Interpreting Governance, High Politics, and Public Policy

Nick Turnbull is Lecturer in Politics at The University of Manchester, where he researches political communication and political rhetoric, public policy and governance, and the philosophy of social science. He is a specialist in the philosophy of questioning, applied to the social sciences.

Interpreting Governance, High Politics and Public Policy offers the latest perspectives on the interpretivist approach to governance and public policy. Commemorating more than a decade of research on governance by Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes, this book is not a review of the past but a guide to how insights from the interpretive perspective can be used to advance the study of governance by researchers outside the interpretivist fold.

Introduction: Interpreting Governance, High Politics, and Public Policy Nick Turnbull Part 1: Governance and Metagovernance 1. Re-centring the British Political Tradition: Explaining Contingency in New Labour and the Coalition's Governance Statecraft Patrick Diamond, David Richards and Martin Smith 2. Critical Encounters with Decentred Theory: Tradition, Metagovernance, and Parrh¿sia as Storytelling Paul Fawcett 3. Interpreting Hillsborough Andrew Taylor Part 2: High Politics and Political History 4. Executive Governance: An interpretive Analysis R.A.W. Rhodes 5. Political Ideas and 'Real' Politics David Craig 6. The Meanings of Progressive Politics: Interpretivism and its Limits Emily Robinson Part 3: Policymaking 7. Extending Interpretivism: Articulating the Practice Dimension in Bevir and Rhodes's Differentiated Polity Model Hendrik Wagenaar 8. The Inadequacy of Interpretivism: Explaining Britain's Failure to 'Number the People' Perri 6 and Christine Bellamy 9. Interpretivism and Public Policy Research Helen Sullivan Conclusion 10: Interpreting British Governance: Ten Years On Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes