Making Policy, Shaping Lives (Power, Dissent, Equality: Understanding Contemporary Politics)

Making Policy, Shaping Lives teases out and interrogates the many faces of public policy and policy making, drawing on case studies ranging from the single European currency to disability politics, and considering how policy impacts on those at the ‘receiving’ end. Through engagement with case materials this book explores key factors involved in the policy-making process, tracks recent attempts at restructuring modern welfare states, and examines the arguments and evidence used in studying the policy process. Links between policy and battles over political values, responses to electoral preferences, challenging social and cultural issues, and the assumptions of the powerful are all explored. The effects of national and international economic and political pressures and changes in how ‘public’ policy operates are discussed. This book is a highly readable and accessible introduction to a range of debates around public policy and it brings the policy-making process alive to students and general readers.Key Features* Includes chapters on Health Policy, Welfare, and Policy-Making in Europe* Takes a comparative approach, looking at policy-making in different countries* Explores links and conflict between policy-making and political values, responses to the electorate, and social and cultural issues