Rod Rhodes

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Governance Stories

Rod Rhodes; Mark Bevir; R.A.W. Rhodes

Synopsis:

In their earlier book Interpreting British Governance, Bevir and Rhodes sought to understand changes in British government by setting out an interpretative approach to British political science, which focused on an aggregate analysis of British political traditions.

This book develops their theory further and challenges conventional approaches to political science. Bevir and Rhodes develop an anthropological epistemology and an ethnographic account of the governance narrative and seek to de-center British political science and British government. They address concerns that the interpretative approach risks neglecting the differences in the beliefs of the individual grouped together in a tradition, arguing that situated agency, the analysis of people's webs of belief and actions located in the inherited traditions and practices that informs them, plays a key role in interpretative political science. This book:

· Provides a theoretical defense of situated agency located in the historicalcontext of British political science.
· Compares their cutting-edge approach to British political science with other forms of enquiry including, post-structural and institutional analysis.
· Provides a general account of governance as the context for ethnographic analyses of governance in action.
· Includes studies of the consumers of public services, the National Health Service, government departments and policy networks.

This new volume is a major challenge to present-day notions of political science and will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of political theory, public policy, British politics and British history.

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