This book offers a novel, refreshing and politically engaged way to think about public policy. Instead of treating policy as simply the government’s best efforts to address problems, it offers a way to question critically how policies produce “problems” as particular sorts of problems, with important political implications. Governing, it is argued, takes place through these problematizations. According to the authors, interrogating policies and policy proposals as problematizations involves asking questions about the assumptions they rely upon, how they have been made, what their effects are, as well as how they could be unmade. To enable this form of critical analysis, this book introduces an analytic strategy, the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach. It features examples of applications of the approach with topics as diverse as obesity, economic policy, migration, drug and alcohol policy, and gender equality to illustrate the growing popularity of this way of thinking and to provide clear and useful examples of poststructural policy analysis in practice.

This book offers a novel, refreshing and politically engaged way to think about public policy. Instead of treating policy as simply the government’s best efforts to address problems, it offers a way to question critically how policies produce “problems” as particular sorts of problems, with important political implications. Governing, it is argued, takes place through these problematizations. According to the authors, interrogating policies and policy proposals as problematizations involves asking questions about the assumptions they rely upon, how they have been made, what their effects are, as well as how they could be unmade. To enable this form of critical analysis, this book introduces an analytic strategy, the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach. It features examples of applications of the approach with topics as diverse as obesity, economic policy, migration, drug and alcohol policy, and gender equality to illustrate the growing popularity of this way of thinking and to provide clear and useful examples of poststructural policy analysis in practice.

Written for Higher Education Masters and PhD programs, this landmark textbook joins the theory of feminist post-structuralism with research methods for the purpose of policy analysis in Higher Education. It showcases the different methods that can be applied to a range of topics in Higher Education policy and policy development. Reconstructing Policy in Higher Education highlights the work of accomplished and award-winning scholars, and provides an in-depth examination of theoretical frameworks and concrete examples of how feminist post-structuralism effectively informs research methods and can serve as a vital tool for policy-makers and analysts.

Poststructuralism, Citizenship and Social Policy shows how poststructuralist ideas can be usefully applied in the areas of welfare, health, education and science and technology policy, making particular reference to the theme of citizenship. The impact of poststructuralism on thinking in the social sciences and humanities over the last decade has been profound. However, to date, there has been little systematic analysis of the implications of poststructuralism for the critical analysis of social policy. Poststructuralism, Citizenship and Social Policy will provide essential reading for students and researchers working in the areas of welfare studies, the sociology of health and medicine, political studies, social work, social administration and education.

This book presents developments of discourse analysis in France and applies its tools to key texts from five theorists of structuralism: Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida and Sollers. It pays special attention to enunciative pragmatics as a poststructuralist approach which analyzes the discursive construction of subjectivity.

This major new textbook introduces students to the dynamic and evolving field of foreign policy. The book opens with a consideration of different theoretical and historical perspectives; it then focuses on a range of actors and the goals they seek to advance; and it ends with a series of case studies involving issues and crises relating to a wide range of different countries Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases is timely given the growing significance of foreign policyin the post-9/11 world. It will be essential reading for all students new to foreign policy.The book is accompanied by an Online Resource Centre.Student resources:TimelineWeb linksFlashcard glossaryInstructor resources:Three case studiesPowerPoint slides

This book offers a novel approach to thinking about public policy and a new, distinctive methodology for analysing policy. It introduces a set of six questions that probe how ‘problems’ are represented in policies, followed by an injunction to apply the questions to one’s own policy proposals. This form of analysis, it suggests, is crucial to understanding how policy works, how we are governed, and how the practice of policy-making implicitly constitutes us as subjects. The book mounts a challenge to the problem-solving paradigm currently dominating the intellectual and policy landscape, a paradigm manifest in ‘evidence-based policy’. Arguing that such a paradigm denies the shaping that goes on in the process of problematisation, it offers a ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to policy analysis as a counter-discourse. In this view critical thinking involves putting ‘problems’ into question rather than learning how to ‘solve’ them. Bacchi’s new approach to policy analysis offers exciting insights in a wide array of policy areas, including welfare, drugs/alcohol and gambling, criminal justice, health, education, immigration and population, media and research policy. Invaluable to those involved in policy studies and public administration, it will also appeal to students and academics in sociology, social work, anthropology, cultural studies and human geography.