Rethinking Governance Ruling, rationalities and resistance

This volume explores new directions of governance and public policy arising both from interpretive political science and those who engage with interpretive ideas. It conceives governance as the various policies and outcomes emerging from the increasing salience of neoclassical and institutional economics or, neoliberalism and new institutionalisms. In doing so, it suggests that that the British state consists of a vast array of meaningful actions that may coalesce into contingent, shifting, and contestable practices. Based on original fieldwork, it examines the myriad ways in which local actors - civil servants, mid-level public managers, and street level bureaucrats - have interpreted elite policy narratives and thus forged practices of governance on the ground. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of governance and public policy.

Introduction 1. The "3Rs" in rethinking governance: ruling, rationalities, and resistance, Mark Bevir and R A W Rhodes Part I: Ruling Narratives 2. Governance and Modernist Social Science: a genealogy, Mark Bevir 3. What’s wrong with Whitehall? Mandarins and ways of thinking in British government, Graham K. Wilson 4. Mass Privatization, and the Changing Nature of Governance in the UK, Mike Raco 5. Educational governance in England, Stephen J Ball and Carolina Junemann 6. Claiming Authority over the NHS, Scott Greer 7. The Governance of Social Care for the Elderly in England, Jonathan Bradbury Part II: Decentring practice: rationalities and resistance 8. Negotiating Austerity and Local Traditions, Alison Gardner and Vivien Lowndes 9. Austerity Realism and the Governance of Leicester, Jonathan Davies and E. Thompson 10. Contestation and Contingency in Advisory Governance, Claire Dunlop 11. Proactivity in tax administration: nudging the knotty, Karen Boll 12. Local knowledge: an interpretive analysis, R. A. W. Rhodes

Mark Bevir is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is the author of various books including Interpreting Global Security (Routledge, 2013), and The Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science (Routledge, 2015). Rod Rhodes is Professor of Government, Research, at the University of Southampton, UK. He has authored and edited numerous books including, The Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science (Routledge 2015). He is also a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in both Australia and the UK.