic strategic views that are simply no longer appropriate for contemporary international circumstances.
At a time when climate change poses an existential threat to the continuation of life itself, Beeson argues that there is an urgent need to rethink security priorities while we still can. Providing an explanation of the failures and dangers of the conventional wisdom, he outlines the case for a new approach that takes issues like environmental and human security seriously.
This agenda-setting book shows how freedom of movement has made the integration of Europe’s labour markets a contentious issue, for example in the aftermath of the eurocrisis, where workers had to make great sacrifices to enable the currency area to function.
It argues that the process of market integration in Europe has undermined the power and influence of European workers and generated significant human costs. In starting from the position of labour, this book offers an alternative approach which balances the needs of justice and efficiency.
With appeal across a wide range of readers interested in economic integration, it provides lessons for policymakers in how to integrate Europe’s member states to better protect workers and citizens.
