Taking Risks and Breaking New Frontiers

How do we conceive of policy and political studies? To what extent should our science be ’normative’ or ’objective’ or ’positive’? Who are our audiences and how do we engage them? Whose knowledge matters and how does it accumulate? How should we advance the study of policy and politics?

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this book makes a statement about the study of policy and politics: what it is, how it is done, where it has been and where it is going. It comprises scholarship that has rarely been combined to explore several fundamental challenges about research in policy and politics. It concludes by challenging the field to consider different ways of thinking about what we can discover and construct in the world and how we can conduct our science.

Oscar Berglund is Senior Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. Claire A. Dunlop is Professor of Politics and Public Policy in the Politics Department at the University of Exeter. Christopher M. Weible is Professor at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs, CO, USA.