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Fully revised for a second edition, this essential guide provides a concise and accessible overview of the public policy process: agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation.The book provides an introduction to the key policy functions, the challenges they entail, and how the challenges may be addressed by policy actors. Written from a comparative perspective, the authors include examples from a diverse range of countries at different stages of development, highlighting key principles and practices through which policy actors can effectively manage their policy processes and outcomes. Key features of the second edition: fully updated and revised content throughout; expanded references and further reading; more guidance towards understanding the key concepts in public policy. This important tool offers students of public policy and policy practitioners guidance on how to make, implement, and evaluate public policies in ways that improve citizens'lives.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive global survey of the policy process. Written by an outstanding line up of distinguished scholars and practitioners, the Handbook covers all aspects of the policy process including: Theory – from rational choice to the new institutionalism Frameworks – network theory, advocacy coalition and development models Key stages in the process – Formulation, implementation and evaluation Agenda setting and decision making The roles of key actors and institutions This is an invaluable resource for all scholars, graduate students and practitioners in public policy and policy analysis.

This short guide provides a concise and accessible overview of the entire policy cycle taking the reader through the various stages of agenda setting, policy formulation, decision making, policy implementation and policy evaluation. Public officials at every level of government play a vital role in the development, adoption and implementation of government policies. Yet existing works focus only on senior politicians and public officials and, thus, fail to provide an insight into the work of the vast majority of other officials. This book provides an introduction to the key policy functions, the challenges they entail, and how the challenges may be addressed by public officials. Written from a comparative perspective, the authors include examples from a diverse range of countries at different stages of development, highlighting key principles and practices through which officials can effectively manage their policy processes and outcomes. This important tool offers students of public policy and policy practitioners'guidance on how to make, implement and evaluate public policies in ways that improve citizens'lives.

After two decades of dominating the public sector reform agenda, privatization is on the wane as states gradually reassert themselves in many formerly privatized sectors. The change of direction is a response to the realization that privatization is not working as intended, especially in public service sectors.This landmark volume brings together leading social scientists, including B. Guy Peters, Anthony Cheung and Jon Pierre, to systematically discuss the emerging patterns of the reassertion of the state in the delivery of essential public services. The state under these emerging arrangements assumes overall responsibility for and control over essential public service delivery, yet allows scope for market incentives and competition when they are known to work. The recent reforms thus display a more pragmatic and nuanced understanding of how markets work in public services. The first part of the book provides the theoretical context while the second provides sectoral studies of recent reforms in healthcare, education, transportation, electricity and water supply. It includes case studies from a range of countries: Brazil, China, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, USA, Hong Kong and the UK. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Political Science, Public Administration, Public Policy, Geography, Political Economy, Sociology, and Urban Planning.

There are a multitude of hazards that confront attempts to change institutional or political orders in pursuit of good governance. Even seemingly technical prescriptions run up against local political and social realities which make their adoption difficult and, if adopted, require significant modification of the original prescriptions. Moreover, the technical, rationalist and/or normative language employed in the good governance discourse masks contests over power, rights, resources, and actors'conflicting interests. There is a definite need to situate the good governance debate in the local context rather than reflexively adopting a universalistic positing of the fact or desirability of governance convergence across countries and sectors because the reality is that the world-wide deployment of good governance rhetoric is not accompanied by convergence in thinking or practices across nations. Transforming Asian Governance asks:• How do good governance principles translate into local settings?• How do local settings influence the conception of what is good governance and how the debate over good governance is deployed as a political or administrative strategy?Using case studies in governance from Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Korea and Japan, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the public and social policy of Asia, and international and comparative governance more generally.

Social Policy in East and South East Asia provides the first systematic comparison of the policy sectors of income maintenance, health, housing and education in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It focuses particularly on the provision and financing arrangements of these four Asian newly industrialized economies and their outcomes in terms of adequacy, efficiency and equity, drawing on extensive primary research carried out by the author.Locating the importance of Asian social policies in the wake of the recent financial crisis in the region, this work provides a comprehensive analysis of the different types of welfare state in contemporary Asia.