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Distributed for Karolinum Press, Charles University

Public Policy

A Comprehensive Introduction

Distributed for Karolinum Press, Charles University

Public Policy

A Comprehensive Introduction

This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, synoptic, and easy-to-grasp account of the state of public policy as a field. Both a scholar and a Czech policy maker, Martin Potůček draws on his vast and diverse experience to offer descriptions of public policy’s normative and conceptual foundations, stages, actors, and institutions, as well as fifteen of the most frequently used public policy theories. Featuring illustrative empirical case studies, this innovative guide shows how these theories can be applied to making public policy. With particular insight into the importance of cultural context and historical legacies for policy making in post-Communist Europe, Public Policy provides nuanced, expert insight into the difficulties of public policy discourse and reform.

300 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2017

Political Science: Political and Social Theory

Sociology: Collective Behavior, Mass Communication


Reviews

“As a textbook, it brings together broad, multi-disciplinary literature with succinct clarity, wisdom, and trenchant examples. The combination of short essays, summaries, and examples, often set apart in text boxes, provides a contemporary framework for learning. For teachers, it provides a road map of each topic that they can use to organize their courses and individual lectures. I have read many books on public policy and policy analysis and I enjoyed and learned from this one more than any other. I know that I will be borrowing from it.”

Douglas Besharov, University of Maryland

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
 
Introduction
 
I. An overview
   Part I: Modes of Production and Classes
2. Patterns of income distribution
Two laws of income distribution
Wages and capital income
Managers within income hierarchies
Appendix to Chapter 2: The methodology used in the construction of Figure 2.1
 
3. Marx’s theory of history
A materialist interpretation of history
Modes of production: The channels of exploitation
Economics and economicism
Classes and income distribution
Class struggle as an “objective” component of historical dynamics
 
4. Managers in Marx’s analysis
The capitalist as owner and manager
Salaried workers as profit-rate maximizers
Bureaucracies
Stretching explanatory powers
 
5. Sociality and class societies
“Sociality”: Governing the workshop
The socialization of production: Capitalists and managers
The state at the intersect between the theories of sociality and class societies
And the emancipation from class dominations
A dual theory of human societies
Appendix to Chapter 5: States and bureaucracies in The Eighteenth Brumaire. The viewpoint of François Furet
 
6. Managerialism and managerial capitalism
Managerialism as mode of production-socialization
Managerial capitalism
The entrance into managerial capitalism I: The revolution in private management
The entrance into managerial capitalism II: The revolution in government
 
7. A wealth of alternative interpretations
“Streamlining” class analysis: The three classes of managerial capitalism
To the limits of Marx’s framework and beyons
Beyond capitalism: Schumpeter, Burnham, and Galbraith
Sociologies and historical philosophies
 
8. Hybridization as analytical challenge
From feudalism to the genesis of capitalist relations of production: The French Ancien Régime
An English “Ancien Régime”
Marx and the economics of emerging capitalist relations
The genesis of a class contradiction: Bourgeois and proletarians
 
Part II: Twelve Decades of Managerial Capitalism
9. Varying trends of inequality
Inequality: Total income
Inequality: Wages
Inequality: Wealth
Levels of inequality
Summing up
 
10. The sequence of social orders
The first financial hegemony up to the Great Depression
The post-depression/postwar compromise
From the mid-1970s onward: The second financial hegemony in neoliberalism
They hedays and decline of Galbraith’s and Chanderl’s analyses
Treating the crisis-Preserving the social order. A fourth social order after 2008?
The state; Social orders to the right and left
Appendix to Chapter 10 (I): Managerial capitalism and social orders in Europe
Appendix to Chapter 10 (2): Michel Foucault’s notion of “governmental rationality”- Its application to (neo)liberalism
 
11. Class and imperial power structures
Ownership and control
Anglo-Saxon hegemony
The interface between ownership-control and management
Managerial national and transnational elites
Upper classes of all countries untie under an imperial banner!
Relations of production and international hegemony
 
12. The politics of social change
Economic and political governing cores
Flipping between right and left?
Social orders and administrations in basic economic variables
Cooperation and strife between the two governing cores
Economic theory in the political turmoil
 
13. Tendencies, crises, and struggles
Two brands of structural crises
Profitability trends
Managers and technical change
Revolutionary and routine trajectories
Paving the way to the second social order and the turn to neoliberalism
Determinism and political contingency
 
Part III: Past Attempts at the Inflection of Historical Dynamics
14. Utopian capitalism in bourgeois revolutions
The French Revolution beyond the bourgeoisie
A brief comparison with seventeenth-century England
The social foundations of the “counter-revolution”
Epilogue
“Capitalist” modernity
 
15. Utopian socialism and anarchism
Utopian socialism: The tension between democracy and authoritarianism
Doing without central authority: Anarchist communism
At the root of the implacable character of historical dynamics
Appendix to Chapter 15: Utopian socialists
 
16. Self-proclaimed scientific socialism
The alliance for revolution
Bureaucratic managerialism
The managerial organization of production
The failure of reforms
Self-management
Brief remarks regarding China
Introduction
Overview of the Public Policy Theories Presented
List of Abbreviations
 
Part A
A1 Public Interest and Public Policy
A2 Values in Public Policy
A3 Governance
A4 Actors and Institutions
A5 Public Policy Instruments
A6 Public Policy Process. The Stage of Problem Delimitation and Problem Recognition
A7 Policy Formulation, Decision-making
A8 Policy Implementation
A9 Policy Evaluation
A10 How to Understand Public Policy
Literature- Part A
Journals and Internet Sources
English-Czech Glossary of Public Policy Terms
List of Tables- Part A
List of Figures- Part A
 
Part B
Introduction to Part B
Terminology of the Pillars in the Czech Pension System
B1 Historical Overview of Pension Systems in the World
B2 The Role of Politicians and Experts in the Preparation of Czech Pension Reform
B3 Czech Pension Reform: How to Reconcile Equivalence with Fiscal Discipline
B4 Rivalry of Advocacy Coalitions in the Czech Pension Reform
B5 Pensions Basics
Literature-Part B
List of Tables- part B
List of Figures- Part B
Subject Index (Part A)
Personal Index (Part A)
 

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