1st Edition

Resolving Messy Policy Problems Handling Conflict in Environmental, Transport, Health and Ageing Policy

By Steven Ney Copyright 2009
224 Pages
by Routledge

224 Pages
by Routledge

224 Pages
by Routledge

Our lives increasingly take place in ever more complex and interconnected networks that blur the boundaries we have traditionally used to define our social and political spaces. Accordingly, the policy problems that governments are called upon to deal with have become less clear-cut and far messier. This is particularly the case with climate change, environmental policy, transport, health and... Read more
1: Introduction 2: Understanding Policy Conflict 3: Transport 4: Ageing 5: Health 6: Conclusion -- Mess, Conflict and Pluralism

Biography

Steven Ney is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University. Trained as a policy analyst, Steven Ney has worked on a wide range of policy issues in a number of research institutes across Europe.

'This book should be read by anyone attempting to understand why policies often do not work.' B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh and Zeppelin University, Germany 'The field of policy studies is knee-deep in turgid texts, but this is not one of them. Ney guides us through all the theories, pointing out where they converge and where they conflict, and ending with a subsuming tour de force in which he refurbishes the classic theory of pluralist democracy by pinning down just what it is that constitutes the plurality.' Michael Thompson, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria and Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Said Business School, University of Oxford 'Steven Ney has produced an extremely important study of contemporary public policy. He points out the extent to which the most significant policy problems facing governments and society are complex and are not subject to neat, linear solutions. This book should be read by anyone attempting to understand why policies often do not work, and how they might be made to work more effectively.' B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh and Zeppelin University, Germany