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- Author or Editor: Catherine Durose x
This important book is a response to crises of public policy. Offering an original contribution to a growing debate, the authors argue that traditional technocratic ways of designing policy are inadequate to cope with increasingly complex challenges, and suggest co-production as a more democratic alternative. Drawing on 12 compelling international contributions from practitioners, policy makers, activists and actively engaged academics, ideas of power are used to explore how genuine democratic involvement in the policy process from those outside the elites of politics can shape society for the better. The authors present insights on why and how to generate change in policy processes, arguing for increased experimentation in policy design. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and students in public policy, public administration, sociology and politics.
The relationship between citizens and local decision makers is a long standing policy pre-occupation and has often been the subject of debate by politicians across parties. Recent governments have sought to empower, activate and give responsibility to some citizens, while other groups have been abandoned or ignored.
Drawing on extensive up-to-date empirical work by leading researchers in the field, “Changing local governance, changing citizens” aims to explain what debates about local governance mean for local people. Questions addressed include: what new demands are being made on citizens and why? Which citizens are affected and how have they responded? What difference do changing forms of local governance make to people’s lives? The book explores governance and citizenship in relation to multiculturalism, economic migration, community cohesion, housing markets, neighbourhoods, faith organisations, behaviour change and e-democracy in order to establish a differentiated, contemporary view of the ways that citizens are constituted at the local level today.
“Changing local governance, changing citizens” provides a pertinent and robustly empirical contribution to current debates amongst policy makers, academics, practitioners and local communities about how to respond to this changing policy framework. It will be of interest to post-graduate students and academic researchers in politics, public and social policy, sociology, local government and urban studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners.
‘Neighbourhood’ was a key political and administrative concept for the New Labour administration and was the spatial focus for a proliferation of initiatives in the early period. Yet since 2006, the appeal and use of ‘neighbourhood’ have waned as evidence of the impact of neighbourhood interventions over the last decade has emerged, along with active re-scaling of policy for regeneration and economic development. This article seeks to draw out why ‘neighbourhood’ was important to the New Labour project, to examine why and how this changed over the course of the New Labour administration, and to explore new agendas emerging in policy for sub-national governance.
Chapter One develops heuristics to encourage lateral thinking about policy design. By using heuristics, we are able to both understand how policy design works, but also to generate alternative designs. The chapters turns to focus on power, often a hidden struggle in policy design, but which fundamentally informs and shapes the vision–the valued outcomes pursued–and the grammar–the activities used in this pursuit. To bring this hidden element out into the debate, the heuristic is developed further by setting out the contrasting ways in which power is interpreted in policy design. Viewing power as a zero sum resource held by one body over another or as positive-sum resource generated in relationships between people, which can be used in a non-coercive way for mutual benefit, lets us consider the implications which differing interpretations of power have for policy design. These different interpretations are then used to inform a discussion on the feasibility and desirability of alternative policy designs.
Theories of policy making offer competing conceptualisations of conventional policy design. The first gives us a sense of a reassuringly logical, thoughtful and intelligent world inhabited by elites who can best look after citizens’ interests. The second draws back the curtain to reveal a harsh, contingent world of hard-fought and brutish policy competition between sets of unlikely and unpredictable allies in a chance world where events align in unforeseen combinations to favour one idea over another. The former seems unrealistic; the latter seems undesirable. Choices appear to be cold rigidity or bloody chaos. Neither seems well suited to addressing complex seemingly intractable global public policy challenges. Chapter Two develops a heuristic to understand what characterises conventional policy design, what is going wrong.
Chapter Three explores the contrast to conventional policy design, developing a heuristic to consider co-production as a radical alternative. Co-production has become a ubiquitous term in contemporary policy, which builds on a rich, diverse and contested lineage of theory and experimentation. Advocating co-production rests on the recognition that there are complex problems that cannot be solved without governments, but that governments alone cannot solve. This chapter sets outs a heuristic which considers the vision–the valued outcomes pursued in co-production–and the grammar–the activities used in this pursuit. Whilst doing so, there is a recognition that co-production will not occur simply through espousing its theoretical benefits and considering its design. Grounded attempts to generate, exemplify and pre-figure co-productive policy design are therefore useful in meeting this daunting challenge.
A combination of theory and practice are used in Chapter Four to challenge, deepen and develop our theorising. The chapter discusses some of the tough questions and dilemmas raised by the conversation between the opening chapters and the contributions from practitioners, policy-makers, activists and engaged scholars. The chapter reinforces the need for change in conventional policy design, but what is clearly articulated is the growing questioning of the limitations, appropriateness and sustainability of the conventional policy process from in and outside. Nevertheless, the scope for change is constrained by the difficulties of establishing new ways of doing, regardless of the level of commitment to the ideas. Even recognising the agency and efficacy of those up for the challenge, co-production remains a ‘daunting’ ambition. The theorising and empirical insights in this book show us that we should remain hopeful about the prospect for change.
Chapter Five considers the governance arrangements which could facilitate co-productive policy design. Moving towards co-productive policy design poses difficult questions and a series of dilemmas for participants. Attempts to re-constitute the policy process do not exist within a vacuum and conventional policy designs can feel deeply entrenched and immutable to change. Through both theorising and working with the grounded powerful reflections on co-production from policy-makers, practitioners, activists and engaged scholars, this book embodies the importance and value of experimentation in policy design. It has demonstrated a growing appetite for change in a context that makes it more daunting but more important than ever.
By linking contemporary practice using design principles in policy with political science and public administration theories, this book offers a distinctive contribution to debates on policy design. The book is conceived as a conversation between theory and practice. It goes beyond traditional scholarship to offer not solely a critique of what exists, but to set out proposals for alternatives. Policy design is fundamentally about substantive and instrumental ambitions to achieve better policy outcomes. In the face of glaring inadequacies and limitations in addressing many of the complex challenges we face as a society, this book challenges conventional policy design and opens up a conversation about how to imagine and realise a radically democratic alternative form of policy design: co-production. First, through a series of heuristics, the book generates theoretical tensions and encourages creative thinking about policy design. Then, compelling international contributions from practitioners, policy makers, activists and engaged scholars provide specific contexts for these theoretical debates. In doing so, the book provides both a framing and grounding for ongoing debates and provides a means for advancing experimentation in policy design.
By linking contemporary practice using design principles in policy with political science and public administration theories, this book offers a distinctive contribution to debates on policy design. The book is conceived as a conversation between theory and practice. It goes beyond traditional scholarship to offer not solely a critique of what exists, but to set out proposals for alternatives. Policy design is fundamentally about substantive and instrumental ambitions to achieve better policy outcomes. In the face of glaring inadequacies and limitations in addressing many of the complex challenges we face as a society, this book challenges conventional policy design and opens up a conversation about how to imagine and realise a radically democratic alternative form of policy design: co-production. First, through a series of heuristics, the book generates theoretical tensions and encourages creative thinking about policy design. Then, compelling international contributions from practitioners, policy makers, activists and engaged scholars provide specific contexts for these theoretical debates. In doing so, the book provides both a framing and grounding for ongoing debates and provides a means for advancing experimentation in policy design.
