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.

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.