The Politics of Policymaking

Arjen Boin is Professor of Public Institutions and Governance at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University. Before he moved to Leiden, he was a professor of public governance and crisis management at the Utrecht School of Governance and associate professor at the Public Administration Institute, Louisiana State University.Arjen Boin has published widely on topics of crisis and disaster management, leadership, institutional design and organizational issues. His most recent books include Guardians of Public Value, Understanding the Creeping Crisis and Governing the Pandemic (all three were published in 2021 by Palgrave and can be downloaded for free).His book Managing Hurricane Katrina (Louisiana State University Press, 2019) investigates the lessons that should be learned from this mega-disaster. His other books include The Politics of Crisis Management (Cambridge University Press, winner of APSA’s Herbert A. Simon book award), Governing after Crisis (Cambridge UP, 2008), Crisis Management: A Three Volume Set of Essential Readings (Sage, 2008), Designing Resilience (Pittsburgh UP, 2010), MegaCrises (Charles C Thomas, 2012) and The EU as Crisis Manager: Patterns and Prospects (Cambridge UP, 2013).Arjen Boin is the previous editor of Public Administration (Wiley), a premier journal in the field, and serves on the editorial board of the following journals: Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management (Wiley), Risks, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy (Wiley), and International Journal of Emergency Management (Inderscience).Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Deputy Head of Department for ResearchDepartment of GovernmentI have been member of the Department of Government since 2002. Prior to that appointment, I was Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown and Senior Research Officer at the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR). I am currently Director of CARR.

Public policy textbooks that provide insight in how public programs are actually crafted, negotiated, implemented, adjusted and terminated are extremely rare, but Boin and Lodge have pulled it off. This earthy and at times gritty gem provides its users with penetrating insights into how the cookies are cut in the real world of policymaking whilst at the same time offering them a helpful introduction to the toolkits that policy craftspeople - analysts and designers - may deploy to make sense of it all.

• Chapter 1: The importance of policymakingChapter 2: The challenges of problem-solving in a complex and dynamic worldChapter 3: Exploring the policymaking worldChapter 4: The fight for attention: Why some problems trigger policymaking (and many others do not)Chapter 5: Crafting sound policy: The political dimension of technical choicesChapter 6: Getting it done: The implementation challengeChapter 7: How accountability and evaluation shape policymakingChapter 8: Creating and maintaining legitimacy for public policiesChapter 9: The art of policy adaptationChapter 10: The moral dimension of policymakingChapter 11: Governing across bordersChapter 12: The future of policymaking: Cues for policy leadership