Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 79 - June 2020): Legislative and Executive Politics

This book assesses the 1991 Child Support Act and demonstrates how its failure was 'foreseeable' and 'foreseen'. It provides an understanding of the creation, and failure, of the Act, as well as providing an examination of the British policy-making process. The book re-introduces the 'stages approach' as an appropriate framework for examining policy-making in general, and analysing policy failure in particular. It draws on evidence gained through interviews, official documents, unpublished consultation responses, Parliamentary debates, and materials from pressure groups and think-tanks, as well as academic literature. The 1991 Child Support Act is seen as one of the most controversial and notorious policy failures in Britain. However it has received relatively little academic attention. An in-depth analysis of the policy-making process that led to the development and passage of this deeply flawed policy has largely been neglected: this book fills that gap.

Policy-making in public health is highly complex, which is one reason why the behavioural turn is now playing a significant role in this field. Against this backdrop, this book aims to develop a theoretical understanding of how policymakers take up public health challenges and how policies change over the course of time. Accordingly, the book reveals policy-makers' underlying assumptions, which influence the way in which public policy seeks to promote the health status of citizens. In a second step, the book presents a typology of policy instruments and applies this to the field of health promotion. This typology introduces an option that adds behaviourally informed insights to the toolbox of political analysis. Empirical evidence of behavioural health policies can be found in various countries around the world, and the book presents both relevant country studies and examples from the supra- and international level. Finally, the book discusses the implications of the rise of behavioural health policies, proposes a specific concept of health citizenship and reviews state-citizen relations. The book is useful for academics from health-related disciplines, such as political science, sociology, and public health, as well as for policy-makers, practitioners and students.

This book examines public administration in South Asia in the context of rapid changes and modernization of administrative traditions, thoughts, and practices. The existing literature has, however, not given adequate attention to these developments, at least in a single volume. The book describes both the shared administrative traditions of Bhutan, Bangladesh, China, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and how far they have adapted their administrative systems to respond to contemporary administrative and governance challenges. The book studies how national civil service reforms have been carried out in each member state of South Asia and how the national civil service acts and different regulations are being implemented, as well as what are the critical factors associated with the implementation of national civil service acts and reform measures in the region.

"As a Journal Editor for over twenty-five years, I have read a lot about the European Union. I am often asked, 'what are the major gaps in EU research?' My answer is always 'implementation'. Eva Thomann's book makes a major contribution to EU implementation studies. She brings really fresh thinking to the field. This is an important book for all students of the EU and of policy implementation." --Jeremy Richardson, Co-Editor of the Journal of European Public Policy    This book sheds light on the patterns, causes and consequences of the "customization" of European Union (EU) policies. Even if they comply, member states interpret and adapt EU rules in very diverse ways when putting them into practice. We can think of and measure this diversity as a phenomenon of regulatory change along the implementation chain. The book explores what explains customization, and what it means for providing policy solutions to shared problems. It studies the implementation of EU food safety policies in Austria, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland using innovative qualitative comparative techniques. After looking at the role of prominent compliance arguments and the "logics of action" for customization, the study assesses how differing degrees of customization affect the success of the implementation. The book provides a new, evidence-based perspective on "gold-plating" and better regulation in Europe for scholars, students and practitioners of policy implementation, European integration and Europeanization alike.                          

This book examines the policymaking process following highly emotional events. It focuses on the politics of shark "attacks" by looking at policy responses to tragic shark bites in Florida, Australia, and South Africa. The book reviews these cases by identifying the flaws in the human-shark relationship, including the way sharks are portrayed as the enemy, the way shark bites are seen as intentional, and how policy responses appear to be based on public safety. Flaws identifies politicians as the true sharks of this story for their manipulation of tragic circumstances to protect their own interests. It argues that shark bites are ungovernable accidents of nature, and that we are "in the way, not on the menu."       

This book explains the existence of illicit markets throughout human history and provides recommendations to governments. Organized criminal networks increased in strength after the enforcement of prohibition, eventually challenging the authority of the state and its institutions through corruption and violence. Criminal networks now organize under cyber-infrastructure, what we call the Deep or Dark Web. The authors analyze how illicit markets come together, issues of destabilization and international security, the effect of legitimate enterprises crowded out of developing countries, and ultimately, illicit markets' cost to human life. 

This book explores the institution of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a policy instrument. It argues that after the Cold War the European Union started challenging the unilateral policies of the United States by promoting new norms and institutions, such as the ICC. This development flies in the face of traditional explanations for cooperation, which would theorize institutionalization as the result of hegemonic preponderance, rational calculations or common identities. The book explains the dynamics behind the emergence of the ICC with a novel theoretical concept of normative binding. Normative binding is a strategy that provides middle powers with the means to tie down the unilateral policies of powerful actors that prefer not to cooperate. The idea is to promote new multilateral norms and deposit them in institutions, which have the potential to become binding even on unilateralist actors, if the majority of states adhere to them.

This book analyses interest group communication strategies in parliamentary political systems, and considers how political uncertainty, which emerges from the political process, shapes interest group communication strategies. It develops a formal model of lobbying in a bicameral legislature with strong party discipline, and discusses why interest groups choose public or private communication channels to influence political bargaining. The book tests its hypothesis in different policy contexts, including lobbying on major legislation in the field of labour and social policy.

This study explores the use of precedents in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It argues that a strategic use of precedent-based discourses aids the Court in developing its jurisprudence autonomously; that is, independent of the political preferences of EU member states. The study is based on a long-term assessment of CJEU case law in the politically sensitive area of immigration law. It traces the Court's rulings in this area from the 1970s up until the most recent period. The study identifies a series of consistent discursive patterns that slowly, but surely, moved EU immigration law beyond what member states had intended. The work takes an interdisciplinary approach, engaging with both political science and legal discussions on the Court of Justice and its role in processes of European integration.

This title brings together seven presidential politics scholars to address the Trump presidency and the current functioning of American democracy based on recent provocative research. These studies focus on several important topics, including presidential leadership theory and the Trump presidency, examining its mistruths, analyzing its record in the lower federal courts, probing its use of the pardon power, debating whether it requires an entirely new United States constitution to prevent future authoritarian threats, and assessing Trump's contribution to presidential power research. Taken together, these chapters represent a snapshot view of the early Trump presidency and its implications for US politics moving forward.

This edited collection delves into the key aspects of the Trump campaign promises around immigration, trade, social and foreign policy, and unpicks how the first year of the presidency has played out in delivering them. It charts his first year from both historical and contemporary political standpoints, and in the context of comparative pieces stacking Trump's performance against Gold-standard presidents such as Reagan, Kennedy and the last 'outsider', Eisenhower. Focusing in on a number of key elements of the presidency in depth, it offers a unique perspective on a presidency like no other, drawing on the overriding themes of populism, nativist nationalism and the battle for disengagement from the neoliberal power generation.

In England, it has been possible since 2013 to convert an office building into residential use without needing planning permission (as has been required since 1948). This book explores the consequences of this central government driven deregulation on local communities. The policy decision was primarily about boosting the supply of housing, but reflects a broader neoliberal ideology which seeks to reform public planning in many countries to reduce perceived interference in free markets. Drawing on original research in the English local authorities of Camden, Croydon, Leeds, Leicester and Reading, the book provides a case study of the implementation of planning deregulation which demonstrates the lowering of standards in housing quality, the reduced ability of the local state to proactively steer development and plan for their places, and the transfer of wealth from the public to private spheres that has resulted. Comparative case studies from Glasgow and Rotterdam call into question the very need for the deregulation in the first place.

This book examines and analyses the complex and contradictory relationships between Higher Education Institutions in England and their local communities within a wider political and policy context. It provides an overview of the UK university system which has a long tradition of a mixed pattern of relationships with communities. The book critically explores the academic  spheres of teaching and learning, third stream activities and research,  showing how the ways in which different initiatives supported by national policy and funding bodies have shaped the relationship universities have with their communities as well as the opportunities and challenges institutions now face to develop and transform these relationships.