Contemporary Approaches to Public Policy: Theories, Controversies and Perspectives

This book assesses a range of contemporary scholarly approaches to public policy. Bringing together leading scholars in policy studies, each chapter addresses a different theoretical approach to policy design and implementation, drawn from the fields of political science, economics and behavioral science. These include the advocacy coalition framework, discursive approaches, institutional analysis, punctuated equilibrium theory, and multiple streams approaches. The book examines how these approaches were born, their limitations, and the theoretical and research problems they pose.

This newly revised edition also considers how the field of policy studies has evolved over the last decade, and includes two new chapters examining the narrative policy framework and policy transaction approaches. It concludes with a discussion of fundamental issues of democracy in public policy. It is an essential resource for all those involved in teaching, researching and studying public policy.